August 30, 2010




Attempting to bring about a sea change in the racist state of Israel through boycotts at the global level is unlikely to have any effect. Even an organization like the Presbyterian Church USA in its 219th General Assembly only managed to call on Catapillar, for example, to mend its ways. Which of course it has not done. Why not do this: Go to all local shops that you regularly do business with, ones that you know are owned by Jews, ask them to put pressure on Zionist organizations in the US (such as AIPAC) to push for Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. Tell the merchants that until that happens you will be shopping elsewhere. Of course they will insist that they are not responsible for AIPAC's policy, have no influence on it, etc. But don't let them blow you off. Tell them that in the case of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust occurred because good Germans did nothing. Tell him that it's time for good Jews to make their feelings known. All politics is local. So is all

RICHARD RALPH ROEHL 2010-08-30

Yes! We should boycott the ethno-racist apartheid theocrazy of Israel. And I find it appalling that President Obama, an Afro-Amerikan, continues to enable and $upport a racist nation that openly practices kidnapping, torture, murder, piracy on the high seas, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

matbury 2010-08-30

I'm wondering what relevance the US Anti-boycott laws already in place have to the BDS campaign in the US: http://www.bis.doc.gov/complianceandenforcement/antiboycottc
ompliance.htm

thinkingman 2010-08-30

It's amazing how many people don't understand why Israel became a state in the first place. SO JEWISH PEOPLE COULD HAVE A PLACE TO CALL HOME Support Israel and the Jewish people ! How many Jewish people have rights without discrimination in an Arab nation ?

peacemonger 2010-08-30

It is perfectly obvious that the US government is not about to impose any sanctions upon its mentor, Israel, for its blatant discriminatory practices. (Ditto for many other governments as well.) Therefore, it is up to the people to impose our own form of sanctions by boycotting all Israeli products.

darwin.ranzone 2010-08-30

This is the truth people wil NEVER see on TV israel is very a chauvinist state, a look on the jerusalem post will confirm that

aubreyfarmer 2010-08-30

I came across a very interesting article in the Occidental Observer written by Lasha Darkmoon about the sex trade in Israel. Exposes the incredibly corrupt trafficking in young girls. Just knowing that Israel has the largest number of brothels in the world per capita speaks volumes of the corrupt nature of the political elite in Israel.

Maxwell1956 2010-08-30

Zionism is not Judaism.It is a political ideology. Judaism is about spiritual actions(kindness & caring) toward all others. I support a Boycott of Israel and these actions "are not" anti-semitic. A historical tradegy(The Destruction of Eropean Jews - Hilberg) does not prevent criticism of any government or people. Mr. Phillips

Lavina 2010-08-30

Absolutely, we should boycott Israel and Israeli products. Those Jewish people who are for Palestinian rights, are doing work. Ex. ICAHD'S Jeff Halper and many, who are working with him. For more information about what is happening in Palestine, go to http://www.icahd.org. The Israeli government will be concerned about money, and that is all that will influence those people.

BJR 2010-08-30

Yes, I believe they should. However, I don't think that Israel is the only country that should be boycotted. Nonetheless, it is about time people recognize Israel for what it has become. An apartheid state with an indigenous "problem" they have chosen to solve through imprisonment, division, and the periodic extermination.

neilemac 2010-08-30

Mais OUI !!! Of course, my dear Watson. The world Boycott of the heinous 'white' regime helped free Nelson Mandela and put an end to apartheid in South Africa. Thanks wiki-pedia for this: The crime of apartheid is defined by the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as inhumane acts of a character similar to other crimes against humanity "committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime." But what is to be done about this insidious institutional dogma and terror... A rabbinical guidebook for killing non-Jews has sparked an uproar in Israel and exposed the power a bunch of genocidal theocrats wield over the government. Check out today's alternet.org hosting the piece: "How to Kill Goyim and Influence People: Israeli Rabbis Defend Book's Shocking Religious Defense of Killing Non-Jews" that on

greenstones 2010-08-30

Of course people should should boycott Israeli goods. Sanctions are usually imposed on rogue countries that don't respect human rights and Israel is one of those countries.

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay. I'm in Ramallah, Palestine. And now joining us from ["la-ROOJ"] Café in Ramallah is Omar Barghouti. He's a founding member of the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. Thanks for joining us.

OMAR BARGHOUTI, PALESTINIAN CAMPAIGN FOR THE ACADEMIC AND CULTURAL BOYCOTT OF ISRAEL: Thank you.

JAY: So what is this boycott about?

BARGHOUTI: The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel actually is one part of a general Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS for short. We started Academic and Cultural Boycott in 2004, and the general Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign was in 2005. The BDS campaign, from the very first moment, was endorsed by more than 170 of the main groups in Palestinian civil society, including the major trade unions, women's unions, political forces, NGOs, and so on and so forth. So this is a movement that has as close to a consensus as you can get, and it's not just among Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, Gaza, including East Jerusalem, but also Palestinians inside Israel, and the largest component of the Palestinian people, those in exile in the Diaspora.

JAY: And specifically what you're asking people outside of Israel to do is what?

BARGHOUTI: The main focus of the boycott campaign is to hold Israel accountable to international law by making it recognize our three basic rights. So it's a rights-based approach. The three rights are ending the occupation, the 1967 occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and other Arab territories, the Golan Heights and so on. The second is ending this system of racial discrimination within Israel. There's an institutionalized, legalized system of racial discrimination within Israel that we're calling for it to end.

JAY: For example?

BARGHOUTI: I'll get to that after I finish the third point, which is the right of return for refugees. And this is the key point. According to UN Resolution 194, Palestinian refugees have a right to return to their homes of origin. So these are the three components. The second one is the least understood, ending the system of racial discrimination. But people say, but isn't Israel a democracy? Well, actually, not even according to the US State Department. In the US [inaudible] not exactly a human rights beacon or reference. But even the US State Department human rights reports consistently have condemned Israel's legalized societal discrimination against its non-Jewish citizens, the Arab citizens of Israel, the Palestinians, the indigenous Palestinians of Israel. The discrimination is in almost all the vital domains of the state of Israel, from the way the state defines itself as the Jewish state rather than a state of its citizens—so this is the only state in the world that does not define itself as a state of its citizens.

JAY: Now, if you make that one of the issues that the boycott's about, then you're saying there's a boycott until there's no longer a Jewish state.

BARGHOUTI: No, we're not saying that. Until there's no discrimination. They can call themselves whatever they wish. But until discrimination ends, until legalized, institutionalized discrimination ends.

JAY: So give some examples of things you want to stop.

BARGHOUTI: For example, discrimination in land ownership. Palestinians inside Israel are not allowed to own, rent, or live on almost 93 percent of the state lands, which are reserved purely for the Jewish citizens of Israel or any Jew in the world. Israel has this system where only if you're Jewish you become a national. A Palestinian born in Israel who is a citizen is not a national of Israel. This distinction between citizen and national is where the discrimination comes in. So a Jewish Canadian can come to Israel tomorrow and have more rights than my wife, who was born in Haifa inside Israel, because he would be an Israeli citizen and a Jewish national.

JAY: What would be an example of a right this person would have that your wife doesn't?

BARGHOUTI: Ownership, for example, in most of the land of Israel. He can buy land almost anywhere, rent, and so on. My wife cannot.

JAY: Your wife can't own a condominium in—.

BARGHOUTI: In most places in Israel, I mean, in 93 percent.

JAY: Barred by law.

BARGHOUTI: By law.

JAY: What else?

BARGHOUTI: Jobs. At every level, if you're not Jewish, in most cases you're not entitled to even apply for these jobs.

JAY: For example, what would be a job you couldn't apply for?

BARGHOUTI: Most government jobs, most government jobs. We're talking about the total number of Palestinians who are employed in ministries, in all the government positions, is tiny, tiny minority, well below the number of Palestinians, the proportion of Palestinians in Israeli society. But even in issues like health, health-care, education—.

JAY: What would stop a Palestinian Israeli going to the high-end health-care hospital in a Jewish neighborhood? Is there anything that stops them from going?

BARGHOUTI: There are many bureaucratic rules that make it very difficult for you to get service in a clinic not in your place of residence. I'll give just one very concrete example: cancer research, something very benign. The state of Israel, the Ministry of Health, carried out a very long, multi-year research into the causes of cancer and the pollutants that might cause cancer, and see the correlation between pollutants and the rate of cancer. What they did throughout those years, they skipped every single Palestinian village and town inside Israel except for one. And this blatant racism, that you're not even researching cancer in Palestinian communities inside Israel, was questioned, and they said, oh, budget problems. But why did budget problems apply only to Palestinian communities? And some researchers reached the conclusion that in most of the pollutant sites, they're right next to Arab villages or Arab towns, so if you had studied them, you would have proven that the rate of cancer is rising so rapidly among Palestinians, double the Jewish population in many places, because all the pollutants are built near Palestinian towns.

JAY: So what effect is the boycott movement having now? Where is there some success? And what effect is it having on the Israeli economy or cultural life?

BARGHOUTI: Okay. So the boycott movement is five, six years old. It's too early to discuss how much impact it's having on the Israeli economy. It is having, but not a huge impact. At this stage, the point is not about making Israel's economy lose a lot. We cannot do this so rapidly. It's about presenting Israel for what it is, an apartheid state that is practicing occupation and colonization as well. It's a very unique combination of occupation, colonization, and apartheid. And this to counter Israel's brand in the West, if you will, as a democracy that has some problem of occupying a neighboring territory. It's not just about occupation; it's also about the system of apartheid within Israel and the most important form of injustice, the denial of Palestinian refugees their UN-sanctioned rights to return. We've had many successes in those five, six years. Actually, compared to South Africa, the anti-apartheid movement of South Africa, our South African comrades tell us we're going much faster in comparison, because in five, six years we've reached the mainstream in several Western societies, including Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Norway, and so on, not to mention South Africa. Our South African supporters, the world tour, the biggest civil society organizations in South Africa, have come out and supported the boycott. But even in Canada, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, for example—it's a national union—it has come out in support of the boycott. The Canadian Union of Public Employees in Ontario has come out in support, and several others, including—.

JAY: What about in the United States?

BARGHOUTI: In the United States we don't yet have unions, but there are many groups that have joined the boycott. One example is the academic and cultural boycott campaign in the US. It's called US ACPE. US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel has just released a statement that they reached 500 endorsers—academics and artists—in the US supporting this boycott. So by American standards 500 is a small number, but relatively speaking that's a big step forward.

JAY: There's been some critique from inside Israel, from professors and academics, particularly, who are critics of Israeli policy, like, for example, were against the attack on Gaza. But some of these professors are saying, you're isolating us from having contact, you're actually, for example, by saying Western universities shouldn't have anything to do with Israeli universities, you wind up also isolating progressive Israeli academics. What's your answer to that?

BARGHOUTI: I think they overestimate their proportion in the academic community in Israel. And they're very Israel-centric. I mean, the world revolves around them. It's about Palestinian rights and Israeli oppression and injustice and the role of the Israeli academy as a partner in the system of oppression. In fact, no Israeli university has ever come out against the occupation, ever. The total number of Israeli academics that have ever condemned the occupation, just the occupation, let alone apartheid in Israel or the denial of refugee rights, is a few hundred out of a community that's 9,000. Just very recently, in 2008, 4 Jewish-Israeli academics started a petition calling upon the Israeli military in the territories—they did not even call it "occupied territories"—in the territories to allow passage at military roadblocks to Palestinian academics and students going to their schools and universities—the most banal demand for academic freedom—and they sent it to all 9,000 academics, hoping almost everyone would sign. Any decent self-respecting academics should endorse this basic requirement. Only 407 signed this petition, out of 9,000.

JAY: Well, to be fair, their argument isn't that they're going to lose some privileges. At least that's not the argument they made. Their argument is that it weakens their hand inside Israel [inaudible]

BARGHOUTI: There is no left movement in Israel. They're individuals who are not that relevant in the Israeli society. If you look at the parliamentary elections, Israel is shifting fast to the far right, and to a certain extent to the fascist right in some parties in Israel—and I'm using that term very deliberately. There are fascist parties in Israel that resemble fascist parties in Europe and elsewhere. And Israeli society is shifting very far to the right, with ethnic cleansing becoming a mainstream term that's used in academia, in the media, in parliament, in conferences. It's openly called for, discrimination at all level.

JAY: Well, in the next segment of our interview let's talk about why there's this big move to the right in Israel. Please join us for the next segment of our interview with Omar Barghouti.

End of Transcript

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