Boycott Israel (part 2)

Here's the [url=http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2009/01/international-writers-and-scholars... appeal[/u][/url] for an academic and cultural boycott:

We stand in support of the indigenous Palestinian people in Gaza, who are fighting for their survival against one of the most brutal uses of state power in both this century and the last.

We condemn Israel’s recent (December 2008/ January 2009) breaches of international law in the Gaza Strip, which include the bombing of densely-populated neighborhoods, illegal deployment of the chemical white phosphorous, and attacks on schools, ambulances, relief agencies, hospitals, universities, and places of worship. We condemn Israel’s restriction of access to media and aid workers.

We reject as false Israel’s characterization of its military attacks on Gaza as retaliation. Israel’s latest assault on Gaza is part of its longtime racist jurisprudence against its indigenous Palestinian population, during which the Israeli state has systematically dispossessed, starved, tortured, and economically exploited the Palestinian people.

We reject as untrue the Israeli government’s claims that the Palestinians use civilians as human shields, and that Hamas is an irredeemable terrorist organization. Without endorsing its platforms or philosophy, we recognize Hamas as a democratically elected ruling party. We do not endorse the regime of any existing Arab state, and call for the upholding of internationally mandated human rights and democratic elections in all Arab states.

We call upon our fellow writers and academics in the United States to question discourses that justify and rationalize injustice, and to address Israeli assaults on civilians in Gaza as one of the most important moral issues of our time.

We call upon institutions of higher education in the U.S. to cut ties with Israeli academic institutions, dissolve study abroad programs in Israel, and divest institutional funds from Israeli companies, using the 1980s boycott against apartheid South Africa as a model.

We call on all people of conscience to join us in boycotting Israeli products and institutions until a just, democratic state for all residents of Palestine/Israel comes into existence.

Mohammed Abed
Elmaz Abinader
Diana Abu-Jaber
Ali Abunimah
Opal Palmer Adisa
Deborah Al-Najjar
Evelyn Azeeza Alsultany
Amina Baraka
Amiri Baraka
George Bisharat
Sherwin Bitsui
Breyten Breytenbach
Van Brock
Hayan Charara
Allison Hedge Coke
Lara Deeb
Vicente Diaz
Marilyn Hacker
Mechthild Hart
Sam Hamill
Randa Jarrar
Fady Joudah
Mohja Kahf
Rima Najjar Kapitan
Persis Karim
J. Kehaulani Kauanui
Haunani Kay-Trask
David Lloyd
Sunaina Maira
Nur Masalha
Khaled Mattawa
Daniel AbdalHayy Moore
Aileen Moreton-Robinson
Nadine Naber
Marcy Newman
Viet Nguyen
Simon J. Ortiz
Vijay Prashad
Steven Salaita
Therese Saliba
Sarita See
Deema Shehabi
Matthew Shenoda
Naomi Shihab Nye
Magid Shihade
Vandana Shiva
Noenoe Silva
Andrea Smith
Ahdaf Soueif
Ghada Talhami
Frank X. Walker
Robert Warrior

Are you applauding this, unionist? I find it appalling that a fucking tennis match is not even safe because of the antionality of some players.

A couple weeks back, a tennis tournament in Dubai barred an Israeli player from entering the country to compete solely based on her nationality. Thankfully, decent people like Andy Roddick refused to play in the tournament and the Tennis Network (that I subscribe to) refsued to broadcast it despite the millions in ad dollars they would lose. The tournament will be dropped from the tour next year. Glad to see my tennis community once again standing for what's right.

Or who knows, catchfire? Maybe city buses or pizza parlors or yeshivas full of students? What's your point? Because the Israeli government engages in objectionable actions, it's acceptable to discriminate against an israeli woman solely because of her nationality?

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Because the Israeli government engages in objectionable actions, it's acceptable to discriminate against an israeli woman solely because of her nationality?

Well, that's kind of the point of a boycott.

ETA: also, what does your allusions to Palestinian acts of resistance have to do with an anti-Israel protest in Malmö?

Again, the issue is the comparison to the boycott imposed against South Africa.

 Lets make this clear, there were two boycott's against South Africa. One, and official one sanctioned by the CW and the UN, and another one, practiced by the non-governmental sector, and private individuals, and the impact of these "civil" boycott's varied depending on the country, and individuals who concerned citizens deemed to be representing South Africa, were defintely made the target of anti-Apartheid activists.

Further, the extent of these civil boycotts included direct action and civil disturbances, aimed at directly preventing organizers of public events from supporting and promoting South African individuals. The arguement that there is some kind of clear distinction between individuals representing a country officially, and those who "just happen" to hold Israeli citizenship is "arguable" at the very extreme extent of prevarication to the extent where such an arguement could also be made about "official" representatives, and is therefore obviously tendentious.

Star Spangled Canadian wrote:

2) by referring to acts which are clearly murder as part of the Palestinian "resistance", you ARE passing judgment on them. Is it really worth debating whether entering a yeshiva with a gun and shooting as many students as possible as they sat and studied is an act of "resistance"? If Paul bernardo or Clifford Olson portrayed their atrocities as 'resistance' would you withhold "passing judgment' on them? What gets "complicated" about condemning walking into a school and shooting people? Are you willing to "pass judgment" on the shooter at the Montreal Massacre? Virginia Tech? Columbine? Are these "complicated acts of resitance" or "cold-blooded murder"?

Those persons are not "officially" representing Palestinians, they just "happen" to be Palestinians.

Cueball wrote:

Those persons are not "officially" representing Palestinians, they just "happen" to be Palestinians.

Exactly. So if a tournament tried to ban a Palestinian athlete because people of the same nationality committed atrocities it would be entirely inappropriate. Also, yes, they are not acting "as palestinians" anymore than paul bernardo was acting "as a canadian". people who committ appalling acts should never get the moral cover of participating in some sort of "resistance' as a way to excuse murder or have people "withold judgment" from their actions.

al-Qa'bong wrote:

Do those who get so worked up about a boycott of a tennis match become equally upset knowing that Israel is imposing an embargo on, well, FOOD, on Gaza?

No one is suggesting that not being allowed to compete in a tennis tournament is the greatest injsutice in the history of the world. But it's injsutice nonetheless. When African American baseball players were barred from the major leagues and consigned to the "negro leagues" there were certainly greater examples of racial discrimination. Not being allowed to be a professional baseball player was hardly the WORST thing that people faced. But it was still utterly indefensible and appalling that people should be excluded and marginalized and treated as "other' in such a way and decent people were still compelled to speak out against it.

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No one is suggesting that not being allowed to compete in a tennis tournament is the greatest injsutice in the history of the world. But it's injsutice nonetheless.

You obviously don't see the connexion between boycotting Israel and trying to end the oppression of Palestinians.

I suppose if you insist on seeing Israelis as the exclusive eternal victims, there isn't much to say that will change your attitude.

Thanks for the reminder about what products are made in Israel, SS Canadian. Keep up the good work, I appreciate it.

I didn't know about Intel's Israeli connexion until a few months ago.  I looked all over my PC and don't see one of those "Intel Inside" stickers, which was a relief.   I do know that I'll keep my eye out for Intel content the next time I have to buy a computer.

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Well, msot would indicate that their nuclear weapons were provided by the USA and paid for by taxpayers, of which I am one. Should I quit my job and give up my income so as not to pay taxes and contribute foreign military aid to Israel?

It would be a lot to expect Americans would suddenly become that selfless but it would be nice if they would try complaining to their elected reperesentatives about their financing of illegal occupation and apartheid.  But waiting for Americans to do the right thing could take a very long time, their government was notoriously slow when it came to acting against Apartheid South Africa as well, so the BDS campaign is the best way to move forward for now.

The Israelis own Google?  Geez, there's more to this ZOG stuff than meets the eye.  Is "Google" code for "ZOGgle" or something?

Unionist wrote:

[size=20]Do you support isolating Israel from the world community until it abides by U.N. resolutions?[/size]

Sure, but I (and would hope other people would) differentiate between ISRAEL and ISRAELIS. So, yes, I have no issue with isolating the political leadership of Israel (particularly if, as expected, we get a Likud govt supported by yisrael beteinu), pressuring them on their policies, cutting off foreign and military aid or excluding them from certain international groups until they change tehir behaviour. However, I would never endorse discrimination against INDIVIDUALS based on their country of citizenship - whether these individuals are tennis players, university professors or whatever. I'd also even be pretty weary about banning Israeli 'institutions' - whether they be a soccer team or a team of researchers from a state university - as soccer and most research have nothing to do with military aggression.

Step 1: Cut teh bullshit, isolate the wackos from the movement and don't do anything that could be even remotely construed as being based on hating Jews or anything else that's gonna cost you support from the vast majority of "mainstream, reasonable" Canadians. So, no targetting individuals based on country of origin. No rallies where you yell at people to 'go back to the oven', no chasing Jews around university campuses and forcing them to barricade themselves in the Hillel lounge, no waving Hamas flags, no anti-apartheid posters where you indicate that someone is jewish and/or israeli by a crude caricature of a guy with a hooked nose that could have come from der Strumer.

In a previous discussion on this topic, I compared the anti-israel movement with the Ontario Coalition Agaisnt Poverty. Now, OCAP has a lot of good and reasonable goals that many people can get behind - namely taking action to help people in poverty. it's less their GOALS than their TACTICS that ahve turned them into a amrginalized group that nobody takes seriously. I mean, I support msot of their goals. But I don't particualrly want to get involved with a group that marches through my parents neighbourhood, branding the residents as "scum" and yelling at people for trying to enjoy a drink in a restaurant.

Step 2: Recognize that the movement isn't gonna reach critical mass overnight and develop a longer-term strategy based on actually making reasonable arguments and building broad support. Pick reasonable, intelligent spokespeople and actually go about trying to educate people in an intellectual and honest manner. Build relationships with elected officials based on mutual respect so that you actually get a seat at a table (hint: calling them 'whores' doesn't help).

Step 3: Be patient. Change doesn't happen overnight but jsutice usually prevails in the end.

Star Spangled Canadian wrote:

Step 1: Cut teh bullshit, isolate the wackos from the movement and don't do anything that could be even remotely construed as being based on hating Jews or anything else that's gonna cost you support from the vast majority of "mainstream, reasonable" Canadians. So, no targetting individuals based on country of origin. No rallies where you yell at people to 'go back to the oven', no chasing Jews around university campuses and forcing them to barricade themselves in the Hillel lounge, no waving Hamas flags, no anti-apartheid posters where you indicate that someone is jewish and/or israeli by a crude caricature of a guy with a hooked nose that could have come from der Strumer.

Been tried already. The response was to make any critcism of Israel anti-semitic by definition and define it that way in dictionary.

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What has priority: that a person is not barred from playing a game or that Palestinians are not barred from living in peace and dignity? Does justice for Peer, the individual, take precedence over the fate of an entire people? Peer has an opportunity, few people are so meaningfully presented in life, to sacrifice her love of playing tennis to bring attention to the plight of an oppressed people. Her silence about the plight of Gazans and her right to play tennis speak loudly....

What is a fundamental principle that favors the tennis playing rights of a woman while a people are slaughtered, even though she is not the slaughterer or that athletes from a nation that is a serial violator of international laws, practices open racism, carries out slow-motion genocide, and commits wanton violations of human rights with impunity are prevented from playing to stop the war crimes?

[url=http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2009/02/when-sports-trump-human-rights/][c... Petersen[/u][/color][/url]

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[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/16/sports/tennis/16araton.html][color=med... New York Times[/u][/color][/url] and Shahar Peer both weep at the denial of any Israeli to compete in just [i]one[/i] tournament. [b]But does the Times and this self-entitled tennis player have any sympathy for those Palestinians denied to play in [i]any[/i] tournament by Israel? Where is the Times’ self-righteous indignation for those Palestinians denied permission to leave the West Bank to they can compete? Zionist fanatics even launched an effort to prohibit the Palestinians from marching in the Olympics under their flag.[/b] They, the Zionist zealots, argued that allowing the Palestinians to march under their flag would be an endorsement by the International Olympic Committee of Palestinian sovereignty. At least Shahar Peer gets to compete somewhere. The Times’ sports columnist calls for a Dubai boycott; would he ever call for an Israel boycott because Israel doesn’t allows [i]dozens[/i] of Palestinians the right to compete not only in overseas games but in Israeli games? No, of course they wouldn’t. For the Times, their sympathy extends only to one people due to their racism against Arabs.

[url=http://marcovilla.instablogs.com/entry/the-ny-times-israeli-athlete-and-...

Yes, it is ONE tennis tournament but so what? it's like saying that Arthur Ashe should ahve just shut the fuck up about not being allowed into SOME tournaments in Jim Crow states when he could still play OTHER tournaments...it's a red herring. Discrimiantion is discrimination, whether based on race or country of origin and whether something relatively benign like being barred from a tennis tournament or soemthing more serious like having your ability to leave your country restricted. I mean, before Canada legalized gay marriage,  it wouldn't have been right to tell gay people "oh quit whining. you get the same benefits, even if it means being treated as second class. hell, gays in Iran are HANGED! jsut take your seat at the back of the bus and be thankful you have a seat at all."

That might be an identifiable Syndrome, Unionist.