Love of the Land: Berkeley BDS and Democracy

Berkeley BDS and Democracy

Jon
Divest This!
18 April '10

Most of the “by losing, we really won” arguments from the BDSers defeated in last week’s Berkeley divestment battle are like this piece by Jewish Voice for Peace/Muzzlewatch Queen Cecilie Surasky, who substitutes the excitement of getting hundreds of people in a room to bash Israel for ten hours for actual political success. If such arguments rang a hollow ten years ago when groups like JVP begun providing a Jewish face to every BDS initiative on the planet, claiming unstoppable momentum seem positively bizarre after a decade of watching divestment fall flat on its face time and time again.

Now there is one argument the boycotters are making that’s worth dissecting: their claim that they actually won a majority of votes in the Senate (16/20 in the original vote, and 12/20 in the veto override) and should thus be considered the winner of the democratic process (implying that their win was undone by undemocratic political maneuvering by their foes). Not that this argument holds any more water than the other ones they trot out, but it does open up some interesting discussions vis-à-vis BDS and democracy.

For Berkeley’s student government (like the US government) is not an Athenian democracy (where all citizens/students vote on every issue), but is rather, like the US, is a constitutional representative system. Because the word “democracy” is used to describe these very two different kinds of systems, it can get confusing why simple majorities do not always get their way.

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Love of the Land: Berkeley BDS and Democracy

Love of the Land: Apartheid Week - Hypocrisy at its Best

Apartheid Week - Hypocrisy at its Best

Jonathan Dahoah Haevi
Shalomlife.com
02 March '10

Five hundred artists from Montreal have recently signed a statement “to support the international campaign for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israeli apartheid.” The Canadian artists blame Israel for intentionally harassing and bringing disaster to the peaceful Palestinian people during more than 60 years and fail to mention the word “terrorism” even once.

Their account of the historical events as they appear in the statement is to say the least distorted. One paragraph within the long list of “crimes” accuses Israel of deliberately oppressing the Palestinian cultural activity as follows:

“During the first and second intifadas, Israel invaded, ransacked, and even closed down cinemas, theatres and cultural centers in the occupied territories. These deliberate attempts to stifle the Palestinian cultural voice have failed and will continue to fail.” [1]

The five hundred Canadian artists virtually portray Israel as a pinnacle of human evil and their basic premise assumes, as it may be understood, that without Israeli “crimes,” the pluralist and liberal Palestinian culture in the Gaza Strip would be flourishing with cinemas, theatres and cultural centres.

This thesis has one little weakness. Not a single cinema house exists in the Gaza Strip and Hamas – NOT Israel – is responsible for "stifling the Palestinian cultural voice". Saud Abu Ramadan, a Palestinian reporter working for the Chinese newswire Xinhua, published an article on July 26, 2009 reviewing the history of cinemas in the Gaza Strip while interviewing 57-year old Adnan Abu Beid, who used to run the most famous and biggest movie house in downtown Gaza city called al-Nasser, and today makes his living as a greengrocer. [2]

Abu Ramadan notes that “after Israel signed Oslo accords with the Palestinians, when the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was established after the Israeli army withdrew from Gaza city, al-Nasser movie house was reopened for a few months, but later it was burned and destroyed by angry Islamic Hamas demonstrators in 1995.” Abu Beid told Xinhua that after al-Nasser movie house was burned and destroyed, “I hid my film archives and decided to become a vegetable vendor.” He added that his archives "are the only that remained after all the movie houses had either shut down, or been destroyed by Hamas activists during demonstrations in Gaza city in 1995."

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Apartheid Week - Hypocrisy at its Best

Love of the Land: So You Want to Boycott Israel

So You Want to Boycott Israel

(As this has been declared to be "Israel Apartheid Week" I didn't want to feel left out.This is truly an oldie but goodie! Y.)

Get the secret tips you won't find anywhere else! Guaranteed to end the occupation now!



Maker's note: This vido was originally posted by me in Spring of 2008. After over 170000 views and well over a thousand comments, it was deleted for being offensive. Whether the whistle-blower was a Palestinian who got the joke or an Israeli who didn't, I don't know. Therefore I must break character and say the following: IT'S A SATIRE! It's all sarcastic! IDFco12

Excellent resource: Divest This!

Love of the Land: So You Want to Boycott Israel

Love of the Land: BDS, Academic/Cultural Boycott of Israel, and Omar Barghouti

BDS, Academic/Cultural Boycott of Israel, and Omar Barghouti

Ricki Hollander
CAMERA
24 February '10

A Palestinian call for comprehensive economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel was issued in August 2002, a year after the idea was introduced at the first United Nations-sponsored World Conference on Racism in Durban. The "Durban Strategy"— a term coined by NGO-Monitor's Gerald Steinberg—attempts to demonize the Jewish state as apartheid and isolate it with the same boycott and divestment tactics that were used so successfully to dismantle South Africa's apartheid regime.

While the comparison of Israel to South Africa is a patently false one rejected by people who have lived and suffered under actual apartheid rule and which has been throughly debunked, it is gaining traction among those who seek an end to the Jewish state. And while the Palestinian-initiated Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement has not managed to inflict economic harm upon Israel, BDS is wielded as a propaganda tool with which to delegitimize that country.

One of its few early successes came in 2004 and 2005 through a group of liberal Protestant (or "mainline") churches in the United States that promoted divestment from companies doing business with Israel, although similar anti-Israel resolutions were defeated at subsequent national church gatherings. This campaign was covered in depth by CAMERA's Christian media analyst Dexter Van Zile (see "Mainline American Christian ‘Peacemakers' against Israel") who points out that, "largely because of their shrinking numbers, the churches involved in this campaign have had little impact on the American public's attitudes toward Israel."

Over the past year, however, BDS activists have been ratcheting up their efforts. They seized upon the biased and mendacious Goldstone report to endorse their goals, claiming that "the report, and the media attention given to it, moved the terms of international solidarity with Palestine into a new plane, where calling for BDS is no longer considered ‘unrealistic' or ‘counterproductive.'"

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Love of the Land: BDS, Academic/Cultural Boycott of Israel, and Omar Barghouti

Love of the Land: It’s Time to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction J Street

It’s Time to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction J Street

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
18 February '10

Solomonia has the details on the latest from the anti-Israel group J Street, which has organized a trip to Israel in partnership with Churches for Middle East Peace. CMEP is a leader in the so-called “BDS movement” — boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel. These are the people who want to isolate Israel in the way that the world is currently isolating, say, Iran — which is a tremendous irony, being that J Street is opposed to anything resembling BDS when it comes to the Islamic Republic.

These guys have gone so far off the deep end that I think if Ismail Haniyah invited J Street on a solidarity mission to Gaza City, Jeremy Ben-Ami would have to sit down and think really hard about the offer.

Love of the Land: It’s Time to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction J Street

Love of the Land: BDS Avatar?

BDS Avatar?

Divest This!
06 February '10

The best BDS hoax story yet has just arrived from Canada, causing one of those truly “you can’t make this stuff up!” moments.

I spent much of last year chronicling the tendency of boycott and divestment activists to make fraudulent claims of victory, from the academic hoax at Hampshire, to false claims that the financial firms Blackrock or TIAA-CREF or companies like Motorola had made financial decisions for political reasons.

More recently, the forging of signatures on boycott petitions made its debut in the UK, so it was just a matter of time before this practice found its way to North America.

The story actually begins last Fall when a relatively obscure Canadian film maker, John Greyson (also a teacher at York University), pulled his work from the Toronto Film Festival in protest of that festival’s inclusion of movies from Tel Aviv in their celebration of international urban cinema. This action was accompanied by a petition declaring the festival was, in effect, celebrating Tel Aviv and thus the brutality of “The Occupation,” the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza who struggle to live while Tel Avivians make movies, blah, blah, blah.

This non-story got some ink when a collection of celebrities (including Jane Fonda) signed onto the petition, with some of them (again, Jane Fonda) eventually signing off. As usual, supporters of Israel rallied, the press railed at this attempt at censorship masquerading as artistic “solidarity” and Israeli films were the hit of the Festival.

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Love of the Land: BDS Avatar?

Love of the Land: BDS State of the Union

BDS State of the Union

Divest This!
03 February '10
Posted before Shabbat

An interesting comprehensive write up of what the BDSers themselves think about the state of their movement was published recently by Australians for Palestine. I’ll likely have more to say about their self analysis in the weeks that follow, although allow a few initial observations:

* Interestingly, outside of the US the BDSers seem to have no problem linking their project with the anti-Israel boycotts that began before the creation of the Jewish state (although they only go back as far as 1936, when Arab boycotts of Jewish businesses can be traced back to the 1920s). Since complying with the Arab boycott is illegal in the US, American boycott/divestment activists have never tried to make this connection, and while (for reasons outlined here) no one in the US has perused a legal strategy against BDS, it’s interesting to see that significant parts of the “movement” consider themselves the heirs of the dubious Arab-boycott legacy.

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Love of the Land: BDS State of the Union

Love of the Land: Israeli intellectuals and the BDS movement

Israeli intellectuals and the BDS movement

Fresnozionism
25 January '10

Yesterday I talked about the remarkable death wish exhibited by some Jewish Israeli intellectuals. Today I want to amplify that with a discussion of their support for the enemy on one particular front of the continuing war against Israel.

The BDS — Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions — movement has become a major part of the 100-year war against a Jewish state in the Mideast. It has two purposes, one direct and one indirect:

1. To weaken Israel economically by getting consumers worldwide to avoid Israeli products, and

2. To contribute to the delegitimization of Israel in order to reduce international support for Israel when conflicts — violent or diplomatic — occur.

BDS is part of an overall strategy to end the Jewish state that also includes propaganda, diplomacy, terrorism and war. These work together to multiply their effect. For example, the false atrocity propaganda surrounding the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead makes it harder for Israel to seek international support for future wars of self-defense.

The indirect effects of BDS — delegitimization — may be more important than the cost of any economic boycott, which is why the BDS movement expends great effort on boycotting Israeli academics, athletes, films, etc.

Love of the Land: Israeli intellectuals and the BDS movement