“Today, solidarity with Palestine cannot but include support for BDS as the most popular and one of the most effective forms of peaceful, civil struggle for Palestinian rights,” Barghouti told almost 300 campaigners from all over the UK,  meeting in the Conway Hall in London to mark the 30^th year since PSC’s foundation.

“At its most basic level, BDS calls for ending partnership in crime, ending complicity in the perpetration, justification and whitewash of Israel’s grave violations of Palestinian rights.

“Withdrawing support for an evil policy or system, as Martin Luther King describes the boycott, is not heroic; it is a profound moral obligation,” Barghouti said.

OUR “SOUTH AFRICA MOMENT”

With recent successes such as huge contract losses for French multinationals Alstom and Veolia, both complicit in Israel’s illegal occupation, the University of Johannesburg’s severance of ties with an Israeli university implicated in human rights violations and the spread of the cultural boycott to prominent musicians and other artists, “BDS is on the verge of its South Africa moment,” said Barghouti.

Building a mass boycott movement comparable to the South African anti-apartheid campaign was placed at the heart of PSC’s work for the coming year.

The AGM resolved to team up with trade unions, students, faith groups, human rights organisations and others working locally, nationally and internationally to end the siege of Gaza, to halt ethnic cleansing of Palestinians within Israel, in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the Occupied Palestinian Territories;  to expose major companies complicit in colonial occupation and settlement, to bring to light the repressive apparatus of the Israeli state in its treatment of Palestinian prisoners and of children living under occupation and to challenge the media bias that marginalises the Palestinian narrative.

Barghouti clarified the origins of BDS as the specific name of the call issued by the great majority of Palestinian civil society on 9 July 2005, constituting “a qualitatively new phase in the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality and in international solidarity with Palestinian rights.”

The call embodies the fundamental principles of Freedom, Justice and Equality in three basic demands which are the minimum required to achieve self-determination – right of return for refugees; end of 1967 occupation and colonisation; equality for the indigenous Palestinians inside Israel.

“No part of the Palestinian people can be ignored,” Barghouti said. “Anyone claiming to be in solidarity with the Palestinian people cannot be satisfied with ending the 1967 occupation alone while ignoring the basic rights of the rest of the Palestinian people.”

He said Palestinians’ basic rights under international law are “inalienable and non-negotiable”, but “the methods through which the movement of international solidarity supports our struggle to realise them are tactical and dependent on context, political alliances, awareness, among other variables.”

Israel’s regime of multi-tiered oppression had to be understood as settler-colonialism, occupation and apartheid, Barghouti said.

BDS A UNIVERSALIST MOVEMENT

He stressed that BDS is a universalist movement categorically opposed to all forms of racism, including Islamophobia and antisemitism. “This is not negotiable,” he said.

Equating Israel with “the Jews” is unacceptable and antisemitic. “Only Zionists and Nazis do that,” said Barghouti .

“Nazis say Jews are sub-human, Zionists say they are superhuman; both agree that they are not a normal part of the human species, and that is clearly racist.”

Suggesting that “the Jews” and Israel are one and the same “implies that Jews are one monolithic sum who think alike and are all collectively equivalent to Israel and responsible for Israel. If this is not antisemitic, I am not sure what is!” Barghouti said.

“Jews, like any other human group, have diversity and differences. Many of the leaders of the BDS movement in the West are Jewish intellectuals, academics, feminists, students, activists. Many of them support the struggle for Palestinian rights through BDS not just out of a deep-rooted sense of international solidarity and moral obligation but also based on their insistence thatIsrael, a colonial apartheid state, does not and should not speak in their names.”

NO PLACE FOR JEW-HATRED

The AGM endorsed these sentiments wholeheartedly, welcoming a statement posted on line by the Executive Committee last year affirming that “any expression of racism or intolerance, or attempts to deny or minimise the Holocaust, have no place in our movement.”

A motion from Tony Greenstein and Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, of Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods (J-BIG), calling on the EC to integrate these principles into the work of the movement, was also passed overwhelmingly. They argued that Zionists’ baseless allegations of antisemitism, and cynical abuse of the memory of the Holocaust, would harm the Palestine solidarity movement if used to justify ignoring genuine Jew-hatred when it arose.

PSC Executive Committee member Ben Jamal regretted that Zionists attacking the movement had been able to cite a few “indefensible statements” by some individuals. Trade Union Advisory Committee member Steve Bell called on the AGM to make it absolutely clear that membership was not open to people holding antisemitic views.

The AGM had earlier upheld the removal from PSC membership of  Francis Clark-Lowes, whose appeal statement stunned listeners with its unapologetic racism. “Dislike of groups”, he said, should not be regarded as “a cardinal sin”. A Jew challenging “Jewish ideology” did not cease to be a Jew, any more than a dog that had lost a leg ceased to be a quadruped.

An edited version of Clark-Lowes  speech swiftly found its natural home on websites peddling racist conspiracy theories where his words were described as “beautiful”.

Such attitudes, Tony Greenstein pointed out in debate later on, were not only morally repugnant but would make it impossible to promote Palestinian rights in the trade union movement or within churches.

ENTERING THE MAINSTREAM

Joining forced with such mainstream organisations was the task of BDS campaigners from now on, according to Barghouti – to think long term, to build broad alliances and to build awareness of the struggle for Palestinian rights as part of the global struggle of the 99 percent – “for social and economic justice, for freedoms, for equal rights, against racism, for immigrant rights, for the environment, for LGBT rights.”

Israel’s expansionist and belligerent agenda, by contrast, “fits right at the centre of the agenda of the 1%, the ‘Perpetual Wars Inc.’ . . . the military industries, the homeland security businesses, the oil companies, the banks and financiers.”

“The 1% of the world are already united,” Barghouti said. “It is high time for us, the 99%, to unite.”

Read a fuller version of Omar Barghouti’s speech

See also Tony Greenstein’ report of the PSC AGM and thorough pre-AGM review of the issues on the agenda.

Writing  in The Electronic Intifada, Winstanley said that, in its attempts to discredit Jews who backed Palestinian political activist Raed Salah’s fight against deportation from the UK,  the Community Security Trust (CST) denounced them to a government department as “extreme”.

Citing a report sent in August to the Home Office, Winstanley said the CST denounced several “anti-Zionist British Jewish individuals and groups” as “extreme groups,” claiming they were “unrepresentative of the vast majority of British Jews.

“The CST denounced as “extreme” well-known Palestine solidarity activist Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and the anti-Zionist Orthodox Jewish group Neturei Karta. The report highlights that Wimborne-Idrissi is secretary of Jews For Boycotting Israeli Goods.”

Winstanley says that use of the term “extreme groups” is significant. “It’s a phrase the CST usually reserves for violent far-right groups such as the British National Party, the National Front and Combat 18; or for Islamic political groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir.”

He  said it appeared that  ”the CST works behind the scenes with an assertively pro-Israel agenda not stated in its charitable remit. There are also serious questions over the CST’s links to the government of Israel and, allegedly, to its intelligence services.”

Read Winstanley’s report in full here, plus background on his sources.

Cohen notes that, for most of its history, Hannukah was marginal to Jewish life. Then the  story of the Maccabee revolt was seized upon and given new prominence by Zionists entranced by a story of Jews taking their fate into their own hands.

“No waiting around for the Messiah to bring their redemption and defeat to their enemies,” writes Cohen. “Rather than the pale, meek, Talmud scholars of Eastern Europe, here were muscular, uninhibited Jews from the Promised Land with the strength to succeed.”

Sea also Tony Karom’s piece on Rootless Cosmopolitan last year, ‘Hannukah without the Taliban‘ (cross-posted from Jnews).

Photo: Agence-France Presse

So far UEFA President Michel Platini has stubbornly refused to respond  to the appeal last June from 42 football clubs in besieged Gaza, not to reward Israel for its persistent infringements of Palestinian rights.

This is despite a steady stream of protests including a pitch invasion by French protesters,  a “Love Football, Hate Apartheid” action in Ireland and publication of a letter signed by high-profile individuals in two leading European newspapers.

The letter, over the names of renowned diplomat Stephane Hessel,  film-maker Ken Loach and Nobel Peace Prizewinner  Mairead Maguire among others, appeared in both the Irish Times and the UK Guardian.

“A state that uses military might to hold sway over land it illegally occupies and exploits, flouts international law and ignores UN resolutions surely forfeits the right to be treated as a member of the community of nations,” the letter said.

It called on UEFA to “respond positively” to the appeal from the 42 Gazan football clubs, backed by many sporting bodies.

Supporters of  the Red Card Israeli Apartheid campaign are now preparing to ratchet up the action with direct approaches to national football association presidents, supporters clubs and fans.

“UEFA is faced with serious ethical and moral problems by the choice of an Israeli venue for the finals,” said London-based campaign coordinator Geoff Lee. “With all the concern about racism in and around the game at the moment, it’s time to wake up to the fact that Israel’s entrenched discrimination against Palestinians amounts to systematic racism affecting football along with  the rest of society.”

Add your voice to the campaign by using this e-tool set up by the  Palestine Solidarity Campaign and following it on the BDSmovement website.

http://www.bdsmovement.net/2011/red-card-uefa-campaign-8178#.TvNpdOXoyTx

Image of the protest at Filmbase during “Israeli Film Days” courtesy of Broadsheet.ie.

Between 24-27 November 2011, the Government of Israel held “Israeli Film Days” at Filmbase in Temple Bar, Dublin’s “cultural quarter”. In advance of this event, the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) requested Filmbase to reconsider its decision to host the festival:

“At a time when Irish peace activists have been illegally imprisoned in Israel after their humanitarian ship the MV Saoirse was hi-jacked in international waters by Israeli commandos, hosting these ‘Israeli Film Days’ sends out the worst possible message: that Filmbase is indifferent to its exploitation as a site of propaganda for the state that perpetrates such atrocities.  To cancel the event at this point would… be perceived worldwide as an honourable gesture of solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people who have called for an international cultural boycott of the Israeli state.”

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) also issued an “Open Letter to Filmbase“, expressing its surprise

“that a prominent Irish cultural institution would allow the Israeli embassy to carry out this audacious ‘Brand Israel’ activity on its premises hardly two weeks after Irish peace activists were illegally apprehended by the Israeli navy in international waters, humiliated, and imprisoned in Israel…”

These approaches were rejected by Filmbase, despite much dissension among its employees, not all of whom supported the decision to host the event.

Read more.

A recent French court ruling was a setback for pro-Israel groups attempting to brand boycott campaigners as racists.

In this post on Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah analyses this significant development:

Twelve French activists from a group called Boycott 68 have been acquitted on charges of “inciting discrimination and racial hatred” for calling on French shoppers to boycott Israeli goods.

The court judgment in the eastern city of Mulhouse deals a blow to efforts by French prosecutors and Zionist groups to outlaw the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions(BDS) movement. The acquittal received wide coverage in French media.

Campagne BDS France declared in a statement (my translation), on the day of the verdict:

Thursday, 15 December will be a historic date for the Campaign in France. The court at Mulhouse has in effect acquitted the 12 activists prosecuted for their participation in the BDS campaign.

They had been pursued by the usual conveyers of Israel’s policies, as well as by the LICRA [International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism] for “discrimination and inciting hatred and violence toward a group or nation” for having participated in two boycott actions in the Carrefour supermarket in Illzach.

The protests took place in September 2009 and May 2010. The statement noted that similar cases, have been brought against French activists in the cities of Perpignan, Paris, Bordeaux and Pontoise and that on 8 July a court in Paris had acquitted another activist on a similar charge. More cases are pending.

Read more.

This video shows the kind of actions, going on in supermarkets across Europe, to which the French charges related.

So argues Robert Cohen in his blog, Micah’s Paradigm Shift, explaining his own shift away from Zionism and towards embracing the campaign for Palestinian rights.

His main message was that since Israeli settlement, occupation and denial of rights to Palestinian refugees are all acknowledged as illegal under international law,  the campaign on these points is as good as won.

Norman Finkelstein addresses boycott activists. Photo: Brian Robinson

He said that Tzipi Livni, when serving as Israel’s foreign minister,  had declared:

“I’m a lawyer – and I’m against the law, international law in particular.”

She had good reason for saying that because under international law “Israel loses, on Jerusalem, on the West Bank and Gaza, on settlements and right of return for refugees,” said Finkelstein.

The relevance of this to the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) was teased out in discussion between Finkelstein and Professor Jonathan Rosenhead, chair of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) on Friday afternoon, Nov 11, at UCL.

BRICUP chair Jonathan Rosenhead at the BDS discussion. Photo: Brian Robinson

Rosenhead opened with a review of the history of boycott as a weapon available to the weak oppressed by the strong, as in Ireland in the 1880s and in South Africa in 1960s-90s.

He said boycotts targeting Israel, begun in  2004, combine “symbolic protest, material intervention and political action.”  The overall aim was ending the Israeli system of oppression,  as called for by Palestinian civil society.

Rosenhead said freedom of expression in academia was a vital principle, but it was not absolute and could conflict with a higher principle, such as freedom and self-determination for an oppressed people.

Finkelstein said he supported the BDS campaign as a legitimate and potentially effective tactic. But he locked horns with Rosenhead and many in the audience when he argued that to go beyond goals that were enshrined in international law was to lose the possibility of reaching a broad public.

If your target is all Israeli institutions and your goal is an amorphous “system of oppression”, he said, the campaign may be morally pure, but it will be politically useless – a sect.

“The public will want to know, you are asking us to boycott until when? Until the Occupation ends, as defined in international law, or until Israel ends?  If the latter, you will have no possibility of reaching beyond the people in this room,” Finkelstein said.

From the audience, Naomi Foyle of British Writers in Support of Palestine (BWISP)  referred to the principles laid down by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), setting out the aims of BDS based on international law and human rights and including “dismantling the Israeli system of apartheid”.

She argued that Israel fits the United Nations definition of apartheid and that far from this position distancing us from the public, explaining the many ways in which Israel behaves like an apartheid state resonates within huge numbers of people.

Frank Barat, coordinator of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, read out the findings of the Tribunal session held last week in Johannesburg. The judgement said that Israel’s “rule over the Palestinian people, wherever they reside, collectively amounts to a single integrated regime of apartheid.”

Abe Hayeem, of Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, said the boycott campaign laid considerable stress on the legal arguments when taking its message to the public.  ”But governments don’t uphold the law, so civil society has to pressure Israel to come to its senses,” Hayeem said.

Tony Greenstein, anti-Zionist blogger and founding member of J-BIG, wrote later that Finkelstein’s focus on international law and institutions was misplaced.

Analysing Finkelstein’s evening lecture, Greenstein said: “Not once in his speech . . .  did Norman Finkelstein mention the word ‘Zionism’. It is as if Israel magically appeared. As if its behaviour towards Palestinians is some form of aberration. As if the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is out of character. And as if Israel, once it hands back all the 1967 territories, will become a normal state.”

“The real task ,” Greenstein wrote, “is to de-Zionist Israel and the creation of one unitary, secular and democratic Israel/Palestine.”

The full BDS discussion can be heard in an audio recording by Brian Robinson here and on video from InMinds here.