<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Occupied Palestine | فلسطين]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[occupiedpalestine]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/author/hajarhajar/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD&nbsp;BOYCOTT?]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p class="byline"> Posted  			by desertpeace			at PS.HADNEWS.COMon Monday, 			February 7, 			2011 			at 8:54 am. </p>
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<div><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;"><em>Apathy  allows Israelis to live in comfort  behind iron walls while remaining  immune to the occupation and innoculated from  its horrors. The culture  of apathy allows them to watch the news and let out a  groan of concern  without thinking seriously about political  engagement.</em></span></div>
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<p><abbr title="Sunday, February 6th, 2011, 10:15 am"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">Posted by Joseph Dana</span></abbr></p>
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<h1><span style="color:#808000;font-family:Verdana;font-size:large;">Who is afraid of BDS?</span></h1>
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<p><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">This piece is co-written with </span><a href="http://www.maxblumenthal.com/"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">Max Blumenthal</span></a></em></p>
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<p><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">The day after the American pop star  Macy Gray announced controversial plans </span><a href="http://maxblumenthal.com/2011/01/israelis-target-macy-gray-with-racist-diatribes-after-she-agrees-to-play-tel-aviv-and-who-are-the-assholes/"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">to perform</span></a><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;"> in Tel Aviv  in March, we sat down for a drink at Pua, a bar nestled in  the heart of one of  Jaffa’s most gentrified neighborhoods. When the  waitress, a sociable  20-something resident of the city’s burgeoning  young Jewish community informed  us of a new brand of beer the  restaurant was carrying, we wondered based on  rumors we had heard if it  was brewed in a settlement in the Golan Heights. The  waitress, who was  clearly offended, vehemently denied that it was “a settlement  beer.”  She reassured us that the owner of the restaurant was “a real Tel Aviv   type guy,” and as such, “would not carry such a product.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">We were  confused. “What exactly is a Tel Aviv type  guy?” we asked her. When she  returned to our table with two European beers, we  asked for more  information about the owner and a conversation began. She  informed us  that the owner of the bar ‘just keeps to himself and his friends in  Tel  Aviv’. She told us that he was not interested in politics and just  wanted to  live his life. We asked about her ideas on politics and the  occupation. “I am a  photographer. I used to go to Bil’in but it is  violent.” She continued, “Now I  just spend time with my friends and try  to be a good person. I can’t take trying  to change anything anymore.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">When asked for  her opinion on BDS, her response was  short and quick: “You can’t fight  evil with evil.” She insisted that every  boycott in history was wrong.  We pressed her gently on the issue of boycotts  (what about MLK’s  Montgomery Bus Boycott, or the boycott of apartheid South  Africa?) but  it was clear that she was unwilling to go deep into the issue. She  knew  about the Occupation, the settlements, the racism that was rising like a   tidal wave all around her, but she had deliberately cloistered herself  inside a  quaint </span><a href="http://972mag.com/simple-and-shocking-israeli-opinions-on-egypt/"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">European-style</span></a><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;"> bar and  Tel Aviv’s cosmopolitan lifestyle. Perhaps she could have  contributed to the  fight for a real democracy in Israel and justice for  Palestinians living under  occupation, but she had surrendered to the  culture of apathy sanctioned by an  entitled elite.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">We began to  understand the power of the cultural  boycott in disrupting the apathy  that pervades middle class, urban Israeli  society. Apathy allows  Israelis to live in comfort behind iron walls while  remaining immune to  the occupation and innoculated from its horrors. The culture  of apathy  allows them to watch the news and let out a groan of concern without   thinking seriously about political engagement. In the case of the  waitress at  Pua, her apathy enabled her to witness the brutal military  repression of  legitimate political protest in the West Bank, only to  return home to Tel Aviv  and ignore her culpability.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">The cultural  boycott forces Israelis to deal with  Israel’s behavior towards  Palestinians by targeting them where it counts most:  in the heart of  their affluent comfort zones. The extreme right of Lieberman and  the  settlement movement must be confronted and exposed, but they are only  the  most extreme representation of an official ideology of racism  towards  Palestinians and the Arab world. They have grown and  metastisized through  fervent political activity, charisma and demagogy,  while the “</span><a href="http://972mag.com/the-myth-of-good-israel-vs-bad-israel/"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">Good Israel</span></a><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">”  of Tel  Aviv sits by impassively, and even cynically, watching the  waves roll in while  their society goes over the brink. It is the  culture of apathy that supplies oil  to the Occupation Machine.</span></p>
<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZzO-9zxNb8&amp;feature=player_embedded"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;"> </span></a><span style="text-align:center;display:block;"><a href="http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/whos-afraid-of-the-big-bad-boycott/"><img src="https://i1.wp.com/img.youtube.com/vi/LZzO-9zxNb8/2.jpg" alt="" /></a></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">Many Ashkenazi  citizens of Israel have a second  passport, allowing them to travel to  and receive benefits from Western  countries. They have developed an  easy escape valve from the oppressive and  violent manifestations of  Jewish nationalism. Meanwhile, Palestinians live under  a matrix of  control devised inside US and European-funded Israeli universities  and  high tech research centers. An elaborate network of walls, electrified   fences, biometric scanning devices, predator drones and collaborator  networks  ensures that each aspect of their lives is dominated by the  Occupation. Because  Palestinian residents of Jerusalem are forbidden  from living where they choose  with West Bank spouses, even their love  lives are occupied. How would our  waitress at Pua react if her life was  subject to such crushing  limitations?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">We have often  heard the argument that Macy Gray and  other artists thinking about  boycotting should perform in Tel Aviv and Ramallah.  This commonly held  idea not only reinforces concepts of segregation between Jews  and  Palestinians, it misses the point of the Palestinian boycott call  entirely.  The cultural boycott is designed to undermine the  normalization of Israeli  society. Palestinians do not necessarily want  to see rock shows in Ramallah,  they want to bring an end to the  occupation. The 170 Palestinian civil society  organizations who crafted  the BDS call concluded that the most realistic  non-violent means for  ending the occupation was to force Israelis to live with  the full  responsibility of their actions. This was one of the ideas behind the   boycott of Apartheid South Africa and one of the reasons why  organizations like  the </span><a href="http://www.southafricanartistsagainstapartheid.com/2011/01/macy-gray-campaign.html"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">South African Artists Against  Apartheid</span></a><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;"> now work to achieve the same  goals in Israel.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">My colleague and peer, Noam Shiezaf, published </span><a href="http://972mag.com/selling-tickets-to-macy-gray-in-ramallah/"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">a thoughtful piece</span></a><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;"> on  this site arguing that Macy Gray should request that a certain  number of tickets  be sold to Palestinians in the West Bank for her Tel  Aviv performance. The  Palestinians would buy the tickets and then  Israel would refuse their entrance  to Tel Aviv. This would then provide  a suitable subtext for Macy Gray to cancel  her show.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">The idea is  clever but raises an important  question: why would Macy Gray need to  create a subtext to cancel? Doesn’t the  longest military occupation in  history provide a suitable enough reason to  boycott? Furthermore,  Israel would be able to correctly point out that  Palestinians from the  West Bank, by and large, are not allowed to enter Tel Aviv  due to the  sovereign laws of entry and exit to the State of Israel. Thus, the   stunt would accomplish little more than reinforcing the notion that a   militarized and radicalized Israeli society is perfectly kosher. And by   circumventing the substance of the Palestinian BDS call, it allows  critics to  paint the cultural boycott as a form of collective  punishment.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">Too much of  the commentary about BDS addresses the  movement in a vacuum. The fact  is, BDS is an integral part of Palestinian  non-violent tactics. Quite  simply, BDS is the globalization of Palestinian  non-violent action  against Israel’s occupation. So why do certain Jewish  organizations  from the United States and Israeli liberal Zionists lend  rhetorical  support to the joint nonviolent struggle in Sheikh Jarrah and   elsewhere, while demonizing the call for BDS as borderline anti-Semitic  and  beyond the pale of reasonable people? Would the leaders of these  organizations  sit with the Palestinian families forcibly evicted from  their homes in Sheikh  Jarrah and tell them that their tactics are  illegitimate?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">It is easy to  wash your hands of moral  responsibility by participating in noble but  ultimately doomed battles against  the Occupation Machine. Confronting  your own personal responsibility in allowing  the crisis to reach such a  terrible juncture is much harder, if not impossible,  for too many.  Perhaps the hardest step for the left-wing of the Jewish  Establishment  is ceding control of the debate while Palestinians assume the lead  in  their own struggle for freedom.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">If the  international community and especially the  American Jewish community is  unwilling to allow Palestinians a global form of  nonviolent resistance  against Israel’s occupation, what is left for the  Palestinians to do?  If violence is out of the question – it is certainly a  terrible option  for everyone — should Palestinians simply allow the Occupation  to sweep  them away like dust?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">This is the question posed by the Palestinian  national poet Mahmoud Darwish in his famous poem, “</span><a href="http://ageofjahiliyah.wordpress.com/2007/05/11/earth-presses-against-us-by-mahmoud-darwish/"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">The Earth Presses Against  Us</span></a><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">.”  “Where should we go after the last  border? Where should birds fly  after the last sky?” he asked. BDS may not be a  panacea, but it at  least ensures that for the Palestinians a horizon darkened by   occupation can be extended until a just solution comes into view.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;">Written <a href="http://972mag.com/bds-is-the-best-and-last-non-violent-recourse/">FOR </a></span><a href="http://972mag.com/bds-is-the-best-and-last-non-violent-recourse/"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;"> </span></a></p>
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<p>Filed under: <a href="http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/category/activism/">Activism</a>, <a href="http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/category/apartheid/">Apartheid</a>, <a href="http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/category/boycott-israel/">Boycott Israel</a>, <a href="http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/category/entertainment/">Entertainment</a>, <a href="http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/category/israel/">Israel</a></div>
<p><a href="http://ps.hadnews.com/who%e2%80%99s-afraid-of-the-big-bad-boycott.htm">WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD BOYCOTT? at PS.HADNEWS.COM</a>.</p>
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