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Debating BDS in midair

Mar 26, 2013
Dalit Baum

When getting unto a long flight like my flight from the U.S. back home to Tel Aviv, there is always some tension before meeting the person sitting next to me, the person I am about to spend a day and a night with in a cramped double seat. This is one of the most intimate settings imaginable, tenderly repositioning a stranger as he dozes off and starts drooling on your shoulder…

The guy who pushed by me to the window seat seemed like a really nice young Israeli man. He immediately exclaimed to me – hey, I know you! Where do I know you from? And I, quite sure, said I did not know him, never saw him before. He asked for my name, and when I answered, his eyes glazed over and he looked around the plane and focused on his bags and suddenly the silence stood between us. I think this was when my headache started.
He recognized me from his work for the Reut Institute, where he had written reports about a grassroots movement I am associated with: the BDS [Boycott, Divest and Sanction] movement. I did not want to know more, and I certainly did not want to answer any questions by someone associated with the Israeli institutional net cast out to investigate and contain political dissent.
As an Israeli feminist activist, I have been working for years with the Coalition of Women for Peace to expose transnational corporations complicit in violations of international law and human rights in the Israeli occupation. During that time, grassroots corporate accountability campaigns of peaceful noncooperation have succeeded where nothing else would in transforming public debate around these crimes and, in some cases, in actually changing corporate policies in the occupied West Bank. With this growing success for BDS, the Israeli government has launched a coordinated attack on organizations and individuals associated with these initiatives, using anything from threatening to close down university departments,legislating severe laws to limit free speech and civil society in Israel to imprisoning Palestinian advocates for BDS and costing Israeli advocates their jobs.
My accidental seat mate turned out to be Eran Shayshon, [1] whose reports and recommendations were central to the strategy adopted by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as the Israeli military that formed a unit to track activists around the world. The Reut Institute is an Israeli think tank founded by ex-members of the Israeli security forces, with easy access from its inception to the highest levels of decision makers and intelligence bodies in Israel. The institute provides its services free of charge to Israeli state bodies. The Coalition of Women for Peace lists Reut in its report “All Out War: Israel against Democracy” as one of the groups participating in the orchestrated state attack on basic democratic freedoms in Israel: “Organizations such as the Reut Institute, who advise the upper echelons of power and define the human rights community as well as the peace movements as a threat to Israel, constitute a significant danger, especially since their positions are echoed in statements made by senior Israeli officials.” Shayshon agrees with the main tenet of the report: democracy in Israel is under a severe attack. Reut, he claims, is an “apolitical, Zionist” institute, and should never have been listed there along with “Fascist groups such as Im Tirzu.” I catch myself almost springing to the defense of Im Tirzu: it might use a more vocal and aggressive tone, but it too presents itself as an “apolitical, Zionist” organization.
The liberal-centrist façade is central both to the way Reut presents itself and to the plan it has devised for the state attack on critical organizations and individuals. In its recommendations to the Israeli state, Reut emphasizes “the progressive case for Israel” – appealing to progressive audiences through rebranding, embracing liberal Zionist critics of Israel while promoting strict bans or “red lines” such as the Jewish Federation’s funding guidelines in the Bay Area. A Powerpoint presentation devised for the Herzeliya Conference in 2010 uses images of Israeli author Amos Oz and singer Idan Reichel, both progressive cultural icons, and an early article by Shayshon also uses the fabrication of “homosexuals … forced to flee from Gaza to Tel Aviv” to sway progressive readers.  Rebranding and banning, Reut’s two main strategies were fully adopted by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the networks of Hasbara in the U.S.
Setting clear “red lines” for the discussion, Shayshon tells me, is actually a tactic devised for “widening the tent” and allowing more critical voices into the mainstream discussion in Jewish communities. He tells me of a panel discussion they have recently organized against BDS, inviting J Street. “They are crazy about us” he claims, “We gave them a way into the Jewish mainstream.” But I know as well as anyone reading Reut publications that the “wide tent” was never the motivation but the tactic proposed as part of the strategic plan to “delegitimize the delegitimizers.” The recommendations also included “attack and sabotage” on “network catalysts” who, in this military language, mean activists like you and me. Shayshon tells me that the “sabotage” language was revised in his report because “it was misunderstood”. As seen from their 2011 victory report where Reut takes credit for the Irvine 11, for the threats against funders of the Electronic Intifada website and other state actions of silencing by intimidation, the Reut recommendations were fully understood and implemented.
I tell him of my friend Rae, whose participation in a Jewish cultural event almost led to its banishment from the Jewish library, just because she worked for an organization that led a boycott campaign against Ahava, a settlement product. He seems confused. “BDS,” he states, “does not differentiate between Israel and settlements”. He heard someone explain that in a BDS conference in London. He thinks “the movement” should come out with clear objectives which are acceptable to him. I find myself trying to explain to him the concept of a grassroots movement, the idea of change from below, and how noncooperation targets our own complicity and not anyone else. I am not sure I believe his confusion – it is so much easier to debate the text of the Palestinian Call for BDS then it is to respond to it as the oppressed people’s call for action.
It dawns on me that Shayshon does not really think of Rae or me as one of the “catalyst” targets for “sabotage.” Or is he just being polite to my face? He describes other Jewish activists as well intentioned, but naïve, “promoting an agenda which is set behind the scenes by other people, with completely different goals.” In the Re’ut papers this is termed “the red-green alliance.” He thinks of the tactics of using divestment and boycotts as if it was a global organization, somehow covertly led by a few gentile anti-Semites, mostly Palestinians, with a plan to “destroy Israel,” followed by misinformed and confused progressives. All the Jews he mentions are of the second category. How to explain a joint movement for equal rights for all against the backdrop of Israeli security thinking, which has always prided itself on ethnic profiling and separation?
Shayshon is on his way back from Toronto, Canada, with a colleague that sits in another row (is that intentional? a moment of paranoia…). They are coming back from presenting their new report to the Jewish community organizations about connections between the Toronto Jewish community and the local Israeli immigrant community. As Jews drift away from identification with Israel, it is important to think of ways to recruit the Israeli diaspora. “’Peoplehood’ – that’s the new buzz word” he says. I wonder why Toronto Jews would hire an Israeli think tank to investigate their own community. But then I find out that the newly appointed Israeli Consul General in Toronto, DJ Schneeweiss, was the coordinator of the anti-BDS strategy department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and I marvel how this too turned out to be a profitable industry.
If I have ever thought I could withstand an interrogation, I just learned that all it took was a boring flight, outrageous statements by the person sitting next to me, and off I go into dogged arguments and fiery speeches. Two hours into the flight and into the argument, the Canadian flight attendant spilled a tower of half-filled glasses into my lap, and I suddenly realized I had a ponderous migraine. At last, I let my new friend fall asleep on my shoulder. With the announcement of morning, hours later, I was still awake, my mind racing. I have tried to write down what I had learned from the conversation, and as he woke up our conversation resumed, in a different, softer tone.
We understand politics in a different way, and I find his so hard to follow. It seems to me that in his world view, public opinion is mostly irrelevant, and change is change of policy, the manipulation and application of state power. He tried to explain his “apolitical” institute’s very clear political agenda: they advocate unilateral Israeli steps to end the military control in the West Bank and recognize a reduced Palestinian “state” in areas behind the Wall.
I did not get any sleep at night and his vision suddenly makes me realize how tired I am. The logic of separation and control presented as a peace plan; fragmented Palestinian Bantustans presented as self-determination; the erasure of Palestinians from the negotiations as well as from the landscape. Earlier he told me how offended he had been when he heard Ben White in London explain that liberal Zionism was a contradiction in terms. He is a proud liberal Zionist, Shayshon says and I concede: liberalism has never looked so sad.
As we land in Tel Aviv, Shayshon disappears and we hardly say goodbye. I confidently walk past two passengers who were pulled aside for questioning by plainclothes security guards, past the biometric ID systems installed by HP in the airport as well as in military checkpoints in the West Bank, and enter the familiar welcoming hall.
Notes
[1] Originally I have intended to leave his name out, until he published his own account of our encounter at http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/19/sitting-beside-a-bds-leader.html

‘Talk is cheap’ — Jon Stewart weighs in on Obama trip
Mar 26, 2013
Annie Robbins

Jon Stewart was really funny last night, and then he wasn’t. On the first night of Passover, after giving Obama some matzoh advice, he lambasted him, mocking the president’s Jerusalem speech and his appeal to Israelis for a Palestinian state.

An American president sketching out a path to an Israeli state, a Palestinian state. Why did no one think of this sooner?

Haaretz explains:

He went on to show footage of former U.S. presidents making similar assertions, including Geroge W. Bush Jr. in 2007, Bill Clinton in 1998 and George W Bush Sr. in 1991, before shouting out “We are f***ng powerless,” and pulling out a one dollar bill with a talking George Washington also repeating the two-state message.
“The point is this: Talk is cheap, and we have done that for years, so call me when there is actually some diplomatic progress,” Stewart said

I loved the talking money!
Alas, in the following segment, Stewart’s humor comes at the expense of nine human rights activists, 8 Turkish and 1 American, whose lives were brutally cut short by an Israeli attack on board the Mavi Marmara in 2010. Prior to Stewart’s humorous exchange with comedian Barack Atah Adonai he played a news clip that characterized Netanyahu’s apology to Turkey as “mistakes that lead to the death of activists on a flotilla.” The execution style killings that led to their deaths were not merely a matter of unintentional “mistakes.” A lost opportunity indeed.  Instead of picking up on this sinister twist of logic Stewart completely brushed off the killings and offered his audience a startled deer in the headlights expression with subsequent remarks suggesting no one had ever even heard of events on board the Mavi Marmara.  “Wait, what? Obama brokered a peace agreement between Israel and Turkey, two countries no one knew was fighting?”
We knew Jon, and yes it is still a big deal.

(Hat tip Mondoweiss commenter Citizen)

 

Two readings for Passover
Mar 26, 2013
Philip Weiss
Many Jews who come to this site are struggling with how to reconcile the majestic liberation story of Passover with Jewish sovereignty in Israel and Palestine and its blind consecration by American Jewish organizations. As someone who has strived, in my own little way, to reconcile living religious ritual with devotion to the human rights of those now condemned to bondage, Palestinians, I’d offer these two readings, provided to me by Jewish friends.
First, from Laurie Arbeiter and the other creative folks at We Will Not Be Silent, a variation on the central teaching of the Passover, the Four Questions:

Four questions
Four questions

And last night at my Seder, I was privileged to read aloud from the late poet Adrienne Rich, her poem Collaborations, Stanza III (published in 2006), addressed to Israeli poets:

Do you understand why I want your voice?
At the seder table it’s said
you reclined and said nothing
now in the month of Elul is your throat so dry
your dreams so stony
you wake with their grit in your mouth?
[italic] There was a beautiful life here once
Our enemies poisoned it? [end italic]

Make a list of what’s lost but don’t
call it a poem
that’s for the scriptors of nostalgia
bent to their copying-desks
Make a list of what you love well
Twist it insert it
into a bottle of old Roman glass
go to the edge of the sea
at Haifa where the refugee ships lurched in
and the ships of deportation wrenched away

I learned that Rich’s poem was a source of controversy and anguish among Israelis. And when she died last year, Electronic Intifada honored her. Ben Doherty:

During her activist career, Adrienne Rich was involved with New Jewish Agenda which broke Zionist taboos around Palestinian existence and right to speak. In 2009, she endorsed the Palestinian call for academic and cultural boycott of Israel despite having reservations…

Freed but not free: Gaza welcomes detainee and former hunger striker Ayman Sharawna
Mar 26, 2013 10:46 am | Joe Catron

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GAZA, PALESTINE, March 25 – Hundreds rallied outside the International Committee of the Red Cross’ Gaza Strip headquarters this morning to welcome former Palestinian detainee and long-term hunger striker Ayman Sharawna. (Photo: Joe Catron)

Hundreds rallied outside the International Committee of the Red Cross’ Gaza Strip headquarters yesterday to welcome former Palestinian detainee and long-term hunger striker Ayman Sharawna.

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Gaza rally welcomes Ayman Sharawna March 25, 2013 (Photo: Joe Catron)

Sharawna, initially released after nine years of detention in the October 18, 2011 prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas, was recaptured by Israeli forces at his home in Hebron on January 31.

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Gaza rally welcomes Ayman Sharawna March 25, 2013 (Photo: Joe Catron)

Israeli military prosecutors demanded that Sharawna complete the remaining 28 years of his sentence based on the contents of a “secret administrative file.” On July 1, he launched an open hunger strike.

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Gaza rally welcomes Ayman Sharawna March 25, 2013 (Photo: Joe Catron)

Sharawna’s hunger strike ended on March 17 in a deal that saw Israel force him into the Gaza Strip for a term of ten years. Human rights organizations condemned his displacement as a war crime.

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Gaza rally welcomes Ayman Sharawna March 25, 2013 (Photo: Joe Catron)

“Israel is treating Gaza as the back prison for the occupied Palestinian territories by these practices,” said Sahar Francis, executive director of the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association.

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Gaza rally welcomes Ayman Sharawna March 25, 2013 (Photo: Joe Catron)
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Gaza rally welcomes Ayman Sharawna March 25, 2013 (Photo: Joe Catron)
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Gaza rally welcomes Ayman Sharawna March 25, 2013 (Photo: Joe Catron)

Apartheid, Bantustans and Obama’s empty words (Walt and Miller agree)
Mar 26, 2013
Philip Weiss
Obama’s visit has produced harmonic convergence in Aaron David Miller and Steve Walt. “Been There, Done That,” is Miller’s headline. “Empty Words” by Steve Walt, who says rhetoric doesn’t move leaders, power politics does, and Obama will never use the tools at his disposal to pressure Israel to end its current policy, apartheid and bantustans and colonialism:

He did not say that future American support for Israel would be conditional on its taking concrete steps to end the occupation and allow for the creation of a viable state (i.e. not just a bunch of vulnerable Bantustans)…
For realists like me, in short, halting a colonial enterprise that has been underway for over forty years will require a lot more than wise and well-intentioned words. Instead, it would require the exercise of power. Just as raw power eventually convinced most Palestinians that Israel’s creation was not going to be reversed, Israelis must come to realize that denying Palestinians a state of their own is going to have real consequences. Although Obama warned that the occupation was preventing Israel from gaining full acceptance in the world, he also made it clear that Israelis could count on the United States to insulate them as much as possible from the negative effects of their own choices. Even at the purely rhetorical level, in short, Obama’s eloquent words sent a decidedly mixed message.
Because power is more important than mere rhetoric, it won’t take long before Obama’s visit is just another memory. The settlements will keep expanding, East Jerusalem will be cut off from the rest of the West Bank, the Palestinians will remain stateless, and Israel will continue on its self-chosen path to apartheid. And in the end, Obama will have proven to be no better a friend to Israel or the Palestinians than any of his predecessors. All of them claimed to oppose the occupation, but none of them ever did a damn thing to end it. And one of Obama’s successors will eventually have to confront the cold fact that two states are no longer a realistic possibility. What will he or she say then?

Aaron David Miller writes that Obama’s trip has the feel of checking boxes; and nothing will eventuate. I wish Miller didn’t call Netanyahu “Bibi” even as he uses last names for everyone else. What’s that about?

Until we have a lot more information, it might be better to see the president’s inaugural visit to Israel as more about managing old business and checking boxes than as a determined leap into the wonderful world of two-state diplomacy..
If he pushes too hard on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, however, he may well run into open opposition and hostility. No matter how well this visit went, there are fundamental differences between Bibi and Obama on the core peace-process issues — particularly on territory and Jerusalem, where Obama is much closer to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Moreover unlike Iran, progress on the peace process could fracture Netanyahu’s own party, bring down his government, and set up another test of wills with the United States.
Obama knows the score, and has seen the movie. The glow in the aftermath of this reset will vanish quickly the harder he pushes Israel on the Palestinian issue. The real issue is this: Is the reset functional? Can Obama work toward a process that brings Netanyahu along without triggering a crisis, and still keep the Palestinians on board?
Right now, it seems like a circle that’s very hard to square.
Right now, the administration has no strategy — or at least not one that holds a lot of promise. The current approach seems to be pressing for negotiations that lead to a provisional Palestinian state, based on a tradeoff between security for Israel and sovereignty for the Palestinians. Borders first, so to speak — and then negotiation of a more general character on the identity issues, Jerusalem, and refugees.
I’m not critical of this approach, because frankly there doesn’t seem to be a much better one right now. But we’re deluding ourselves if we think it can work quickly, or perhaps at all. It’s a very pro-Israeli approach, in that it calls for direct talks without preconditions, says nothing on settlements, and doesn’t include a timeline to resolve the final status issues. And it really does presume an enormous amount of trust between Netanyahu and Abbas, which currently doesn’t exist.

Obama went to Israel to try to rescue the state from deepening isolation
Mar 26, 2013
Alex Kane

Obama and Netanyahu
President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during Obama’s visit to Israel (Photo: Associated Press/Carolyn Kaster)

The Obama administration’s creation of extremely low expectations prior to the president’s first trip to Israel and Palestine in office was a strategic gambit meant to make his trip look all the more good when he made some progress, albeit incremental, on a number of fronts. All of the admittedly meager deliverables Obama obtained and pushed for had one thing in mind: helping to break Israel out of its increasing political isolation in the Middle East, and the world more broadly. Whether this will actually work remains to be seen, but by most indications, Israel’s actions and political system will continue to isolate the country.
You can see the examples of political isolation in many places. Whether it’s the California divestment movement or the United Nations Human Rights Council approving a harsh report against illegal settlements, Israel’s loneliness continues—save for the United States always having its back.
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may recognize Israel’s political isolation is not beneficial, the continued strength of the Israeli economy and the discovery of natural gas off its shores will leave most of the Israeli political class comfortable no matter what the world thinks of them.
President Obama’s worldview—evidently a liberal Zionist one—leaves him uncomfortable with this state of affairs. But Obama’s personal worldview only has a small effect on what actions he takes; the institution of the presidency is much more important than his personal inclinations. And the U.S. elite he represents has a reason to be worried about Israeli isolation. This isolation deepens because of continued illegal and provocative actions. Those actions may lead to increased pressure on Israel from Palestinian protests and regional governments that are more susceptible to popular opinion than they were before the Arab Spring (though there is no Palestinian uprising coming in the near future for a variety of reasons). And those provocations in the region could make it difficult for a “stable” Middle East–friendly to American elite interests–to continue existing to the extent it does now. For all these reasons, Obama’s speech in Jerusalem was meant to sound the alarm about Israel’s regional isolation.
“Given the frustration in the international community, Israel must reverse an undertow of isolation. And given the march of technology, the only way to truly protect the Israeli people is through the absence of war,” Obama told the crowd of Israeli youth. “This truth is more pronounced given the changes sweeping the Arab World. I recognize that with the uncertainty in the region – people in the streets, changes in leadership, the rise of non-secular parties in politics –it is tempting to turn inward. But this is precisely the time to respond to the wave of revolution with a resolve for peace.”
These words came in a speech that promised unconditional American support, which helps boost the profits of weapons companies and is the easy political thing to do. But unconditional American support only means so much if the rest of the world continues to turn against you.
The biggest get on the anti-isolation front was the much-heralded Israeli-Turkish rapprochement. Obama also tried to make progress on the “peace process.” While it remains unlikely that a genuine “peace process” will emerge from Obama’s efforts, the semblance of movement towards one could help Israel out with its diplomatic relations with Europe and other countries in the Middle East.
Right before President Obama left Israel, a phone call from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was made to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. After the call concluded, Netanyahu’s office announced that he told Erdogan that Israel “regretted” the incidents on board the Mavi Marmara, the flotilla ship where Israel killed 9 people trying to get to Gaza, and that Turkey had accepted Netanyahu’s apology. Headlines beamed the news of Israeli-Turkish reconciliation around the world, and predictions of increasing Israeli ties to Turkey were made. But the devil remains in the details.
Erdogan has now said that the normalization of ties with Israel is predicated on the lifting of the Gaza blockade and the payment of compensation to the families of those killed by the Israeli Navy on the Mavi Marmara. Still, whether full normalization goes through between the two states, it is significant that Obama seemed to encourage Netanyahu into making the apology as the way for Israel to restore ties to Turkey.
These ties are important because, on a number of political issues, Israel needs Turkey as an ally in a region where it has none. Israel needs Turkey to help deal with the chaos in Syria, and closer Israeli cooperation with NATO, which Turkey has sought to block, is another prize that could come from Israeli-Turkish rapprochement.
So the Israeli-Turkish dance remains complicated. And getting the “peace process” back on track could be even more complicated.
Time and time again during the president’s trip, both Obama and Netanyahu emphasized the need to return to negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. The negotiations, in Obama’s worldview, will also help Israel break out of growing isolation, even if they won’t lead to a real agreement. Netanyahu knows this, and it’s why he agreed on the need for peace talks despite a right-wing coalition filled with settlers and their supporters.
The need for Netanyahu’s government to put on a nice face was driven home to me when I encountered Michael Oren, the American-born Israeli ambassador to the U.S., in the press room at the residence of Netanyahu in an upscale neighborhood in Jerusalem. After he was done giving an interview in Hebrew, I approached him and asked to speak with Oren. He was hesitant—Mondoweissis “not exactly friendly” to Israel, he told me, and he was worried how I would spin it—but he did briefly talk with me.
Asked about whether Israel’s right-wing pro-settler government would cause tensions with the U.S., he replied:

“The government’s committed to the peace process. There may be different ideas about how to proceed, but the government, the Israeli government, the way our democracy works, it’s a consensual form of government, there’s one government position…And the government is committed to finding a solution.”

The nod to the “peace process” and a “solution” is Oren’s attempt to tell the world that Israel wants peace, despite the fact that its actions say otherwise.

And the Palestinian Authority (PA), for its part, desperately wants to return to negotiations. Peace talks are all they have, as their economy remains in shambles and sentiment in the West Bank continues to turn away from Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. But the PA is caught between their wish to please their international benefactors and their people, who want no part of pointless negotiations.

So Obama came here to help jumpstart negotiations, and the U.S., led by Secretary of State John Kerry, is trying to coax the PA into talks. The unlocking of $500 million in aid to the West Bank government could be one way to do that. The Israeli government made a similar move yesterday when it resumed the regular transfer of tax revenues they collect on the PA’s behalf to Abbas’ government.

The peace talks, if they ever happen, will not go anywhere substantive. We can say that given their miserable history. But Obama sees them as important to breaking Israel out of its deepening political isolation.

And this was one reason why Obama came to Israel: to warn them that despite unconditional U.S. support, you have to make some moves that brighten up your image.

The Israeli settlers don’t care about this image. But Obama knows that if Israel is to weather the storm of revolution and a changing Europe that is now talking about sanctions (though for now, it is only talk), the facade of peace talks are important. A belligerent right-wing government in Israel will continue to do harm to the state’s political situation. But Obama came to help rescue the state from itself. The big problem for the Obama administration, though, is that the dominant political forces in Israel continue to dive deeper into the abyss of apartheid, and by consequence, isolation.

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