Jews Joining Palestinian Boycott of Israel
By: Peter Beinart
Israel's barbarous
treatment of Palestinians is making many "progressive" US Jews
join the Palestinian "BDS" movement (Boycott, Divestment &
Sanctions.) Here, CUNY Professor Peter Beinart predicts this fissure will
become the focus of American Jewish politics.
It may be
time for Mossad to rally US Jews with some "anti Semitic" false
flag attacks. Nothing like a pogrom to keep the
"lesser brethren" in line.
The news that [billionaire GOP funder] Sheldon Adelson will this weekend
host a secret conference for Jewish groups aimed at countering the boycott,
divestment and sanctions movement is yet more evidence that
"pro-Israel" activism in the United States is entering a new
phase...
BDS is growing because the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process has died. For six years, Netanyahu has
publicly rejected the idea of a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines, with
land swaps.
Most Palestinians have lost any
faith that negotiations with Israel can bring them a state anytime soon. And
Mahmoud Abbas' failure to end the occupation, or stand for election, has
wrecked his legitimacy among Palestinian activists.
The BDS movement has entered this
breach. It offers Palestinian activists a way to bypass their divided, corrupt,
ineffectual politicians by taking the struggle against Israel into their own
hands. Its three planks -- an end to Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel and the return of
Palestinian refugees--offers something for each of the three main Palestinian
populations (those in the occupied territories, those inside Israel proper and
refugees) and thus unites a divided people.
As a
nonviolent movement that speaks in the language of human rights and
international law rather than Islamic theology, the movement also attracts
progressive allies who would never join a movement defined by suicide bombings
and the Hamas charter.
Already, BDS is changing the
landscape of organized American Jewish life. First, it is making Washington
less important, which may make AIPAC less important. AIPAC's power rests on the
relations between its members and members of Congress. But the BDS movement
bypasses Congress in favor of universities, liberal Christian groups and trade
unions, where it can gain a more sympathetic ear.
The response has been a gold rush
among American Jewish groups seeking to lead the anti-BDS charge. In 2010, the
Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council on Public Affairs
created the Israel Action Network to combat Israel's
"delegitimization." As the Forward notes, AIPAC, the
Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee have all
recently "set up operations geared at students" largely to do the
same thing. In Washington, AIPAC still dominates. But in these new arenas where
the BDS struggle will be fought, AIPAC is just one Jewish group among many.
The second consequence of the rise
of BDS will be to increase the prominence of Jewish Voices for Peace.
Right now, many establishment-minded American Jews don't know what JVP is. In
their mind, J Street still represents American Jewry's left flank. But as the
only significant American Jewish group to support BDS, Jewish Voices for
Peace will grow in prominence as the movement itself does.
Already, non-Jewish BDS activists
cite JVP as evidence that American Jews do not monolithically oppose their
cause. The more that mainstream American Jews hear this, the more enraged at
JVP they will become. How exactly that rage will express itself, I don't know.
But as JVP grows, its battles with the American Jewish establishment will make
those of J Street look tame.
Finally, BDS will spark a growing
debate among American Jews about Zionism itself. American Jews are used to
thinking of Palestinians as residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. (By
using the phrase "Arab Israelis," American Jews even delude
themselves that the Arabs living inside the 1967 lines are not really
Palestinian.) But many of the Palestinians active in BDS live in the West or
hail from Israel proper or both. That means that for them personally, the
rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel and the rights of Palestinian refugees
are at least as important as the rights of Palestinians in the occupied
territories.
Ending Israel's occupation of the
West Bank and Gaza doesn't threaten its character as a Jewish state. To the
contrary, it may help preserve it, which is why many centrist American Jews
support the two-state solution. But as the BDS movement grows more prominent,
it will spark more debate about Palestinian citizens and Palestinians refugees,
both subjects that expose the tension between Israel's democratic character and
its policies -- in immigration and public life -- that privilege Jews.
Inside the
American Jewish establishment, the first response to the BDS movement's
challenge to Zionism has been to cry anti-Semitism. But that response conceals
a dirty little secret: that many "pro-Israel" activists haven't
thought much about the tension between Jewish statehood and liberal democracy,
and thus don't really know how to justify Zionism to an audience of skeptical,
progressive non-Jews.
Justifying
Zionism to liberals is not an impossible task. But neither is it intellectually
or morally simple. And it will require establishment-minded American Jews to
defend principles they have long taken for granted. Of all the BDS movement's
consequences for American Jews, that may prove the most significant of all.
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