Waging Peace from Afar: Divestment and Israeli Occupation
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Photo via Flickr/samdaq (AT) hotmail.
When Israeli commandos launched their assault on the unarmed flotilla of ships carrying hundreds of humanitarian aid workers and 10,000 tons of supplies for the besieged Gaza Strip, killing at least nine activists and injuring scores more, part of the operation was “Made in the USA.”
Decades of uncritical U.S. financial, military, and diplomatic support has ensured that Israel’s military power—nuclear and conventional—remains unchallengeable. A U.S. pattern of using UN Security Council vetoes to protect Israel from accountability has ensured that Israel can essentially do whatever it likes with those U.S.-provided weapons, regardless of what U.S. or international laws may be broken.
Israel has long relied on the numerous U.S.-made and U.S.-financed Apache and Blackhawk war helicopters in its arsenal—it’s a good bet those were in use in the May 31st assault in international waters. Use of U.S.-provided weapons is severely limited by our own laws: The Arms Export Control Act (AECA) prohibits any recipient from using U.S. weapons except for security within its own borders, or for direct self-defense. And no amount of Israeli spin can make us believe that an attack by heavily-armed commandos jumping onto the decks of an unarmed civilian ship in international waters has anything to do with self-defense.
So yes—our tax dollars and our politicians’ decisions play a huge part in enabling not only the flotilla attack but Israel’s violations of human rights overall. But increasingly, across the country, people and organizations are standing up to say no to U.S. support for those policies of occupation and apartheid.
The main strategy is known as “BDS”—boycott, divestment, and sanctions. Based on the lessons of the South African anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s, BDS brings non-violent economic pressure to bear in order to end Israeli violations of international law. In 2005, a coalition of Palestinian civil society organizations issued a call for a global campaign of BDS. The call was based on the understanding that the Palestinian struggle for human rights, equality, and the enforcement of international law needed international support—and civil society organizations would have to step in, given that the traditional Palestinian leadership hadn’t created a strategy for mobilizing such support.
The strength of the BDS call was its recognition that while a unified global campaign was needed, conditions are different in every country. So in Europe, the focus began on individual boycotts of consumer goods produced in Israeli settlements. In countries like Brazil and India, the emphasis was on military sanctions, pressuring governments to stop buying Israeli armaments. And in the U.S., the initial focus was on divestment.
In fact, the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation, the largest coalition of organizations working on the issue, had been working on divestment even before the 2005 Palestinian call. The movement began in earnest following the 2003 death of Rachel Corrie, a young U.S. peace activist killed as she tried to block the demolition of a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip by Israeli troops. Corrie was run over by an armored bulldozer manufactured by Caterpillar, which became the first target of the divestment efforts.
Since that time, BDS work in the U.S. has increased dramatically. In addition to Caterpillar, the campaign is now targeting Motorola (the company’s Israeli affiliate provides special communications systems for Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank) and Ahava (a cosmetics company that uses mud from the Dead Sea, harming the fragile environment as well as expropriating Palestinian land).
Across the U.S., churches, university campuses, municipal governments, and many more institutions are debating divestment and boycott resolutions. The Presbyterian Church is debating how to include an anti-occupation approach within its socially responsible investment policies. On June 15, the Northern Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church voted to divest from three corporations that profit from the occupation of Palestine. And in spring 2010, Hampshire College became the first university to divest from companies supporting occupation—a moment of special resonance because Hampshire was also the first U.S. college to divest from South Africa in the 1980s. When the issue was debated in Berkeley’s student senate, more than 4,000 people mobilized to support divestment.
What can we learn from Israel's response to the death of Rachel Corrie?
The U.S. Campaign is also working to end U.S. military aid to Israel, calling for the enforcement of U.S. laws already prohibiting Israel’s illegal use of U.S. weapons. Really, it’s a call for sanctions from below. Who really thinks that giving $30 billion of our tax money in military aid to Israel—already militarily powerful and nuclear-armed—as promised by George Bush and now being implemented by President Obama over the next ten years, is a good use of those funds in this time of economic crisis? BDS is a strategic effort to change U.S. policy to support human rights, equality, and an end to the occupation rather than continued military build-up.
In the first 24 hours after the attack on the Gaza aid flotilla, the Obama administration limited itself to expressions of concern and regret for the loss of life, along with a polite request to Israel for “clarifications.” But maybe the international outcry that followed the attack, joined by the rising BDS movement in the U.S., will mark the beginning of a shift in U.S. policy.
In the first days and weeks after the flotilla attack, BDS actions across the United States took on new energy and achieved new results. In California, hundreds of activists formed a picket line at dawn at the Port of Oakland where an Israeli cargo ship waited, urging dock workers not to unload the ship in protest of the flotilla assault. Workers of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) refused to cross the picket line, a labor arbitrator immediately upheld their right to refuse to unload the ship, and the shipping company abandoned the effort. The ILWU workers joined counterparts in a number of other countries, including Sweden, South Africa, Norway, and Malaysia, who have all announced their refusal to unload Israeli ships.
The powerful example of the BDS movement that helped end apartheid in South Africa is a constant source of inspiration. Current BDS campaigns have learned key lessons and grounded much of their work in the accomplishments—and, indeed, the challenges and even failures—of that earlier, seminal version.
A generation ago, South African apartheid appeared to be an equally impossible-to-change political reality. Considering that history, is it so unlikely that Washington could tell Israel that we would rather keep those $30 billion here at home to create 600,000 new green union jobs, rather than support a foreign military force’s ability to kill humanitarian workers trying to break an illegal blockade in order to bring desperately needed supplies to a besieged population?
Phyllis Bennis wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a nationl, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Phyllis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and author of Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer. She serves on the steering committee of the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation.
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Israel is not like South Africa was
South Africa was a nation with a majority of native, dark skinned people and a minority of foreign invadors who conquered and repressed the majority with force, keeping them from reach of any institution of power. Israel has a wide majority Jewish population who have returned to their native land after being forced away and treated as second class citizens throughout the diaspora. Israel's Arab minority are free to own and run their own businesses, run their municipal affairs, educate their youth as they please, are encouraged, and supported in attending University, and reaching high level jobs, including police, and yes, membership in Israel's parliament, (excepting those who refuse to recognise the existence of Israel and collude with nations who are attacking Israel) which is supported by the fact that all Arabs and Jews in Israel are citizens. A large portion of Israel's Arabic speaking population (Bedouin and Druze) fought on Israel's side in the 1947-48 war, and continue to bravely defend Israel as soldiers and officers of Israel's army. There are also many Arabs in Israel who want to see the Jews leave, as a point of pride. They don't want to live in a "Jewish" state, and are free to leave if they want to.
South Africa was conquered by force. Israel was created in the UN by an overwhelming majority of nations, the only nations voting against the 1947 creation of Israel and Palestine being nations with Muslim majorities. According to this UN resolution, Israel was to be on land that was already inhabited by a majority of Jews or not inhabited by anyone. The Jews accepted the resolution and joyfully celebrated the long-dreamed of opportunity of sovereignty and self-determination, in a time when everywhere else (yes, also the USA and Canada) Jews were excluded. It is no irony that Jews were so widely involved in the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950's and 60's. The opportunity to have an option of a nation where we can be a sovereign people was a dream for many Jews for centuries. There was no proper place to do this other than on the Jewish ancestral homeland, towards where Jews all over the world have prayed for centuries, where Israel is now. Not all Arabs, but many extremists who saw a Jewish nation on land that was once Muslim as an insult to their prophet, attacked Israel on the day after the UN resolution. No one expected the out manned and out gunned Jews to survive this attack, but they not only survived, they defended themselves decisively enough that they gained a strong military advantage within the area of what is now Israel. Although Jewish leaders publicly announced that no Arab need to run for their life, Arabs were encouraged by leaders of Arab nations to become refugees, while they regroup and conquer Israel. Jewish leaders made it clear that no one is required to leave, but anyone who does leave, will not be able to return. Many stayed, and none were massacred. Those who have stayed continue to have a higher quality of life than those who have left. They are free to leave if they want to, but they don't.
It is sad that Palestinian sympathizers fail to hold Palestinians responsible for their extremists' behavior, which creates this situation. Another difference between Israel and apartheid S. Africa is that a boycott and divestment pressured S. African leaders to do the right thing and give the rights of citizenship to all of its residents. All of the residents of Israel already have the rights of citizenship. A boycott and divestment wouldn't choke Israel into submission and cause us to do what ignorant people see as the right thing. If we suddenly pull out of the West Bank, what happened in Gaza will also happen there, and if you thought that the war in Gaza was ugly, imagine a war where Israel has to defend every population center from attacks on civilians made by terrorists who shoot from behind women and children. You may think that Israeli withdrawal is the right thing, but we know who we are dealing with, and we know that the result will be horrible. Instead, we are trying to do what we started doing since we took the territories from our then aggressors, Egypt, Jordan and current aggressor, Syria. We invested in their leadership and their success. In 1967, until the 2000 intifada, the economy in the occupied territories was much better than under Jordanian, Syrian and Egyptian rule. Right before the 2000 intifada, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat what was basically complete withdrawal of the Israeli army and settlements from occupied territories, except for 2 small, defensively necessary areas, for which a land trade was offered. The resulting war that was called an intifada made almost every Israeli realize that the Palestinian people do not want peace. They want Israel. This puts Israelis in an unavoidable position of self-defense. The clamp down on the territories happened after this, as well as the collapse of the Jewish, Israeli peace movement. This is the truth as we know it. So, with that in mind, who is responsible?
And is the boycott and its one sided lies the responsible thing to do, when it would be much smarter instead to focus on giving small business loans and educational grants to moderate Palestinians, as a way to strengthen them, and perhaps weapons to help them defend themselves from the tyrannical and corrupt rule of Hamas and Fatah (both parties plot for the end of Israel and vie for control of Palestine). The USA and Europe give large sum grants to the corrupt leaders of Palestine and Israel, when small grants to individuals with realistic plans is a much more effective way to peacefully empower people. When the majority of Palestinians begin to feel that they have more to lose by wagin war on Israel (their business, their job...), than they have to gain by waging war, a real peace will be possible.