Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions

The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights

Omar Barghouti

• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781608461158
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Human Rights
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"Barghouti is the future. He is intelligent, empowered, and non-violent. He is completely impressive. It would help Americans to see such a picture of Palestinian political engagement, when they have such a distorted image of who Palestinians are. Some day they will know him."—Phillip Weiss, author of Mondoweiss: The War of Ideas in the Middle EastTHIRTY YEARS ago, an international movement utilizing boycott, divestment, and sanction (BDS) tactics rose in solidarity with those suffering under the brutal apartheid regime of South Africa. The historic acts of BDS activists from around the world isolated South Africa as a pariah state and heralded the end of apartheid.Now, as awareness of the apartheid nature of the State of Israel continues to grow, Omar Barghouti, founding member of the Palestinian Civil Society Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, presents a renewed call to action. Aimed at forcing the State of Israel to uphold international law and universal human rights for the Palestinian people, here is a manifesto for change."No one has done more to build the intellectual, legal and moral case for BDS than Omar Barghouti. The global Palestinian solidarity movement has been transformed and is on the cusp of major new breakthroughs."
—Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and No Logo"I commend this excellent book by Omar Barghouti…BDS is a call to refuse to be silent in the face of military occupation of the Palestinian people by the Israeli regime, apartheid, and colonialism. BDS is a nonviolent way in which each of us and our governments can follow our conscience and rightful moral and legal responsibility and act now to save Palestinian lives by demanding that the Israeli apartheid regime give justice and equality to all."
—Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate (1976)

1

WHY NOW?

to the most effective effort to date aimed at ending Israel’s impunity and realizing Palestinian rights: the global BDS movement. The current¹ grim reality on the ground in occupied Palestine makes a comprehensive boycott of Israel and its complicit institutions not only a moral obligation but also an urgent political necessity—first and foremost to avert genocide, and second, for those who may be oblivious to the moral argument and subscribe to what they perceive as a realpolitik approach, to head off a meltdown of the geopolitical system in the entire Arab / Middle Eastern region. Beyond preventing total, bloody chaos, the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS)² aims to hold Israel accountable to international law and universal principles of human rights, in the pursuit of freedom, justice, self-determination, equality, and sustainable peace.

BDS is urgent because of the nightmarish conditions facing the Palestinian people and because the UN and the world’s dominant states, led by the United States, have not only failed to hold Israel accountable to its obligations under international law but afforded it immunity, practically turning it into a state above the law of nations. This chapter focuses on the most serious of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people and why BDS promises to be an effective and potentially decisive response to them.

When the most stringent phase of Israel’s ongoing siege of the occupied Gaza Strip started in June 2007, right after Hamas took over “power” there from a US-Israeli-backed faction of Fatah, few human rights and international law experts were able to accurately analyze the real motives and policy objectives behind Israel’s patently illegal and immoral form of collective punishment. Even fewer had the insight to foretell the long-lasting consequences this siege would have on the 1.5 million Palestinians cramped in what was accurately described as the world’s largest open-air prison. Richard Falk, a leading international law expert and the current UN special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, stood out among those few. In 2007 he wrote:

Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with [the] criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not. The recent developments in Gaza are especially disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty. The suggestion that this pattern of conduct is a holocaust-in-the-making represents a rather desperate appeal to the governments of the world and to international public opinion to act urgently to prevent these current genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy. If ever the ethos of “a responsibility to protect,” recently adopted by the UN Security Council as the basis of “humanitarian intervention” is applicable, it would be to act now to start protecting the people of Gaza from further pain and suffering.³

Falk was not only diagnosing Israel’s hermetic siege and its cruelty; he was actually predicting the slow genocide that has transpired as a result of the blockade and the December 2008–January 2009 Israeli war of aggression that aggravated it. Insightful indicators of the scale of the crime committed by Israel in Gaza were revealed in the report issued by UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, headed by the prominent South African judge Richard Goldstone, who happens to be a Zionist with ties to Israel. Among its damning findings, the Goldstone Report states:

1688. It is clear from evidence gathered by the Mission that the destruction of food supply installations, water sanitation systems, concrete factories and residential houses was the result of a deliberate and systematic policy by the Israeli armed forces. It was not carried out because those objects presented a military threat or opportunity but to make the daily process of living, and dignified living, more difficult for the civilian population.

1689. Allied to the systematic destruction of the economic capacity of the Gaza Strip, there appears also to have been an assault on the dignity of the people. This was seen not only in the use of human shields and unlawful detentions sometimes in unacceptable conditions, but also in the vandalizing of houses when occupied and the way in which people were treated when their houses were entered. The graffiti on the walls, the obscenities and often racist slogans all constituted an overall image of humiliation and dehumanization of the Palestinian population.

1690. The operations were carefully planned in all their phases. Legal opinions and advice were given throughout the planning stages and at certain operational levels during the campaign.

There were almost no mistakes made according to the Government of Israel. It is in these circumstances that the Mission concludes that what occurred in just over three weeks at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 was a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.⁴ (emphases added)

Although the UN report, adopted by the UN Human Rights Council with a comfortable majority despite hypocritical objections from the United States, the European Union, and Israel, calls on Israel—and the unrecognized Hamas government in Gaza—to “launch appropriate investigations that are independent and in conformity with international standards.” It goes on to dampen any hope that Israel is capable, let alone willing, to do so:

1755. The Mission is firmly convinced that justice and respect for the rule of law are the indispensable basis for peace. The prolonged situation of impunity has created a justice crisis in the OPT that warrants action.

1756. After reviewing Israel’s system of investigation and prosecution of serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law, in particular of suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity, the Mission found major structural flaws that in its view make the system inconsistent with international standards. With military “operational debriefings” at the core of the system, there is the absence of any effective and impartial investigation mechanism and victims of such alleged violations are deprived of any effective or prompt remedy. Furthermore, such investigations being internal to the Israeli military authority, do not comply with international standards of independence and impartiality.⁵

The necessity of holding Israel accountable by referring it to the International Criminal Court is the only logical conclusion one can reach from the above. This becomes more self-evident once the other, more fatal, long-term and genocidal aspects of Israel’s war on and siege of Gaza are exposed.

The systematic Israeli targeting of Gaza’s water and sanitation facilities has compounded an already “severe and protracted denial of human dignity,” wrote Maxwell Gaylard, UN resident and humanitarian coordinator in the occupied palestinian territory, causing “a steep decline in standards of living for the [Palestinians] of Gaza, characterized by erosion of livelihoods, destruction and degradation of basic infrastructure, and a marked downturn in the delivery and quality of vital services in health, water and sanitation.”⁶

A 2009 report by Amnesty International on Israel’s intentional and long-standing policy of denying Palestinian fair access to their water resources has shed light on a particularly fatal aspect of Israel’s designs for the 1.5 million Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip. “In Gaza,” the report affirms, “90–95 per cent of the water supply is contaminated and unfit for human consumption.”⁷ The report cites an earlier study by the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP), which correlates the widespread contamination of Gaza’s water resources to the rise in nitrate levels in the groundwater “far above the WHO accepted guideline,” inducing a potentially lethal blood disorder in young children and newborns called methemoglobinaemia, or the “blue babies” phenomenon. Some of the detected symptoms of this disease in Gaza infants include “blueness around the mouth, hands and feet,” “episodes of diarrhea and vomiting,” and “loss of consciousness.” “Convulsions and death can occur” at higher levels of nitrate contamination, the report concludes.⁸

Contamination from Israel’s assault and siege did not stop at Gaza’s water resources; it dangerously polluted the soil as well. An independent group of scientists and physicians from the New Weapons Committee, an Italy-based group that researches the effects of recently developed weapons on civilian populations in war zones, conducted a study on Israel’s use of “non-conventional weapons” and their “middle-term effects” on the Palestinian residents of areas in Gaza that were bombed by the Israeli army on two separate occasions. “The 2006 and 2009 Israeli bombings on Gaza,” the study shows, “left a high concentration of toxic metals in soil, which can cause tumours, fertility problems, and serious effects on newborns, like deformities and genetic pathologies.”⁹

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In a report tellingly titled Rain of Fire: Israel’s Unlawful Use of White Phosphorus in Gaza, Human Rights Watch confirms Israel’s deliberate targeting of civilians with devastating results. It states that the Israeli army’s “repeatedly exploded white phosphorus munitions in the air over [densely] populated areas, killing and injuring civilians, and damaging civilian structures, including a school, a market, a humanitarian aid warehouse and a hospital,” adding that the recurrent and indiscriminate use of this deadly weapon “indicates the commission of war crimes.”¹⁰

Corroborating such findings by international human rights organizations and UN agencies on the impact of Israel’s attacks on Gaza, on December 20, 2009, Al Dameer Association for Human Rights in Gaza published a position paper on the health and environmental problems caused by Israel’s extensive use of proscribed radioactive and toxic materials throughout its assault on Gaza. Among the many grave, “long-lasting,” and “tragic” effects of Israel’s intentional choice of munitions and its indiscriminate and recurring targeting of densely populated civilian neighborhoods, schools, and even UN shelters, the paper gives special attention to the “dramatic” increase in the incidence of cancer—especially among children—as well as the rise in the number of birth defects and miscarriages, “particularly, in Jabalya, Biet Lahia, and Biet Hanoun as these areas witnessed the fiercest Israeli aggression.” Drawing attention to the considerable “impact on men’s fertility” that this radioactive and toxic weaponry is causing, the report warns that this wide deterioration in the health status of people in Gaza will “plague the future generation” and calls for “serious measures” toward “pressurizing Israel to lift the siege.”¹¹

The above, mostly ongoing, Israeli crimes do not occur in a vacuum; they are products of a culture of impunity, racism, and genocidal tendencies that has overtaken Israeli society, shaping its mainstream discourse and “commonsense” approach to the “Palestinian problem.” Weeks after the end of Israel’s attacks, for instance, testimonies of Israeli soldiers who participated in the commission of the Gaza massacre were published. Although the incidents they recount are merely the tip of the iceberg, these testimonies provide rare insight into prevailing Israeli thinking about the Palestinians and how best to “deal with them.” The testimonies’ significance is underscored by the fact that Israel’s military remains a “people’s army” based on mandatory service for men and women alike and, as a result, the army has long been regarded as the country’s foremost melting pot and an accurate representation of a wide spectrum in Israeli society.

Explaining orders to indiscriminately shoot civilians in residential buildings and civilian neighborhoods, one solider says: “From above they said it was permissible because anyone who remained in the sector and inside Gaza City was in effect condemned, a terrorist, because they hadn’t fled.”

Another narrates how a well-reported incident of intentionally shooting and killing an elderly Palestinian woman took place: “A company commander saw someone coming on some road, ... an old woman. She was walking along pretty far away, but close enough so you could take [her] out.... If she [was] suspicious, not suspicious—I don’t know. In the end, he sent people up to the roof, to take her out with their weapons. From the description of this story, I simply felt it was murder in cold blood.” When asked why they shot her despite recognizing her as an older woman who posed no threat, the soldier replies: “That’s what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza: You see a person on a road, walking along a path. He doesn’t have to be with a weapon, you don’t have to identify him with anything and you can just shoot him.”

An honest soldier from an elite army brigade explains why a fellow sharpshooter who deliberately fired at a mother and her two children, killing all three, did not feel “too bad about it.” He says: “After all, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to . . . I don’t know how to describe it. . . . The lives of Palestinians, let’s say, [are] something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers.”¹²

Gideon Levy, a renowned Israeli journalist, contextualizes this phenomenon among soldiers as a “natural culmination” of killing thousands of Palestinians over the previous nine years, “nearly 1,000 of them children and teenagers.” He writes:

Everything the soldiers described from Gaza, everything, occurred during these blood-soaked years as if they were routine events. It was the context, not the principle, that was different. An army whose armored corps has yet to encounter an enemy tank and whose pilots have yet to face an enemy combat jet in 36 years has been trained to think that the only function of a tank is to crush civilian cars and that a pilot’s job is to bomb residential neighborhoods.

To do this without any unnecessary moral qualms we have trained our soldiers to think that the lives and property of Palestinians have no value whatsoever. It is part of a process of dehumanization that has endured for dozens of years, the fruits of the occupation.¹³

During the Israeli war on Gaza, fundamentalist Zionist rabbis played an unprecedented role in urging soldiers to “show no mercy” to any Palestinian in Gaza, citing popular, yet fanatic, interpretations of Jewish law as justifying genocide against Gentiles in the “Land of Israel” in any war of “revenge” or of necessity, as all Israeli wars are labeled by definition.¹⁴ The late Israeli academic and human rights advocate Israel Shahak¹⁵ was among the very first to expose this critical dimension, which had been intentionally overlooked by most analysts based on inexplicable sensitivities, as if Jewish fundamentalism were more benign or should be tolerated more than Islamic, Christian, Hindu, or any other fundamentalism.

It is crucial to note that fundamentalist interpretations of the Halacha, or Jewish law, openly justify massacres,¹⁶ even genocide (as in mass murder of “non-Jewish” civilians, including children), in what is termed a “war of revenge” or a “necessary war.” A war of necessity in fundamentalist teachings would be waged against the entire “enemy” population without sparing anyone. The only limit is on committing any act that might lead to more injury of t...