<![CDATA[BDS ou la continuation de la Solution finale par d’autres moyens (Why do the heathen rage ? – From Judenrein to Zionistfrei, guess who holier-than-thou universities, unions, « human rights » groups and churches are targeting from among the 200 territorial disputes, from Tibet to Ukraine)]]>neonazisbdsPourquoi ce tumulte parmi les nations, ces vaines pensées parmi les peuples? Pourquoi les rois de la terre se soulèvent-ils et les princes se liguent-ils avec eux contre l’Éternel et contre son oint? Psaumes 2: 1-2
A secular, democratic state solution is increasingly being perceived by Palestinians and people of conscience around the world as the moral alternative to Israeli apartheid and colonial rule. Such a solution, which promises unequivocal equality in citizenship, as well as individual and communal rights, both to Palestinians (refugees included) and to Israeli Jews, is the most appropriate for ethically reconciling the ostensibly irreconcilable: the inalienable, UN-sanctioned rights of the indigenous people of Palestine to self-determination, repatriation, and equality in accordance with international law and the acquired and internationally recognized rights of Israeli Jews to coexist in the land of Palestine — as equals, not colonial masters. Omar Barghouti
When I was a dissident in the former Soviet Union, one of my regular activities was monitoring anti-Semitism, and smuggling out evidence and records of such activity to the West. I believed then that the free world, particularly after the Holocaust, would always be a staunch ally in the struggle against anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, I was wrong. (…) Over the past four years, we have witnessed a resurgence of anti- Semitic activity in the democratic world. In Europe, synagogues have been burned, rabbis have been abused in the streets, Jewish children have been physically attacked on the way to school and inside schools, and Jewish cemeteries have been desecrated. Moreover, the so-called “new anti-Semitism” poses a unique challenge. Whereas classical anti-Semitism is aimed at the Jewish people or the Jewish religion, “new anti-Semitism” is aimed at the Jewish state. Since this anti-Semitism can hide behind the veneer of legitimate criticism of Israel, it is more difficult to expose. Making the task even harder is that this hatred is advanced in the name of values most of us would consider unimpeachable, such as human rights. Nevertheless, we must be clear and outspoken in exposing the new anti-Semitism. I believe that we can apply a simple test – I call it the “3D” test – to help us distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism. The first “D” is the test of demonization. When the Jewish state is being demonized; when Israel’s actions are blown out of all sensible proportion; when comparisons are made between Israelis and Nazis and between Palestinian refugee camps and Auschwitz – this is anti- Semitism, not legitimate criticism of Israel. The second “D” is the test of double standards. When criticism of Israel is applied selectively; when Israel is singled out by the United Nations for human rights abuses while the behavior of known and major abusers, such as China, Iran, Cuba, and Syria, is ignored; when Israel’s Magen David Adom, alone among the world’s ambulance services, is denied admission to the International Red Cross – this is anti-Semitism. The third “D” is the test of delegitimization: when Israel’s fundamental right to exist is denied – alone among all peoples in the world – this too is anti-Semitism. (…) vicious anti-Semitism which expressly calls for massive terrorism and genocide against Jews, Zionists, and the State of Israel is becoming more and more commonplace across the Arab Middle East. Moreover, the borders between anti-Semitism, anti- Americanism, and anti-Westernism have become almost completely blurred. (…) There is a direct link between the laxity with which countries have responded – or not responded – to growing Arab/Islamic anti- Semitism and the sharp increase in physical and verbal attacks on Jews and Israelis globally. (…) Anti-Semitism is not a threat only to Jews. History has shown us that left unchecked, the forces behind anti-Semitism will imperil all the values and freedoms that civilization holds dear. Never again can the free world afford to sit on the sidelines when anti-Semitism dangerously emerges. Natan Sharansky
Comparé à la plupart des flambées antijuives antérieures, ce nouvel antisémitisme est moins souvent dirigé contre des Juifs en tant qu’individus. Il attaque principalement les Juifs de façon collective, l’État d’Israël et alors avec ces attaques, démarre une réaction en chaine d’attaques contre des individus juifs et des institutions juives. […] Dans le passé, les antisémites les plus dangereux étaient ceux qui voulaient rendre le monde judenrein, libre de Juifs. Aujourd’hui, les plus dangereux antisémites sont peut-être ceux qui veulent rendre le monde judenstaatrein, libre d’un état juif. Per Ahlmark (ancien vice-premier ministre suédois)
You can criticize an Israeli policy or action as having been not only a violation of human rights and humanitarian law but also, you could even say it was a war crime. It may be, as I say, distasteful to see that, or witness that, but I don’t regard that as being anti-Semitic content. I think that that’s part of what is called rigorous criticism and discourse. Where you say that Israel is an apartheid state, even then – that to me is, it’s distasteful, but it’s still within the boundaries of argument. It’s where you say, because it’s an apartheid state, it has to be dismantled – then you crossed the line into a racist argument, or an anti-Jewish argument. You’re not just criticizing, you’re not only criticizing Israeli policy or practice; you’re not only saying it has apartheid policies; you’re saying it’s a criminal apartheid state that must be dismantled. Then in my view, you’ve crossed the line. (…) Since the start of the 21st century, the world has been « witnessing a new and escalating, globalizing, virulent, and even lethal anti-Semitism, one which substitutes hate for the Jewish person with hate for the Jewish state. We had moved from the discrimination against Jews as individuals, to the discrimination against Jews as a people, to Israel as the targeted collective ‘Jew among the nations. [But] I think we’ve got to set up certain boundaries of where it does cross the line, because I’m one of those who believes strongly, not only in free speech, but also in rigorous debate, and discussion, and dialectic, and the like. If you say too easily that everything is anti-Semitic, then nothing is anti-Semitic, and we no longer can make distinctions. (…) I think it’s too simplistic to say that anti-Zionism, per se, is anti-Semitic. It may cross the line into being anti-Semitic where it ends up by saying, ‘Israel has no right to exist’, or ‘the Jewish people have no right to self determination’, or, that the Jewish people are not even a people. (…) where people single out only Israeli nationals and apply only to them the principal of universal jurisdiction … and you’re not initiating any such processes against anybody else in a world in which many war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide are being committed – then you have to question whether this is not the singling out of Israeli nationals for selective and discriminatory treatment. Irwin Cotler
Your headline in the article “Canadian MP Cotler: Calling Israel an apartheid state can be legitimate free speech“ – as well as the inappropriate juxtaposition of disparate comments – suggest that the indictment of Israel as an apartheid state can be legitimate free speech. As all of my writing, my talk at the President’s Conference and my follow up interview with Ha’aretz make clear: the indictment of Israel as an apartheid state is false, defamatory and hateful, but the right to be wrong, defamatory and hateful – however offensive it may be, can nevertheless be an exercise in free speech. Simply put, the fact that the indictment is hateful – and may cross the line into being anti-Semitic when it calls for the dismantling of the State – does not mean that we should prohibit the hateful speech to begin with. It means, as I said in the interview, that we need to engage it, expose it, rebut it and thereby “delegitimize the delegitimizers” – not prevent their delegitimizing speech to begin with. The main theme in my writings – and in the interview – was regrettably not referenced in the article itself: that the real concern is not the phenomenon of the delegitimization of Israel. That has always been with us – what is new, and particularly offensive, is the laundering of the delegitimization of Israel under all that which is good, for example: the struggle against racism, international law, human rights, and the like. The result is not only prejudicial to the State of Israel – as in the indictment of Israel as an apartheid state or the singling out of Israel for differential and discriminatory treatment in the international arena– but prejudicial to the case and cause of the struggle against racism and human rights. To label Israel an apartheid state demeans the real struggle against apartheid – in which I was honoured to be at the forefront – as much as it falsely misrepresents Israel, however one may criticize Israeli policy and practice. Irwin Cotler
L’antisionisme est le nouvel habit de l’antisémitisme. Demain, les universitaires qui boycottent Israël demanderont qu’on brûle les livres des Israéliens, puis les livres des sionistes, puis ceux des juifs. Roger Cukierman (président du CRIF, janvier 2003)
Boycotter Israël, c’est lutter pour une paix juste (…) Du Canada à l’Australie en passant par l’Afrique du Sud, les Etats-Unis, l’Amérique latine et l’Europe, c’est un mouvement international, non-violent et populaire qui se développe. Syndicats, ONG, associations, Eglises, universités, municipalités, personnalités de renommée mondiale et simples citoyens se retrouvent pour défendre un même objectif : l’application du droit. (…)  Notre combat n’est pas fondé sur le rejet d’un peuple. Il s’agit d’exercer une réelle pression sur l’Etat d’Israël, en développant un boycott économique, diplomatique, et un boycott des institutions académiques, sportives et culturelles israéliennes. Ces institutions sont en effet trop souvent utilisées par Israël pour soigner son image et mieux masquer sa politique à l’égard des Palestiniens et son mépris des règles internationales. Michel Platini, président de l’Union européenne des associations de football (UEFA), l’a compris, menaçant d’exclure l’Etat d’Israël de l’UEFA s’il continuait d’entraver le développement du sport palestinien. Desmond Tutu, archevêque sud-africain récompensé par le prix Nobel de la paix en 1984 pour son combat contre l’apartheid, s’est de son côté élevé contre la visite prochainement prévue, en Israël, de la troupe de l’Opéra du Cap. En tant que soutien actif de la stratégie BDS, Desmond Tutu mérite-t-il aussi les titres de saboteur et de naufrageur d’espoir ? A ceux qui s’inquiètent de la dégradation de l’image d’Israël et qui accusent la campagne BDS d’en être responsable, nous disons qu’Israël est le seul auteur de cette dégradation. En violant chaque jour le droit international, en commettant des actes criminels comme les bombardements massifs sur Gaza en 2008-2009 ou l’assaut sanglant contre la Flottille de la liberté, en poursuivant le blocus de Gaza, la construction de colonies et l’arrachage des oliviers, Israël ne peut susciter qu’un rejet de plus en plus fort. (…) Nous savons, fort du précédent sud-africain et de la campagne victorieuse de boycott contre le régime d’apartheid, que cette arme, loin d’être indigne, peut être noble et efficace lorsque les circonstances l’exigent. C’est le cas aujourd’hui. Nicole Kiil-Nielsen (députée européenne, Les Verts)
Le Mouvement de la Résistance Islamique croit que la Palestine est un Waqf [patrimoine religieux] islamique consacré aux générations de musulmans jusqu’au Jugement Dernier. Pas une seule parcelle ne peut en être dilapidée ou abandonnée à d’autres. Charte du Hamas
Il n’y a aucun doute qu’à l’intérieur des territoires occupés palestiniens nous avons affaire à un exemple effarant d’apartheid. Jimmy Carter
En tant que membres du monde de la culture, notamment du cinéma, nous sommes troublés par la décision du TIFF de réserver une place de choix à Tel Aviv et de s’être ainsi rendu complice, intentionnellement ou pas, de la machine de propagande israélienne. Nous ne visons pas les cinéastes israéliens dont les œuvres sont inscrites au programme du festival. Mais nous dénonçons l’instrumentalisation du festival, par une campagne de propagande au service d’un régime d’apartheid. Ken Loach
La présentation sélective de la façade moderne et sophistiquée de Tel-Aviv, sans égard au passé et aux réalités de l’occupation israélienne des territoires palestiniens de Cisjordanie et de Gaza, ce serait comme si on glorifiait la beauté et la vie élégante chez les communautés exclusivement blanches au Cap ou à Johannesburg pendant l’apartheid, sans reconnaître les cantons noirs de Khayelitsha et de Soweto. Ken Loach, Jane Fonda, Naomi Klein, David Byrne, Alice Walker, Danny Glover, Harry Belafonte, Noam Chomsky, etc.
Se peut-il que cette guerre soit le laboratoire des fabricants de mort ? Se peut-il qu’au XXIe siècle on puisse enfermer 1,5 million de personnes et en faire tout ce qu’on veut en les appelant terroristes ? Mads Gilbert
L’Etat d’Israël est en train de mener une guerre de purification ethnique dans les territoires palestiniens. Nous avons passé 48 heures dans les camps d’internement de l’armée israélienne, où des centaines de Palestiniens, raflés en pleine nuit, sont emprisonnées, les yeux bandés. José Bové (Ramallah, avril 2002)
Il faut se demander à qui profite le crime. Je dénonce tous les actes visant des lieux de culte. Mais je crois que le gouvernement israélien et ses services secrets ont intérêt à créer une certaine psychose, à faire croire qu’un climat antisémite s’est installé en France, pour mieux détourner les regards. José Bové (de retour de Ramalah, Libération, avril 2002)
Vive le Hamas, le Hamas vaincra! Patrick Farbiaz (conseiller politique de Noël Mamère, 2003)
L’université est censée être un lieu où l’on apprend à utiliser son cerveau, à penser rationnellement, à examiner les preuves, à tirer des conclusions à partir de faits avérés, à vérifier ses sources, à comparer les points de vue. Si celle d’Edimbourg ne peut former que des étudiants qui n’ont pas la moindre notion de toutes ces choses, alors l’avenir est sombre. Je n’ai aucune objection à la critique argumentée contre Israël. Mais je m’oppose à ce que des gens supposés intelligents stigmatisent l’Etat juif comme celui qui traiterait sa population de la pire façon. (…) S’il y avait eu un Etat juif dans les années 1930 (ce n’était malheureusement pas le cas), vous ne croyez pas qu’Hitler aurait décidé de le boycotter ? Dr. Denis MacEoin
En Allemagne nazie,  c’était très à la mode de rendre sa ville Judenfrei – débarrassée des juifs-. Maintenant une nouvelle mode balaie l’Europe : rendre sa ville ce que l’on pourrait appeler ‘Zionistfrei’ – débarrassée des produits et de la culture de l’État juif. À travers tout le continent des villes se déclarent ‘zones débarrassées d’Israël,’ isolant leurs citoyens de tout ce qui est produit ou culture israéliens. On y trouve de hideux échos de ce qui s’est passé il y a soixante-dix ans. Brendan O’Neill
The Zionistfrei movement isn’t really about effecting any change in the Middle East. As Leicester Councillor Mohammed Dawood admits, Israel is hardly going to be “trembling in its shoes” over the city’s boycott. Rather, the movement is about making the chattering classes in Europe feel pure and righteous, unsullied by the poisonousness of the state it’s now so fashionable to hate. Where yesteryear’s creators of Judenfrei zones saw the Jewish people as a corrupting presence, today’s lobbyists for Zionistfrei territories see the Jewish state as corrupting, as a toxic entity whose fruit and technology and books must be shunned. No, Jews aren’t being physically expelled from Europe, but they are being made to feel unwelcome. Given that most Jews feel affinity with the state of Israel, what must they think when they see parts of Europe being cleansed of all things Israeli? They must think: “My culture and my people are not wanted here.” And European Jews are voting with their feet. In the first eight months of this year, 4,566 Jews left France for Israel, more than the total number that left in 2013 (3,228). Last year a European Union survey found that 29% of Europe’s Jews had considered emigrating because they no longer feel safe. BDS is one of the ugliest political movements of our time. It is shot through with double standards, treating Israel as more wicked than any other state. It is shrill and censorious, too. Its members boo and jeer and seek to expel from apparently civilized Europe not only Israeli military leaders and politicians but even Israeli violinists and actors. Now, the demand for Zionistfrei zones is taking BDS to its terrifying conclusion, that Israel and everyone associated with it (you know who) should be shunned by respectable communities everywhere. Brendan O’Neill (Spiked)
Aujourd’hui ces campagnes de haine et ces politiques nazies sont en grande partie le fait d’universités, de syndicats, d’entreprises et de groupes hypocrites, soi-disant militant pour les « droits de l’homme », ainsi que d’autres ONG. Et, ce qui est honteux, le fait d’églises. (…) Ils prétendent tous, à tort, être « pacifiques », utiliser des « moyens économiques » pour corriger « les injustices » dans les Territoires palestiniens. Cependant, ils semblent ne jamais essayer de remédier aux torts des gouvernements corrompus et répressifs de l’Autorité palestinienne et du Hamas à Gaza, ni même d’y promouvoir une presse libre, l’état de droit ou l’élaboration d’une économie stable. Leurs véritables motivations sont démasquées. Ils se coordonnent tout simplement avec la stratégie violente des Palestiniens et des fondamentalistes musulmans en Occident, ceux qui ont refusé encore et encore de faire la paix avec Israël depuis sept décennies et, au lieu de cela, ont choisi le terrorisme. (…) L’Union européenne a signé un accord avec le Maroc, qui a une dispute territoriale avec l’Algérie, lui garantissant néanmoins le droit d’exploiter les ressources du Sahara occidental ; il n’y a eu aucune campagne de protestation. Et nous n’avons entendu aucune protestation contre la Turquie pour son occupation du nord de Chypre ou son emprisonnement de masse de dissidents, de journalistes ou d’universitaires. Non, la politique de boycott n’est pratiquée que contre l’État juif qui peut se targuer des plus hauts niveaux de liberté académique, de liberté de presse et d’égalité devant devant la loi de la planète. (…) Ils soumettent aussi les universitaires israéliens à une campagne néo-nazie « de silence » de la part d’universités sans scrupules : envoyer moins d’invitations, rejeter plus d’articles et utiliser les critères des lois de Nuremberg du Troisième Reich pour exclure les juifs de toute participation. (…) Ces néo-nazis répandent leur message dans les universités, les églises, les entreprises et les municipalités. Ils adoptent des mesures comme des pétitions d’enseignants, le harcèlement public, des menaces de poursuites légales (guerre par la loi), des manifestations devant des magasins et, souvent, juste des cris stridents, de l’intimidation, des menaces et des sit-ins. (…) Des syndicats académiques au Royaume-Uni et au Canada, allant de médecins à architectes, ont également soutenu les nouvelles Lois de Nuremberg contre Israël. Des dizaines d’artistes – notamment des musiciens et des cinéastes – ont refusé, comme les premiers nazis avant eux, de se produire en Israël ou ont annulé leurs représentations. Nombre de fonds de pension ont retiré leurs investissements d’Israël.  (…) Les lignes d’avant ou après1967 ne sont qu’un alibi pour ces nouveaux nazis. Nombre d’entre eux considèrent que l’intégralité d’Israël est illégale, immorale ou les deux à la fois – bien que des juifs vivent sur cette terre depuis trois mille ans, une partie s’appelant même la Judée. L’appétit qu’ils mettent à accuser les juifs d’avoir l’audace « d’occuper » leur propre terre historique, biblique, ne fait que révéler leur collusion avec les mensonges les plus sombres des extrémistes islamiques qui essaient de détruire les coptes chrétiens autochtones dans leur terre natale d’Égypte et les Assyriens chrétiens autochtones que l’on voit massacrer dans tout le Moyen Orient. Les Français devraient-ils être accusés « d’occuper » la Gaule ? Il suffit de voir n’importe quelle carte de « Palestine », qui recouvre l’État d’Israël tout entier : pour nombre de Palestiniens, la totalité d’Israël est une seule colonie énorme qui doit être démantelée. À la place d’Israël, ils faciliteraient la création d’un autre État arabo-islamique qui supprimera la liberté d’expression des artistes, des journalistes et des écrivains, qui chassera les chrétiens de chez eux, qui lapidera à mort les homosexuels, qui torturera les détenus en prison, qui mettra à mort des innocents voulant simplement se convertir au christianisme, qui condamnera à des coups de fouet, à la prison ou la mort ceux dont il sera allégué qu’ils ont dit quelque chose que quelqu’un pourrait considérer comme une offense faite à l’islam, qui obligera les femmes à porter le voile et à vivre à part, qui glorifiera les terroristes, qui interdira l’alcool, qui arrêtera ceux qui exprimeront des opinions impopulaires, qui encouragera une nouvelle catégorie de réfugiés musulmans : ceux qui fuiraient volontiers un régime oppressif et meurtrier. Ces néo-nazis, en guise d’arguments, avancent des slogans faux et trompeurs tels que « état d’apartheid », « occupation », « répressif », « violateur des lois internationales » (toutes choses qu’Israël n’est scrupuleusement pas). Leur but, comme celui des nazis d’origine, est de manipuler les gens et de leur instiller préjugés et haine contre Israël, et juste derrière ce subterfuge, contre tous les juifs. Giulio Meotti (Il Foglio)

De Judenrein à… Judenstaatrein !

Devinez quel pays …

Parmi les 200 conflits territoriaux du monde allant du Tibet à l’Ukraine …

Et derrière un mouvement dont le co-fondateur nie tout « droit inaliénable » aux Juifs israéliens …

Ont choisi comme cible …

Nos universités, syndicats, groupes des droits de l’homme et églises ?

Les Nouveaux Nazis « Vertueux »
Giulio Meotti
Gatestone institute
25 septembre 2016
Traduction du texte original: The « Virtuous » New Nazis
Adaptation française: HKL

Au lieu de se préoccuper du terrorisme islamiste et de Molenbeek, le nid de djihadistes de Bruxelles, il y a des racistes en Europe qui veulent écraser Israël, la seule démocratie au Moyen-Orient.

Rencontrez donc les meutes de nouveaux nazis, se présentant comme la Droiture et la Vertu, qui mènent de nouvelles politiques d’extermination contre Israël et, juste après, contre les juifs.

« En Allemagne nazie, » notait Brendan O’Neill dans le Wall Street Journal, « c’était très à la mode de rendre sa ville Judenfrei – débarrassée des juifs-. »

« Maintenant une nouvelle mode balaie l’Europe : rendre sa ville ce que l’on pourrait appeler ‘Zionistfrei’ – débarrassée des produits et de la culture de l’État juif. À travers tout le continent des villes se déclarent ‘zones débarrassées d’Israël,’ isolant leurs citoyens de tout ce qui est produit ou culture israéliens. On y trouve de hideux échos de ce qui s’est passé il y a soixante-dix ans. »

Les nazis disaient « kauft nicht bei Juden » : n’achetez pas aux juifs. Le slogan de ces nouveaux racistes est « kauft nicht beim Judenstaat » : n’achetez pas à l’État juif. Les nazis répétaient « Geh nach Palästina, du Jud » : Va en Palestine, toi Juif. Les racistes en Europe crient « juifs, sortez de Palestine ! »

Voyons qui ils sont. Le conseil municipal de la ville de Leicester, par exemple, a récemment approuvé l’interdiction des produits « fabriqués en Israël ». Réfléchissez-y : une ville sans produits israéliens. Ce n’est pas l’Allemagne nazie de 1933 ; c’est une ville britannique dirigée par le Parti Travailliste en 2016. Deux conseils municipaux gallois, Swansea et Gwynedd, ont bloqué des partenariats commerciaux avec des compagnies israéliennes. À Dublin, un restaurant connu, Exchequer, a décidé de ne pas utiliser de produits israéliens. La ville irlandaise de Kinvara est devenue ville « débarrassée d’Israël ». En Espagne, la ville de Villanueva de Duero ne distribue plus d’eau venue d’Israël dans ses bâtiments officiels. La ville française de Lille a gelé un accord avec la ville israélienne de Safed.

Ayant subi des pressions racistes, Brussels Airlines, une compagnie aérienne belge, qui appartient en partie à Lufthansa, a décidé de ne plus servir de halva, un dessert de la marque Israëli Achva. Un militant du Mouvement de Solidarité avec la Palestine, Palestine Solidarity Movement, qui avait pris un vol allant de l’aéroport Ben Gurion de Tel Aviv à Bruxelles s’est retrouvé en train de manger ce dessert produit en Israël. Ce nazi version allégée s’est plaint à la compagnie aérienne qui s’est empressée de retirer ce dessert (après des protestations, la compagnie est revenue sur sa décision). Au lieu de s’inquiéter du terrorisme islamiste et de Molenbeek, le nid de djihadiste de Bruxelles, il y a des racistes en Europe qui veulent écraser Israël, la seule démocratie au Moyen-Orient.

Il y a eu un cas précédent de tentative de destruction d’Israël par des moyens économiques en 1980 lorsque L’Oréal avait acheté la compagnie de cosmétiques Helena Rubinstein. Des régimes arabes avaient menacé de couper leurs relations lucratives avec des compagnies multinationales si elles ne coupaient pas leurs liens avec Israël. Au lieu de rejeter ce chantage, L’Oréal y a cédé. Aujourd’hui cet antisémitisme n’est pas le fait de pays arabes ou occidentaux. La France, par exemple, a récemment rendu illégaux les appels à prendre Israël pour cible par le biais de boycotts. Aujourd’hui ces campagnes de haine et ces politiques nazies sont en grande partie le fait d’universités, de syndicats, d’entreprises et de groupes hypocrites, soi-disant militant pour les « droits de l’homme », ainsi que d’autres ONG.

Et, ce qui est honteux, le fait d’églises. L’Église Évangélique Luthérienne d’Amérique (ELCA), le 11 août 2016 a appelé le gouvernement des États-Unis à arrêter toute aide à Israël et à adopter des tactiques pour détruire le pays par des moyens économiques. L’hiver dernier, l’Église Méthodiste des États-Unis a également désinvesti de cinq banques israéliennes de manière très peu chrétienne.

Ils prétendent tous, à tort, être « pacifiques », utiliser des « moyens économiques » pour corriger « les injustices » dans les Territoires palestiniens. Cependant, ils semblent ne jamais essayer de remédier aux torts des gouvernements corrompus et répressifs de l’Autorité palestinienne et du Hamas à Gaza, ni même d’y promouvoir une presse libre, l’état de droit ou l’élaboration d’une économie stable. Leurs véritables motivations sont démasquées. Ils se coordonnent tout simplement avec la stratégie violente des Palestiniens et des fondamentalistes musulmans en Occident, ceux qui ont refusé encore et encore de faire la paix avec Israël depuis sept décennies et, au lieu de cela, ont choisi le terrorisme.

Cette guerre asymétrique, pour la première fois depuis la Shoah et le massacre systématique de six millions de juifs, a aussi brisé récemment un tabou allemand. Apparemment, pour quelques Allemands, la vielle soif de sang n’a jamais disparu, elle n’était qu’endormie. Le syndicat des professeurs de la ville de Oldenburg vient de publier un article dans son magazine de septembre appelant à « un boycott total de l’État juif », selon le Jerusalem Post, « le premier appel à boycotter Israël ou les juifs émanant d’un groupe organisé de syndicats depuis la Shoah. » À son crédit tardif, le 5 septembre le syndicat des professeurs d’Oldenburg s’est excusé, qualifiant le boycott de « grande erreur » et « d’antisémite ».

L’Union européenne a signé un accord avec le Maroc, qui a une dispute territoriale avec l’Algérie, lui garantissant néanmoins le droit d’exploiter les ressources du Sahara occidental ; il n’y a eu aucune campagne de protestation. Et nous n’avons entendu aucune protestation contre la Turquie pour son occupation du nord de Chypre ou son emprisonnement de masse de dissidents, de journalistes ou d’universitaires. Non, la politique de boycott n’est pratiquée que contre l’État juif qui peut se targuer des plus hauts niveaux de liberté académique, de liberté de presse et d’égalité devant devant la loi de la planète. Ils le font à la manière des « 3-D » notée par Natan Sharansky, le véritable défenseur des droits humains, le dissident soviétique, dans son The Case For Democracy (Bien-fondé de la Démocratie ) :

  • Double standard : ne s’attaquer qu’à Israël parmi les deux cents conflits territoriaux, allant du Tibet à l’Ukraine.
  • Diabolisation : en comparant les actions d’Israël à celles des nazis alors qu’en fait, ce sont ceux qui font cette comparaison qui devraient être comparés aux nazis.
  • Délégitimation : nier à Israël le droit d’exister.

Cette hypocrisie raciste est aussi limpide qu’elle est perfide.

Ils soumettent aussi les universitaires israéliens à une campagne néo-nazie « de silence » de la part d’universités sans scrupules : envoyer moins d’invitations, rejeter plus d’articles et utiliser les critères des lois de Nuremberg du Troisième Reich pour exclure les juifs de toute participation. L’université de Syracuse vient de désinvestir d’une conférence Simon Dotan, un professeur juif de l’université de New York, cinéaste primé, né en Roumanie, élevé en Israël et qui vit aux États-Unis rapporte Caroline Glick :

« La décision de Hamner n’a rien à voir avec la qualité du travail de Dotan. Elle l’a admis de fait…L’invitation faite à Dotan a été annulée parce qu’il est israélien et que le titre de son film The Settlers ( Les Colons), ne montre pas d’emblée ni suffisamment clairement s’il vilipende le demi-million d’Israéliens qui vivent en Judée Samarie. »

Parmi ceux qui ont approuvé ces mesures néo-nazies dans le monde universitaire il y a l’historienne britannique Catherine Hall et, ce qui est une honte, Stephen Hawking, gravement handicapé et qui ne peut parler que grâce à un appareil de communication israélien.

Cette campagne de boycott universitaire a commencé quand Oren Yiftachel, professeur à l’université Ben Gourion, s’est vu refuser un article par le journal Political Geography. –Géographie Politique-. Ce rejet était accompagné d’une note l’informant que le magazine ne pouvait accepter une proposition venant « d’Israël » et son article lui a été renvoyé sans avoir été ouvert. La maison d’édition St. Jerome Manchester, spécialisée dans les traductions, a refusé d’envoyer des ouvrages universitaires à l’Université Bar Ilan en Israël. La revue britannique, Dance Europe, a refusé de publier un article sur la chorégraphe israélienne Sally Anne Friedland ; Richard Seaford a refusé de faire une critique d’un livre pour le magazine israélien, Antiquity Scripta Classica Israëlica. Un professeur de pathologie à l’Université d’Oxford, Andrew Wilkie, a rejeté une demande présentée par Amit Duvshani, un étudiant en doctorat à l’université de Tel-Aviv. Dans sa lettre de rejet, Wilkie a écrit : « je n’accepterai en aucun cas quelqu’un qui a servi dans l’armée israélienne. »

Ces néo-nazis répandent leur message dans les universités, les églises, les entreprises et les municipalités. Ils adoptent des mesures comme des pétitions d’enseignants, le harcèlement public, des menaces de poursuites légales (guerre par la loi), des manifestations devant des magasins et, souvent, juste des cris stridents, de l’intimidation, des menaces et des sit-in.

Ils sont, bien sûr, incapables de porter tort à une économie israélienne florissante mais ils essaient clairement de susciter un climat raciste fait de soupçons et d’hostilité envers Israël et les juifs où qu’ils soient. La Swedish Coop a cessé de vendre les appareils pour la gazéification fabriqués par l’entreprise israélienne SodaStream, tandis que le plus grand fonds de pension néerlandais, PGGM, a retiré ses investissements d’institutions financières israéliennes. Vitens, le plus grand fournisseur d’eau potable aux Pays-Bas, a rompu ses liens avec son homologue israélien, Mekorot. Le grand magasin berlinois KaDeWe, le plus grand d’Europe, a arrêté de vendre des vins israéliens (puis est revenu sur sa décision). La plus grande coopérative du Royaume-Uni, le Co-operative Group, a introduit une politique discriminatoire contre les produits israéliens. McDonald’s a refusé d’ouvrir un restaurant dans la ville israélienne d’Ariel, en Samarie. L’université de Johannesburg a coupé ses liens avec l’université Ben Gourion en Israël. Des syndicats académiques au Royaume-Uni et au Canada, allant de médecins à architectes, ont également soutenu les nouvelles Lois de Nuremberg contre Israël. Des dizaines d’artistes – notamment des musiciens et des cinéastes – ont refusé, comme les premiers nazis avant eux, de se produire en Israël ou ont annulé leurs représentations. Nombre de fonds de pension ont retiré leurs investissements d’Israël. La Deutsche Bank, la plus grande banque d’Allemagne, soulevant des « problèmes éthiques » contestables a inclus la banque israélienne Hapoalim dans une liste noire de compagnies.

Les lignes d’avant ou après1967 ne sont qu’un alibi pour ces nouveaux nazis. Nombre d’entre eux considèrent que l’intégralité d’Israël est illégale, immorale ou les deux à la fois – bien que des juifs vivent sur cette terre depuis trois mille ans, une partie s’appelant même la Judée. L’appétit qu’ils mettent à accuser les juifs d’avoir l’audace « d’occuper » leur propre terre historique, biblique, ne fait que révéler leur collusion avec les mensonges les plus sombres des extrémistes islamiques qui essaient de détruire les coptes chrétiens autochtones dans leur terre natale d’Égypte et les Assyriens chrétiens autochtones que l’on voit massacrer dans tout le Moyen Orient. Les Français devraient-ils être accusés « d’occuper » la Gaule ? Il suffit de voir n’importe quelle carte de « Palestine », qui recouvre l’État d’Israël tout entier : pour nombre de Palestiniens, la totalité d’Israël est une seule colonie énorme qui doit être démantelée.

À la place d’Israël, ils faciliteraient la création d’un autre État arabo-islamique qui supprimera la liberté d’expression des artistes, des journalistes et des écrivains, qui chassera les chrétiens de chez eux, qui lapidera à mort les homosexuels, qui torturera les détenus en prison, qui mettra à mort des innocents voulant simplement se convertir au christianisme, qui condamnera à des coups de fouet, à la prison ou la mort ceux dont il sera allégué qu’ils ont dit quelque chose que quelqu’un pourrait considérer comme une offense faite à l’islam, qui obligera les femmes à porter le voile et à vivre à part, qui glorifiera les terroristes, qui interdira l’alcool, qui arrêtera ceux qui exprimeront des opinions impopulaires, qui encouragera une nouvelle catégorie de réfugiés musulmans : ceux qui fuiraient volontiers un régime oppressif et meurtrier.

Ces néo-nazis, en guise d’arguments, avancent des slogans faux et trompeurs tels que « état d’apartheid », « occupation », « répressif », « violant les lois internationales » (toutes choses qu’Israël n’est scrupuleusement pas). Leur but, comme celui des nazis d’origine, est de manipuler les gens et de leur instiller préjugés et haine contre Israël, et juste derrière ce subterfuge, contre tous les juifs.

Giulio Meotti, Chef du service culturel de Il Foglio, est journaliste et auteur italien

Voir aussi:

Rinsing Israel Out of Europe: The Zionistfrei Movement
In Britain, France, Spain and beyond, a drive to ban products from the Jewish state is picking up speed.
Brendan O’Neill
The Wall Street Journal
Dec. 9, 2014

In Nazi Germany, it was all the rage to make one’s town Judenfrei. Now a new fashion is sweeping Europe: to make one’s town or city what we might call “Zionistfrei”—free of the products and culture of the Jewish state. Across the Continent, cities and towns are declaring themselves “Israel-free zones,” insulating their citizens from Israeli produce and culture. It has ugly echoes of what happened 70 years ago.

Leicester City Council in England last month voted to boycott goods made in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. All services run by the council will be free of any product or technology made in any of the settlements. The motion “condemns the Government of Israel for its continuing illegal occupation of Palestine’s East Jerusalem and the West Bank” and resolves “to boycott any produce originating from illegal Israeli settlements.”

Leicester Mayor Peter Soulsby insists that there’s nothing anti-Semitic about this erection of an Israel-deflecting force field around the city, telling the local Leicester Mercury newspaper that it’s simply about expressing dismay with “the behavior of the Israeli state.”

But Jeffrey Kaufman, former president of Leicester’s Progressive Jewish Congregation, isn’t convinced. He wants to know why, “of all the horrible things going on in the world,” the council singled out Israel for punitive treatment. “It’s blatant anti-Semitism,” he said.

Other communities in Europe have gone further than Leicester. During this summer’s Gaza conflict, the town of Kinvara in western Ireland went completely Zionistfrei. Pro-Palestinian campaigners lobbied the town’s retailers, restaurants and cafes to expunge from their premises anything produced in Israel. All the businesses agreed, meaning Kinvara is now, in the eyes of anti-Israel agitators, morally pure. It is held up as a model town by numerous European backers of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, movement.

Also during the Gaza conflict, the mayor of Newry in Northern Ireland wrote to all the retailers of his district asking them to provide a list of the Israeli products they stock. He then asked them to remove these products from sale—he was backed by 21 votes to three on the Newry Council.

Numerous Spanish provinces have this year been bombarded with requests to reject the “products, culture and sport” of the state of Israel. When BDS activists can’t get official backing for their desire to live Zionistfrei lives, they take things into their own hands. Three years ago in Montpellier, France, BDS activists spent an hour and a half rampaging through a shopping mall and “de-shelving” all the fruit produced in Israel.

Under pressure from campaigners to break off all links with Israel, the French city of Lille in October ripped up its twinning accord with the Israeli city of Safed. Roger Cukierman, president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, was quoted in the French press saying Lille’s officials had shown a “heinous attitude toward the Israeli people.”

In 2011, the council of West Dunbartonshire in Scotland voted to boycott all Israeli products and instructed all local libraries to stop stocking books printed in the state of Israel. Why not just burn them?

Various towns in Turkey are shunning Coca-Cola over what they see as its support for Israel. Earlier this year, the mayor of Ordu in northern Turkey said “we boycott killer Israel and the global capital supporting it and do not drink its products,” as if anything made by Israel or its friends is some kind of poison liable to sully one’s body and soul.

The Zionistfrei movement isn’t really about effecting any change in the Middle East. As Leicester Councillor Mohammed Dawood admits, Israel is hardly going to be “trembling in its shoes” over the city’s boycott. Rather, the movement is about making the chattering classes in Europe feel pure and righteous, unsullied by the poisonousness of the state it’s now so fashionable to hate.

Where yesteryear’s creators of Judenfrei zones saw the Jewish people as a corrupting presence, today’s lobbyists for Zionistfrei territories see the Jewish state as corrupting, as a toxic entity whose fruit and technology and books must be shunned.

No, Jews aren’t being physically expelled from Europe, but they are being made to feel unwelcome. Given that most Jews feel affinity with the state of Israel, what must they think when they see parts of Europe being cleansed of all things Israeli? They must think: “My culture and my people are not wanted here.” And European Jews are voting with their feet. In the first eight months of this year, 4,566 Jews left France for Israel, more than the total number that left in 2013 (3,228). Last year a European Union survey found that 29% of Europe’s Jews had considered emigrating because they no longer feel safe.

BDS is one of the ugliest political movements of our time. It is shot through with double standards, treating Israel as more wicked than any other state. It is shrill and censorious, too. Its members boo and jeer and seek to expel from apparently civilized Europe not only Israeli military leaders and politicians but even Israeli violinists and actors. Now, the demand for Zionistfrei zones is taking BDS to its terrifying conclusion, that Israel and everyone associated with it (you know who) should be shunned by respectable communities everywhere.

Mr. O’Neill is editor of the online journal Spiked

Voir également:

Boycott Israël: trop c’est trop

Bernard Maro

Directeur de recherche CNRS

Huffington Post

18/08/2015

INTERNATIONAL – La lutte « pacifique » contre l’occupation de la Palestine par Israël se focalise autour d’une campagne de boycott (BDS pour Boycott, Désinvestissement, Sanctions). Or cette organisation et ses supports les plus virulents dérivent de plus en plus vers un antisémitisme qui se cache de moins en moins. Déjà l’année dernière, lors des manifestations contre l’opération « plomb durci », menée par Israel à la suite de l’envoi de centaines de roquettes de Gaza vers son territoire, on avait entendu des cris de « mort aux juifs », quatre synagogues avaient été menacées ou attaquées (Belleville, Tournelles, Roquette et Sarcelles), des commerces juifs attaqués à Paris et en banlieue.

Les événements qui ont suivi les attentats de janvier avaient mis en évidence une rupture au sein de la gauche, une partie de celle-ci ignorant l’antisémitisme des terroristes et ne voulant que dénoncer l’islamophobie possible à venir, en association avec des organisations islamistes. Cela avait même atteint des sommets lorsque le Parti des Indigènes de la République, une des organisations de cette mouvance, avait dénoncé le « philosémitisme d’État » qui favoriserait l’antisémitisme dans notre pays, afin de dédouaner et justifier ces dérives.

Six mois plus tard, la diabolisation d’Israël et des juifs n’a pas cessé. Voici deux exemples tirés de l’actualité récente, concernant le boycott culturel d’Israel:

Des organisations pro-palestiniennes ont tenté de faire interdire l’événement « Tel Aviv sur Seine » que la mairie de Paris organisait en partenariat avec la mairie de Tel Aviv, municipalité de gauche, très ouverte et cosmopolite. N’y parvenant pas elles ont organisé « Gaza plage » pour « faire entendre la voix de la Palestine occupée, colonisée, emmurée, bombardée ». Or si en Palestine il y a bien une occupation israélienne et des colons, ce n’est pas à Gaza. Les derniers colons ont été évacués en 2005 et l’armée israélienne s’est retirée de l’autre côté de la ligne verte (ligne de cessez-le-feu de 1949), frontière entre la Palestine (Cisjordanie et Gaza) et Israël. Reste le quatrième terme : bombardée. C’est le seul qui puisse s’appliquer à Gaza. Mais ces organisations oublient de dire que depuis qu’Israël s’est retiré en 2005, plus de 8 000 roquettes visant des zones civiles (2 par jour en moyenne sur 10 ans) ont été tirées depuis la bande de Gaza sur l’État hébreu.

Ces organisations ont donc choisi comme étendard de la Palestine un territoire qui n’est ni occupé, ni colonisé, mais qui est sous le contrôle du Hamas: une organisation islamiste totalitaire, sexiste, homophobe dont la charte prévoit la disparition d’Israel et un statut de citoyens de seconde zone pour les non-musulmans. Pourtant, il existe en Cisjordanie des villes qui subissent la colonisation et l’occupation israélienne, comme Hebron, ou une poignée de colons rend la vie impossible à des dizaines de millier de Palestiniens.

Pourquoi Gaza plutôt que Hebron: la réponse est simple, dans le cas d’Hebron on ne peut utiliser les termes de « génocide » (bien que la croissance démographique de Gaza soit extrêmement élevée) ou de « camp de concentration à ciel ouvert » (comme si les camps nazis étaient sous terre). Cette terminologie qu’elles aiment tant employer favorise l’amalgame « sionistes = nazis ». L’autre terme de cet amalgame qui fonctionne bien dans cette mouvance, c’est « juif = sioniste »: on a donc pu entendre sur les quais de la Seine scander « sionistes, sales juifs, c’est vous les terroristes ».

Le second événement met encore plus en évidence ces dérives: le festival de musique espagnol « Rototom Sunsplashun » avait invité Matisyahu, un chanteur américain juif de reggae et de hip hop. Les pressions de BDS ont amené les organisateurs de ce festival à lui demander d’écrire une lettre ou de faire une vidéo donnant sa position sur le conflit israélo-palestinien. Devant son refus, le festival a déprogrammé Matisyahu.

« Le festival n’a cessé d’insister pour que je clarifie mes opinions personnelles… Ce que j’ai ressenti comme une façon de me pousser à prendre parti pour les options politiques de BDS. Franchement, il était malhonnête et offensant qu’étant le seul artiste juif américain programmé au festival, on veuille me faire faire des déclarations politiques. Était-ce requis des autres artistes programmés? ».

Un pas de plus dans les dérives de BDS: si un artiste est israélien juif, il est boycotté, s’il n’est pas israélien mais juif, il doit faire allégeance à BDS pour pouvoir se produire.

Le mois dernier, Omar Barghouti, fondateur de BDS, dans une interview au Monde disait clairement que le but de BDS est la disparition d’Israel en tant qu’État pour les juifs (via le retour de tous les réfugiés palestiniens en Israel afin que les juifs deviennent minoritaires). Cette convergence de vue avec le Hamas n’est pas fortuite. Les partisans de la grande Palestine sont tout aussi nocifs pour la paix que les partisans du grand Israel. Il y a un an, lors de la dernière guerre de Gaza, Charlie Hebdo titrait « La Palestine à deux problèmes, ses ennemis là-bas, ses amis ici ». Ceci est toujours d’actualité.

Voir de même:

3D Test of Anti-Semitism: Demonization, Double Standards, Delegitimization
Natan Sharansky

Jewish Political Studies Review (Fall 2004)

October 21, 2004

When I was a dissident in the former Soviet Union, one of my regular activities was monitoring anti-Semitism, and smuggling out evidence and records of such activity to the West. I believed then that the free world, particularly after the Holocaust, would always be a staunch ally in the struggle against anti-Semitism.

Unfortunately, I was wrong. Today, as a minister in the Israeli government in charge of monitoring anti-Semitism, I find myself regularly summoning the ambassadors of West European states to protest anti-Semitic attacks on Jews in their countries and the often meek response of their governments.

Over the past four years, we have witnessed a resurgence of anti- Semitic activity in the democratic world. In Europe, synagogues have been burned, rabbis have been abused in the streets, Jewish children have been physically attacked on the way to school and inside schools, and Jewish cemeteries have been desecrated.

Recognizing the “New Anti-Semitism”
Moreover, the so-called “new anti-Semitism” poses a unique challenge. Whereas classical anti-Semitism is aimed at the Jewish people or the Jewish religion, “new anti-Semitism” is aimed at the Jewish state. Since this anti-Semitism can hide behind the veneer of legitimate criticism of Israel, it is more difficult to expose. Making the task even harder is that this hatred is advanced in the name of values most of us would consider unimpeachable, such as human rights.

Nevertheless, we must be clear and outspoken in exposing the new anti-Semitism. I believe that we can apply a simple test – I call it the “3D” test – to help us distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism.

The first “D” is the test of demonization. When the Jewish state is being demonized; when Israel’s actions are blown out of all sensible proportion; when comparisons are made between Israelis and Nazis and between Palestinian refugee camps and Auschwitz – this is anti- Semitism, not legitimate criticism of Israel.

The second “D” is the test of double standards. When criticism of Israel is applied selectively; when Israel is singled out by the United Nations for human rights abuses while the behavior of known and major abusers, such as China, Iran, Cuba, and Syria, is ignored; when Israel’s Magen David Adom, alone among the world’s ambulance services, is denied admission to the International Red Cross – this is anti-Semitism.

The third “D” is the test of delegitimization: when Israel’s fundamental right to exist is denied – alone among all peoples in the world – this too is anti-Semitism.

The Rise of Arab and Islamic Anti-Semitism
I am particularly concerned about the constant and growing stream of anti-Semitic propaganda from the Arab and Muslim world – including propaganda that is genocidal in nature against both Jews and the State of Israel. This should be of grave concern, not only to Israel and Jews but to men and women of good conscience everywhere. Such venom defiles the Middle East and the international climate of discourse, and makes it possible for unabashed Jew-hatred to be expressed with impunity.

Earlier this year, my office published a 150-page report on “Anti- Semitism in the Contemporary Middle East.” The study surveys anti- Semitic reporting, editorials, and editorial caricatures in the government- controlled press of Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states. In the more than one hundred editorial cartoons included in this report, Jews and Israelis are invariably represented as poisonous snakes, murderous Nazis, and bloodthirsty Crusaders.

We found that vicious anti-Semitism which expressly calls for massive terrorism and genocide against Jews, Zionists, and the State of Israel is becoming more and more commonplace across the Arab Middle East. Moreover, the borders between anti-Semitism, anti- Americanism, and anti-Westernism have become almost completely blurred. The overwhelming majority of this propaganda is issued from the government-controlled media and from supposedly respectable publishing houses closely tied to the Arab regimes.

There is a direct link between the laxity with which countries have responded – or not responded – to growing Arab/Islamic anti- Semitism and the sharp increase in physical and verbal attacks on Jews and Israelis globally.

I recognize that there have been positive developments in the fight against anti-Semitism over the past year or so. The Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has held several meetings on fighting anti-Semitism, and for the first time ever the UN Commission on Human Rights condemned anti-Semitism in three separate resolutions, which were adopted by consensus.

But these important initiatives are not sufficient to combat state-sponsored anti-Semitism, especially of the Arab/Islamic variety described above. For real progress to be made, the free world must be willing to not only publicly and forcefully condemn this anti-Semitism, but also to pursue a policy of linkage against states that support anti- Semitism.

The Need for a Linkage Policy
The effectiveness of a policy based on linkage was powerfully demonstrated a generation ago after a group of dissidents inside the Soviet Union, including myself, decided to form the Helsinki Group in the wake of the Helsinki accords – the very agreement that led to the establishment of the OSCE.

With the help of courageous leaders in the West who were willing to link their relations with the Soviets to their treatment of their own people, the Helsinki Group helped ensure that the Soviets could not take one step in the international arena without their human rights policies becoming an issue. As a result, real progress was made.

I believe that combating anti-Semitism ought to become a much more prominent issue in the bilateral relations between America and the Arab and Muslim worlds. Linkage can be used to marginalize the extremists and to encourage and support those who reject this virulent hatred.

Anti-Semitism is not a threat only to Jews. History has shown us that left unchecked, the forces behind anti-Semitism will imperil all the values and freedoms that civilization holds dear. Never again can the free world afford to sit on the sidelines when anti-Semitism dangerously emerges.

We must not let this happen. We must do everything in our power to fight anti-Semitism. Armed with moral clarity, determination, and a common purpose, this is a fight that we can and will win.

*     *     *

NATAN SHARANSKY, the former Prisoner of Zion who spent nine years in Soviet jails, was Israel’s minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora affairs when he wrote this article. In 2003 he founded the Global Forum against Anti-Semitism, which brings together Jewish leaders and organizations from five continents for coordination and consultation in the struggle against anti-Semitism. He has also served as minister of industry and trade, interior minister, minister of construction and housing, and deputy prime minister. His memoir, Fear No Evil, was published in the United States in 1988 and has been translated into nine languages. His book, The Case for Democracy, was published by Public Affairs (New York) in 2004.

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Canadian MP Cotler: Calling Israel an Apartheid State Can Be Legitimate Free Speech

David Sheen

Jul 01, 2011

Canadian parliamentarian and staunch supporter of Israel Irwin Cotler told Haaretz last week that criticism of Israel as an apartheid state, while distastful, could be within the bounds of legitimate discourse.

Cotler, who was in Israel for the Presidential Conference, spoke to Haaretz about where to draw the line between acceptable critiques of Israel’s policy and anti-Semitism, which he has spent much of his career fighting.

« You can criticize an Israeli policy or action as having been not only a violation of human rights and humanitarian law but also, you could even say it was a war crime, » the former Canadian justice minister said. « It may be, as I say, distasteful to see that, or witness that, but I don’t regard that as being anti-Semitic content. I think that that’s part of what is called rigorous criticism and discourse. »

Cotler, who is currently an MP from Montreal, said that idea extends to classification of Israel as an apartheid state, a sentiment he does not agree with, but sees as a part of the debate.

« Where you say that Israel is an apartheid state, even then – that to me is, it’s distasteful, but it’s still within the boundaries of argument, » Cotler said. « It’s where you say, because it’s an apartheid state, it has to be dismantled – then you crossed the line into a racist argument, or an anti-Jewish argument. You’re not just criticizing, you’re not only criticizing Israeli policy or practice; you’re not only saying it has apartheid policies; you’re saying it’s a criminal apartheid state that must be dismantled. Then in my view, you’ve crossed the line. »

Cotler’s statements to Anglo File represent a slight departure for the politician, who has argued vociferously against calling Israel an aparthied state and called for campaign to deligitimize the delegitimization.

In 2009, Cotler, who is Jewish, co-founded the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism, a group of Jewish and non-Jewish lawmakers from dozens of countries devoted to fighting anti-Jewish racism. The organization held its inaugural meeting in England in 2009, with Canadian MPs making up the largest delegation, and the group held its second conference in Ottawa this past November, with 140 parliamentarians in attendance. The Canadian parliament followed the conference with its own inquiry into Canadian anti-Semitism.

Since the start of the 21st century, the world has been « witnessing a new and escalating, globalizing, virulent, and even lethal anti-Semitism, » Cotler said, one which substitutes hate for the Jewish person with hate for the Jewish state. « We had moved from the discrimination against Jews as individuals, to the discrimination against Jews as a people, to Israel as the targeted collective ‘Jew among the nations. »

But he said not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic.

« I think we’ve got to set up certain boundaries of where it does cross the line, because I’m one of those who believes strongly, not only in free speech, but also in rigorous debate, and discussion, and dialectic, and the like, » he said. « If you say too easily that everything is anti-Semitic, then nothing is anti-Semitic, and we no longer can make distinctions. »

Cotler also says anti-Zionism is not always racist. « I think it’s too simplistic to say that anti-Zionism, per se, is anti-Semitic, » he said. « It may cross the line into being anti-Semitic where it ends up by saying, ‘Israel has no right to exist’, or ‘the Jewish people have no right to self determination’, or, that the Jewish people are not even a people. »

Cotler said efforts by activists in other countries to lay criminal charges against Israeli politicians and high-ranking military officials can be a legal tool, so long as it is not pursued against Israelis alone. « That’s fine, that was the principal that Israel invoked for why it prosecuted Adolf Eichmann, » he said.

« But where people single out only Israeli nationals and apply only to them the principal of universal jurisdiction … and you’re not initiating any such processes against anybody else in a world in which many war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide are being committed – then you have to question whether this is not the singling out of Israeli nationals for selective and discriminatory treatment. »

Cotler said that if activists also target others than just Israelis on the same charges, it can lend their moves credibility.

« Some of the same people may also want to try [former U.S. Secretary of State] Henry Kissinger and [former British Prime Minister] Tony Blair [for war crimes], okay? And then you can say, ‘Okay, I don’t like what they’re doing, but they want to try them all,' » he said.

Voir encore:

Former Canadian Minister of Justice Cotler: ‘Calling Israel an Apartheid State is Not Antisemitic’
Antony Lerman

06/07/2011

Professor Irwin Cotler, the former Canadian Minister of Justice and Chairman of the Inter-Parliamentary Commission for Combatting Antisemitism, recently told Ha’aretz journalist David Sheen:

‘You can criticize an Israeli policy or action as having been not only a violation of human rights and humanitarian law but also, you could even say it was a war crime,’ the former Canadian justice minister said. ‘It may be, as I say, distasteful to see that, or witness that, but I don’t regard that as being anti-Semitic content. I think that that’s part of what is called rigorous criticism and discourse.’

‘Where you say that Israel is an apartheid state, even then – that to me is, it’s distasteful, but it’s still within the boundaries of argument’.
Cotler’s remarks seem to have been received in relative silence by the blogosphere and others who comment regularly on antisemitism. This is curious to say the least given that Cotler is probably the most significant and influential international figure in the propagation of the concept of the ‘new antisemitism’, a key example of which is calling Israel an ‘apartheid state’. That what Cotler now says is a fundamental change in his position is clear from his past articles and speeches. In an ‘Alert Paper’, New Anti-Jewishness, written for the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute and published in November 2002, Cotler gave examples of ‘new antisemitism’ under 13 headings. Under the third, ‘Ideological antisemitism’, he wrote:

This finds expression not only in the ‘Zionism is Racism’ indictment – and the singling out of Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people and Israel’s ideological raison d’être, for discriminatory treatment – but the further criminal indictment of Israel as ‘an apartheid state,’ and the calling for the dismantling of this ‘apartheid state’ – a euphemism for Israel’s destruction.
Although he has never said that all critiques of Zionism are antisemitic, Cotler has avoided foregrounding this view. But in the Ha’aretz interview he is clearly keen to redress the balance. He says:

I think we’ve got to set up certain boundaries of where it does cross the line, because I’m one of those who believes strongly, not only in free speech, but also in rigorous debate, and discussion, and dialectic, and the like. If you say too easily that everything is anti-Semitic, then nothing is anti-Semitic, and we no longer can make distinctions . . .

I think it’s too simplistic to say that anti-Zionism, per se, is anti-Semitic. It may cross the line into being anti-Semitic where it ends up by saying, ‘Israel has no right to exist’, or ‘the Jewish people have no right to self determination’, or, that the Jewish people are not even a people.
I can imagine that many who have rightly seen the Canadian MP and law professor as the standard bearer for exposing the ‘new antisemitism’, and have lauded him for coining the phrase ‘Israel is the Jew among the nations’, will be bitterly disappointed by this change of mind. And at the moment they are keeping quiet about it.

But it comes at a very significant moment in the context of developments in the UK in relation to controversies surrounding definitions of antisemitism. Just during the last week a challenge has been mounted by the celebrity lawyer Anthony Julius, on behalf of Ronnie Fraser, against the University and Colleges Union for ‘institutional antisemitism’, following the Union’s highly controversial decision to reject the ‘working definition’ of antisemitism drawn up by the now superseded European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC). More or less immediately after the vote at the annual congress of the UCU, the establishment bodies of the UK Jewish community, such as the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council and the Zionist Federation, went into overdrive as they started a campaign to label the UCU as institutionally racist and demand that the Equality and Human Rights Commission investigate. They have received significant backing from politicians. And when the Communities Secretary Eric Pickles, wrote an op-ed for the Jewish Chronicle, in which he attacked the UCU, this was taken as governmental support for the organized Jewish community’s stand. Lambasting the union for ‘boycotting visits by Israeli academics for a number of years’, Pickles argues that it’s not interested in securing freedom of speech but rather in silencing dissenting opinion. Various UCU decisions have ‘left many Jewish academics and students uneasy’.

When seen in this context, the latest resolution is in fact sending out a chilling message. It says that Jewish academics and students who perceive that they are being harassed or bullied should understand that they will be held to a different standard. It says that they should expect to be fair game for invective, and learn to live with feeling more vulnerable. Little wonder that the UCU has already seen many members of the Jewish faith, other faiths and none, vote with their feet and leave.
Julius’s letter to General Secretary Sally Hunt setting out UCU member Ronnie Fraser’s case against the UCU is written in the strongest terms. It accuses the union of breaches of the Equality Act 2010, threatens that unless a series of demands by Fraser are met – including the abrogation of the resolution rejecting the EUMC ‘working definition’ and a ‘commitment to sponsor a programme (for a minimum of ten years . . . ) educating academics concerning the dangers of anti-Semitism, with special reference to the relationship between anti-Semitism and what now passes for “anti-Zionism” ‘ – Fraser will make an Equality Act claim to the Employment Tribunal.

The letter is full of bombast and ridiculous hyperbole, and in places is just factually incorrect, but my concern here is not to analyse or critique the entire text. Rather, I simply want to draw attention to the fact that in two paragraphs listing the causes for Fraser’s complaint – i.e. the evidence of institutional antisemitism – the first item in each is the constant ‘anti-Israel boycott resolutions’, and it’s clear that the issue of boycott is a central bone of contention.

Whatever position you hold on boycotting Israel as a means of bringing pressure to bear on it to fulfil its international legal obligations, end the occupation and so on – and I have always opposed boycotting as a means of achieving this – it’s difficult to regard boycotting Israel as a priori antisemitic. Professor David Newman of Ben Gurion University, who spent two years in the UK as the Israeli universities’ official coordinator of the campaign against the academic boycott, was adamant in remarks he made before finishing this assignment that it was both wrong and counterproductive to fight the boycott proposals on the grounds that they are antisemitic. If it reaches the point where the UCU had to defend itself against charges of institutional antisemitism at a tribunal, citing Professor Newman alone would be a strong defence.

Now that Professor Cotler has so publicly concurred with David Newman, UCU have an even stronger voice to use in their defence. It wouldn’t surprise me if Julius tried to use Professor Newman’s often strong criticisms of the Israeli government and his very dovish position on Israel-Palestine peace as a way of discrediting his view on boycott, notwithstanding the incontrovertible fact that Newman is a Zionist, heart and soul. But such a tactic would be impossible to use against Professor Cotler whose record as a defender of the Israeli status quo is impeccable and whose efforts to embed the concept of the ‘delegitimization’ of Israel in the international consciousness have been long-standing and sustained.

It’s true that Cotler says: ‘It’s where you say, because it’s an apartheid state, it has to be dismantled – then you crossed the line into a racist argument, or an anti-Jewish argument. ‘ In other words, that’s when call for boycott becomes antisemitic. But there are two problems with this argument. First, it would be extremely difficult to prove that the Union as a whole, in voting for boycotting Israel, is therefore saying Israel must be dismantled. Second, even if a handful of people in the Union do believe that boycott should lead to the dismantling of the Israeli state, however far-reaching or shocking such a view might be, it also cannot a priori be deemed antisemitic. If such people were arguing that the Israeli state should be dismantled in order to construct a single secular democratic state in which Jews and Palestinians, and anyone else living in the state, were fully equal, you might charge them with extreme naivety in believing that such a goal is attainable, but it would be grossly unfair to assume that they were advocating the proposal in order to implement an antisemitic agenda of exclusion, demonisation, dehumanisation and so on.

Of course, the Julius letter carries other alleged evidence of institutional antisemitism and I am not commenting on them at this point. As I wrote in an earlier post, I’m not in a position to judge whether the UCU is entirely devoid of institutional racism or antisemitism. I have no doubt that the Union may have behaved insensitively in some way, but I confess that it seems far-fetched to me that a charge of institutional antisemitism could be made to stick. Certainly, there is something about the bullying and aggressive tone of Anthony Julius’s letter that suggests he is simply trying to humiliate the UCU, frighten it into making redress, rather than demonstrating a serious determination to take the matter to a tribunal. But I would not take this for granted for one minute.

Voir enfin:

Making the world ‘Judenstaatrein’

New anti-Semitism discriminates against the Jewish people’s right to live as an equal nation.

Irwin Cotler
The Jerusalem Post
February 22, 2009

 

Some 125 parliamentarians gathered together last week for the historic founding conference of the Interparliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism (ICCA), brought together by a new sophisticated, globalizing, virulent and even lethal anti-Semitism reminiscent of the atmospherics of the 1930s, and without parallel or precedent since the end of World War II. The new anti-Jewishness overlaps with classical anti-Semitism but is distinguishable from it. It found early juridical, and even institutional, expression in the UN’s « Zionism is racism » resolution – which the late US senator Daniel Moynihan said « gave the abomination of anti-Semitism the appearance of international legal sanction » – but has gone dramatically beyond it. This new anti-Semitism almost needs a new vocabulary to define it; however, it can best be identified using a rights-based juridical perspective. In a word, classical or traditional anti-Semitism is the discrimination against, denial of or assault upon the rights of Jews to live as equal members of whatever host society they inhabit. The new anti-Semitism involves the discrimination against the right of the Jewish people to live as an equal member of the family of nations – the denial of and assault upon the Jewish people’s right even to live – with Israel as the « collective Jew among the nations. » As the closing « London Declaration » of the ICCA conference affirmed: « We are alarmed at the resurrection of the old language of prejudice and its modern manifestations – in rhetoric and political action – against Jews, Jewish belief and practice and the State of Israel. » Observing the complex intersections between the old and the new anti-Semitism, and the impact of the new on the old, Per Ahlmark, former leader of the Swedish Liberal Party and deputy prime minister of Sweden, pithily concluded: « Compared to most previous anti-Jewish outbreaks, this [new anti-Semitism] is often less directed against individual Jews. It attacks primarily the collective Jews, the State of Israel. And then such attacks start a chain reaction of assaults on individual Jews and Jewish institutions… In the past, the most dangerous anti-Semites were those who wanted to make the world Judenrein, ‘free of Jews.’ Today, the most dangerous anti-Semites might be those who want to make the world Judenstaatrein, ‘free of a Jewish state.' »

Genocidal Anti-Semitism

The first modality of the new anti-Semitism – and the most lethal type – is what I would call genocidal anti-Semitism. This is not a term that I use lightly or easily. In particular, I am referring to the Genocide Convention’s prohibition against the « direct and public incitement to genocide. » If anti-Semitism is the most enduring of hatreds and genocide is the most horrific of crimes, then the convergence of this genocidal intent embedded in anti-Semitic ideology is the most toxic of combinations. There are three manifestations of this genocidal anti-Semitism. The first is the state-sanctioned – indeed state-orchestrated – genocidal anti-Semitism of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran, dramatized by the parading in the streets of Teheran of a Shihab-3 missile draped in the emblem « wipe Israel off the Map, » while demonizing both the State of Israel as a « cancerous tumor to be excised » and the Jewish people as « evil incarnate. » A second manifestation of this genocidal anti-Semitism is in the covenants and charters, platforms and policies of such terrorist movements and militias as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah and al-Qaida, which not only call for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews wherever they may be, but also for the perpetration of acts of terror in furtherance of that objective. The third manifestation of this genocidal anti-Semitism is the religious fatwas or execution writs, where these genocidal calls in mosques and media are held out as religious obligations – where Jews and Judaism are characterized as the perfidious enemy of Islam, and Israel becomes the Salmon Rushdie of the nations. In a word, Israel is the only state in the world – and the Jews the only people in the world – that are the object of a standing set of threats by governmental, religious and terrorist bodies seeking their destruction. The London Declaration – again in a significant clarion call – recognized that « where there is incitement to genocide signatories [to the Genocide Convention] automatically have an obligation to act. » This promise must now be acted upon.

Ideological Anti-Semitism

Ideological anti-Semitism is a much more sophisticated and arguably a more pernicious expression of the new anti-Semitism. It finds expression not in any genocidal incitement against Jews and Israel, or overt racist denial of the Jewish people and Israel’s right to be; rather, ideological anti-Semitism disguises itself as part of the struggle against racism. The first manifestation of this ideological anti-Semitism was its institutional and juridical anchorage in the « Zionism is racism » resolution at the UN. Notwithstanding the fact that the there was a formal repeal of this resolution, Zionism as racism remains alive and well in the global arena, particularly in the campus cultures of North America and Europe, as confirmed by the recent British All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism. The second manifestation is the indictment of Israel as an apartheid state. This involves more than the simple indictment; it also involves the call for the dismantling of Israel as an apartheid state as evidenced by the events at the 2001 UN World Conference against Racism in Durban. The third manifestation of ideological anti-Semitism involves the characterization of Israel not only as an apartheid state – and one that must be dismantled as part of the struggle against racism – but as a Nazi one. And so it is then that Israel is delegitimized, if not demonized, by the ascription to it of the two most scurrilous indictments of 20th-century racism – Nazism and apartheid – the embodiment of all evil. These very labels of Zionism and Israel as « racist, apartheid and Nazi » supply the criminal indictment. No further debate is required. The conviction that this triple racism warrants the dismantling of Israel as a moral obligation has been secured. For who would deny that a « racist, apartheid, Nazi » state should not have any right to exist today? What is more, this characterization allows for terrorist « resistance » to be deemed justifiable – after all, such a situation is portrayed as nothing other than occupation et résistance, where resistance against a racist, apartheid, Nazi occupying state is legitimate, if not mandatory.

Legalized Anti-Semitism

If ideological anti-Semitism seeks to mask itself under the banner of anti-racism, legalized anti-Semitism is even more sophisticated and insidious. Here, anti-Semitism simultaneously seeks to mask itself under the banner of human rights, to invoke the authority of international law and to operate under the protective cover of the UN. In a word – and in an inversion of human rights, language and law – the singling out of Israel and the Jewish people for differential and discriminatory treatment in the international arena is « legalized. » But one example of legalized anti-Semitism occurred annually for more than 35 years at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. This influential body consistently began its annual session with Israel being the only country singled out for country-specific indictment – even before the deliberations started – the whole in breach of the UN’s own procedures and principles. In this Alice in Wonderland situation, the conviction and sentence were pronounced even before the hearings commenced. Some 30 percent of all the resolutions passed at the commission were indictments of Israel. After the commission was replaced in June 2006 by the UN Human Rights Council, the new body proceeded to condemn one member state – Israel – in 80% of its 25 country-specific resolutions, while the major human rights violators of our time enjoyed exculpatory immunity. Indeed, five special sessions, two fact-finding missions and a high level commission of inquiry have been devoted to a single purpose: the singling out of Israel. This week’s ICCA conference and London Declaration unequivocally condemned this « legalized » anti-Semitism, calling out that « governments and the UN should resolve that never again will the institutions of the international community and the dialogue of nations states be abused to try to establish any legitimacy for anti-Semitism, including the singling out of Israel for discriminatory treatment in the international arena, and we will never witness – or be party to – another gathering like Durban in 2001. »

The Resurgence of Global Anti-Semitism: Evidentiary Data

The data unsurprisingly confirm that anti-Semitic incidents are very much on the rise. Still, the available figures only show half the picture – they demonstrate an increase in this old/new anti-Semitism by concentrating on the traditional anti-Semitic paradigm targeting individual Jews and Jewish institutions, while failing to consider the new anti-Semitic paradigm targeting Israel as the Jew among nations and the fallout from it for traditional anti-Semitism. But the rise in traditional anti-Semitism is bound up with the rise in the new anti-Semitism, insidiously buoyed by a climate receptive to attacks on Jews because of the attacks on the Jewish state. Indeed, reports illustrate both an upsurge in violence and related anti-Semitic crimes corresponding with the 2006 Second Lebanon War and the recent Israel-Hamas war, which delegates to the ICCA conference characterized as a « pandemic. »

Conclusion

It is this global escalation and intensification of anti-Semitism that underpins – indeed, necessitates – the establishment of the ICCA to confront and combat this oldest and most enduring of hatreds. Silence is not an option. The time has come not only to sound the alarm – but to act. For as history has taught us only too well: While it may begin with Jews, it does not end with Jews. Anti-Semitism is the canary in the mine shaft of evil, and it threatens us all.

The writer is a Canadian MP and former minister of justice and attorney-general. He is professor of law (on leave) at McGill University who has written extensively on matters of hate, racism and human rights. He is a co-founder of the Interparliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism with UK MP John Mann.

Voir par ailleurs:

Omar Barghouti: Light at the End of the Gaza-Ramallah Tunnel

Palestine chronicle
June 20, 2007

By: Omar Barghouti
Special to PalestineChronicle.com

When I saw some of the images coming out of the infighting in Gaza last week, I suppressed my anguish and steaming anger, recalling the wise, almost prophetic, words of the great Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, who wrote:

“The central problem is this: How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation? Only as they discover themselves to be ‘hosts’ of the oppressor can they contribute to the midwifery of their liberating pedagogy. As long as they live in the duality in which to be is to be like, and to be like is to be like the oppressor, this contribution is impossible. The pedagogy of the oppressed is an instrument for their critical discovery that both they and their oppressors are manifestations of dehumanization.”

Apparently, neither of the two warring factions succeeded in transcending the being “like the oppressor” part.

The lightening success of Hamas in forcefully taking over the supposed symbols of Palestinian power in Gaza cannot and ought not obscure the fact that, given the overbearing presence of Israel’s military occupation, the bloody clash between the Islamist group and its secular counterpart, Fatah, and irrespective of motives, has descended into a feud between two slaves fighting over the crumbs thrown to them, whenever they behave, by their common colonial master.

There is no doubt that a faction within Fatah — overtly funded, trained and steered by the US and Israel — is the primary suspect behind the flare-up of this bloody internecine strife, which many observers view as a thinly veiled attempt to destabilize Hamas’s democratically-elected government, coercing it into accepting Israeli dictates that it had so far balked from. Furthermore, any decent legal expert will readily admit that the so-called “emergency government,” declared by the Palestinian Authority chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, in response to Hamas’s take-over in Gaza, violates several articles in the Basic Law, the equivalent of the PA’s constitution.

While the corruption, lawlessness, profiteering and even betrayal of sections of Fatah have been known and well documented for some time now, the brutal, reckless and in some cases criminal tactics used by armed groups within Hamas were fresh reminders to neutral bystanders who were willing to give the group the benefit of the doubt that it, too, contains a strong, power-hungry faction that is eager to sacrifice principles and human rights to reach its political objectives. Hamas cannot be exonerated from the accusation that, by participating in the legislative and municipal elections according to laws and parameters set by the Oslo agreements, it has already contributed to legitimizing the products of those agreements and forsaken its claim to being a resistance movement that is primarily dedicated to realizing the main tenets of the Palestinian national program of liberation and self-determination. On top of that, and unlike the far more sophisticated and responsible Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas, in the last year and a half of ruling at various levels, has revealed its inherent tendency, like all Islamist movements, to impose its exclusionary ideological and social order, and to dismiss and whenever possible suppress diverse views and cultural outlooks that conflict with that order.

In the short term, the political vacuum that will inevitably result from the growing rift between Ramallah and Gaza and the steady collapse of the PA structures and remaining authority on the ground is most likely to be filled by an all-out Israeli reoccupation of the entire West Bank and Gaza. This would announce the official death of the so-called Oslo peace process, which actually collapsed long ago under the weight of Israel’s incessantly expanding colonies, apartheid wall — declared illegal by the International Court of Justice — and intricate apparatus of oppression and humiliation of the Palestinians under its control.

Such a scenario may either lead to threatening the very survival of the Palestinian national movement and the completion of the well-underway disintegration Palestinian society or trigger a renaissance of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. For the latter to occur, however, two difficult but realistic conditions must be met: first, Palestinian structural democratization and political reform and resetting Palestinian national priorities; and second, a critical review and revamping of the Palestinian resistance strategy, both from moral and pragmatic perspectives. Both are urgently called for, to realign the Palestinian struggle with the international social movement and to put the question of Palestine back on the world’s agenda as essentially a morally and politically justifiable and viable liberation struggle that can — again — capture the imagination and support of progressives and freedom lovers the world over.

In order to counter Israel’s dual strategy of, on the one hand, fragmenting, ghettoizing, and dispossessing Palestinians, and, on the other hand, reducing the conflict to a dispute over a partial set of Palestinian rights, the PLO must be resuscitated and remodeled to embody the claims, creative energies, and national frameworks of the three main segments of the Palestinian people: Palestinians in the OPT, Palestinian refugees, and Palestinian citizens of Israel. The PLO’s grassroots organizations need to be rebuilt from the bottom up with mass participation, and they must be ruled by unfettered democracy and proportional representation. This process must entail a well-planned transfer of power from the withering PA back to a rejuvenated PLO, including the entire spectrum of the Palestinian political movement.

As to resistance strategies, one cannot and should not strictly separate means from ends. If the struggle for freedom in Algeria, Northern Ireland and South Africa taught us anything, it is this fact. Irrespective of the right of Palestinians to resist foreign occupation by all means, as granted in international law, we have a moral duty to avoid tactics that indiscriminately target innocent civilians and inevitably corrupt our own humanity. Concurrently, and with full deference to the first principle, we have a political obligation to select methods that maximize our gains. Given the ongoing nihilistic abuse and utter futility of Palestinian armed resistance, the uniquely harsh geo-political context of the Palestinian resistance movement, and the de facto fragmentation of the Palestinian people and isolation of its resistance core from potential sources of supply and logistical support, civil resistance that has the potential of engaging and mobilizing the Palestinian grassroots seems not only morally but also pragmatically preferable.

The young Palestinian campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, modeled after the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, has already shown ample evidence that it has the potential of unifying Palestinians and international solidarity movements in a resistance strategy that is moral, effective and sustainable. In the last few years alone, many mainstream and influential groups and institutions have heeded Palestinian boycott calls and started to consider or apply diverse forms of effective pressure on Israel. These include the British University and College Union (UCU); Aosdana, the Irish state-sponsored academy of artists; the Church of England; the Presbyterian Church (USA); top British architects led by Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine (APJP); the National Union of Journalists in the UK; the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU); the South African Council of Churches; the Canadian Union of Public Employees in Ontario; and dozens of celebrated authors, artists and intellectuals led by John Berger, among many others.

The intensification of Israel’s colonial and racist oppression of the Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, with unprecedented impunity was the main trigger for the spreading boycott. With its wanton destruction of Palestinian infrastructure, willful killing of civilians, particularly children, apartheid wall, Jews-only colonies and roads, incessant confiscation of land and water resources, and horrific denial of freedom of movement to millions under occupation, Israel has shown the international community its total disregard to international law and fundamental human rights.

This latest dose of American — Israeli-inspired — “constructive chaos” in the occupied Palestinian territory may well wreak havoc on US-Israeli policy in the region. With the imminent dissipation of the illusion that a national Palestinian sovereignty can be established under the overall colonial hegemony of Israel, many Palestinians are now seriously questioning the wisdom of the two-state mantra and considering to repose their plight as one for equal humanity and full emancipation, within the framework of a unitary, democratic state solution in historic Palestine. After almost three decades of “searing into the consciousness” of Palestinians that only a two-state solution can deliver any of their demands, the US and Israel are harvesting what they sowed: the collapse of any semblance of independence and integrity of the PA — which was all along charged with relieving Israel’s colonial burdens vs. the inhabitants of the occupied West Bank and Gaza — and the mounting Palestinian discontent with, if not yet revolt against, the game of unilateral Palestinian compromise leading only to insatiable Israeli demands for further compromise, with the simultaneous loss of land, resources, freedoms and the bleak — and real — prospects of social breakdown.

The demise of the two-state solution should not be mourned. Besides having passed its expiry date, it was never a moral solution to start with. In the best-case scenario, if UN resolution 242 were meticulously implemented, it would have addressed most of the legitimate rights of less than a third of the Palestinian people over less than a fifth of their ancestral land. More than two thirds of the Palestinians, refugees plus the Palestinian citizens of Israel, have been maliciously and shortsightedly expunged out of the definition of the Palestinians.

It is now clearer than ever that the two-state solution — other than being only a disguise for continued Israeli occupation and a mechanism to permanently divide the people of Palestine into three disconnected segments — was primarily intended to induce Palestinians to give up the inalienable right of their refugees to return to their homes and lands from which they were ethnically cleansed by Zionists during the 1948 Nakba.

A secular, democratic state solution is increasingly being perceived by Palestinians and people of conscience around the world as the moral alternative to Israeli apartheid and colonial rule. Such a solution, which promises unequivocal equality in citizenship, as well as individual and communal rights, both to Palestinians (refugees included) and to Israeli Jews, is the most appropriate for ethically reconciling the ostensibly irreconcilable: the inalienable, UN-sanctioned rights of the indigenous people of Palestine to self-determination, repatriation, and equality in accordance with international law and the acquired and internationally recognized rights of Israeli Jews to coexist in the land of Palestine — as equals, not colonial masters.

-A regular contributor to PalestineChronicle.com, Omar Barghouti is an independent Palestinian political analyst.

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