Why Is BDS a Moral Duty Today?

A
Response to Bernard-Henri Levy
By Omar Barghouti Founding member, BDS movement

Huffington Post, 1 February 2011

In his angry attack on the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel,
Mr. Bernard-Henri Levy 1 desperately attempts to smear the movement by presenting a
number of patently false, regurgitated, and misleading premises and reaching, as a result,
unwarranted, even illogical, conclusions. What Mr. Levy peculiarly tries to hide or obscure
are the real objectives of the movement, who stands behind it, and the reasons behind its
spectacular rate of growth lately, especially in France and other Western countries.

The fact is the BDS Call was launched by a great majority in Palestinian civil society on July
9, 2005, as a qualitatively new phase in the global struggle for Palestinian freedom, justice,
and self-determination. More than 170 leading Palestinian political parties, trade union
federations, women's unions, refugee rights groups, NGOs, and grassroots organizations
called for a boycott against Israel until it fully complies with its obligations under
international law. Rooted in a century-old history of civil, nonviolent resistance against settler
colonialism, occupation and ethnic cleansing, the effort recalls how people of conscience in
the international community have "historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight
injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa," calling upon
international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to
"impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those
applied to South Africa in the apartheid era."

Since 2008, the BDS movement has been led by the largest coalition of Palestinian civil
society organizations inside historic Palestine and in exile, the BDS National Committee
(BNC). Anchored in deep respect for international law and universal human rights, the
movement has spread across the world, empowering and mobilizing creative energies and
emphasizing sensitivity to the particularities of each context. BDS activists anywhere select
their own targets and set the tactics that best suit their political and cultural environment. The
fact that BDS categorically rejects racism of all sorts, including anti-Semitism, has further
increased its appeal among liberal and progressive movements everywhere.

While several leading BDS activists openly endorse the unitary state solution, most of the
members of the coalition leading the movement still subscribe to the two-state solution. This
is, however, an irrelevant issue, as the BDS movement, being strictly rights-based, has
consistently avoided taking any position regarding the one-state/two-states debate,
emphasizing instead the three basic rights that need to be realized in any political solution.
Ending the Israeli occupation that started in 1967 of all Arab territories, ending Israel's system
of legalized and institutionalized discrimination against its own Palestinian citizens, and

1
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernardhenri-levy/why-the-call-to-boycott-i_b_813856.html

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recognizing the UN-sanctioned rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes of origin
are the three basic principles of the movement. Everything else is secondary and tactical.

Mr. Levy completely misrepresents my position on the matter. Citing a 2003 article of mine,
he outlandishly claims that I endorse a "two-Palestines" solution. Here are my exact words:
"... one must not deny that the right of return of Palestinian refugees does contradict the
requirements of a negotiated two-state solution. Israel simply will never accept it, making it
the Achilles' heel of any negotiated two-state solution, as the record has amply shown." The
point was that a negotiated two-state solution will de facto exclude the right of two-thirds of
the Palestinians, the refugees, to return to their homes, as all refugees are entitled to according
to international law.

For more than 27 years, I've consistently and openly advocated a secular, democratic state in
the entire area of historic Palestine, where everyone enjoys equal rights, irrespective of
ethnicity, religion or any identity attribute. This, to my mind, is the most ethically-consistent
formula that can accommodate the inalienable Palestinian right to self determination,
including the return of refugees, with the rights of all the inhabitants of the land to justice,
peace, dignity and democratic rights. Regardless, even if my real position on this issue were
presented by Mr. Levy, extrapolating from this alleged position of mine to implicate the entire
BDS movement not only lacks intellectual honesty; it is logically equivalent to claiming that
the anti-war movement in France, say, is plotting to replace the capitalist system with a
socialist order based on having a communist (or one merely claimed to be a communist)
among its leaders.

Like any large, democratic coalition of groups that is built on common principles but espouses
and dearly respects pluralism, the BDS movement, as anyone can conclude from examining
the huge record of official statements and documents issued in the last five years, does not
endorse any specific political solution to this colonial conflict. The common denominator of
the movement is upholding Palestinian rights in accordance with international law.

Another serious fallacy in Mr. Levy's article is his rhetorical characterization of Israel as a
"democracy." South Africa was also the only "democracy" in Africa during apartheid. The
U.S. was a "democracy," as well, when in the South millions of African-Americans were
thoroughly segregated and racially oppressed. An ethnocentric state, like Israel, that
discriminates by law against people who are not Jewish and that occupies, forcibly displaces,
colonizes and commits what leading international law experts and human rights organizations
describe as war crimes, cannot remotely be called a democracy. If France were to adopt laws
discriminating against its Jewish citizens and favoring its Catholic citizens, would we call it a
democracy?

Former South African government minister Ronnie Kasrils and British author Victoria
Brittain addressed this point quite well. They wrote:

The desire for an ethnic-religious majority of Israeli Jews has seeped across from the
occupied territories to permeate the Israeli 'national' agenda... The Palestinian minority in
Israel has for decades been denied basic equality in health, education, housing and land
possession, solely because it is not Jewish. The fact that this minority is allowed to vote
hardly redresses the rampant injustice in all other basic human rights. They are excluded from
the very definition of the "Jewish state", and have virtually no influence on the laws, or
political, social and economic policies. Hence their similarity to the black South Africans.

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Furthermore, at a time when a wave of popular uprisings is sweeping the Arab region,
demanding freedoms, social justice and democracy, it is quite telling, if largely expected, to
see Israel -- and the US government -- in such a panic and uproar, standing on the wrong side
of history, with despots and authoritarian regimes against the people. Unnerved by the storm
of criticism, albeit polite, of the Egyptian dictatorship by its hitherto European allies and even
some in the US administration, Israel has launched a diplomatic campaign to convince key
capitals to support Hosni Mubarak lest stability is lost and Israel's other despotic friends in the
region feel abandoned.

In Tunisia, as well, the vaunted electronic surveillance apparatus of the former dictator Ben-
Ali was run in close cooperation with Israel, as Tunisian civil society organizations
systematically reported. With more of Israel's friends in the region being dethroned, it is
becoming abundantly clear how much Israel and its Western partners have invested in
safeguarding and buttressing the unelected, autocratic regimes in the Arab world, partially to
make a self-fulfilling prophecy of Israel as the "villa in the midst of the jungle" -- the myth
often repeated by Israel's lobby groups.

The fact that Israel was for decades apartheid South Africa's best friend, helping it to develop
nuclear weapons, to crush popular resistance by the black majority, and to dodge the
widespread boycott against it has not helped Israel's case in projecting a deceptive brand of
democracy and enlightenment either.

Finally, regarding the patently misleading and unfounded claim that a boycott of Israeli
products is tantamount to boycotting "Jewish merchandise," one can only ask whether a
boycott of Sudan, or Saudi Arabia, for that matter, would be considered Islamophobic? Was
the boycott against South Africa anti-Christian? Why the double standard when it comes to
Israel? The BDS movement against Israel could not care less whether it is a Jewish, Muslim,
Catholic or Hindu state; all that matters is that it is a colonial oppressor that persistently
denies the Palestinian people their basic rights. Is this too difficult to understand? A boycott
of Israel today is a moral duty for all those who care about the rule of law and universal rights
for all humans, equally.

Omar Barghouti is a founding member of the BDS movement and author of Boycott,
Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights," (Haymarket, 2011).

Quelle:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/omar-barghouti/why-is-bds-a-moral-duty-t_b_816990.html