4/3/2016

On Israel-Palestine and BDS Those dedicated to the Palestinian cause should think carefully about the tactics they choose.

On Israel-Palestine and BDS: Those dedicated to the Palestinian

cause should think carefully about the tactics they choose.
Noam Chomsky
This article appeared in the July 21-28, 2014 edition of The Nation, July 2, 2014

The misery caused by Israels actions in the occupied territories has elicited serious concern
among at least some Israelis. One of the most outspoken, for many years, has been Gideon
Levy, a columnist for Haaretz, who writes that Israel should be condemned and punished for
creating insufferable life under occupation, [and] for the fact that a country that claims to
be among the enlightened nations continues abusing an entire people, day and night.
He is surely correct, and we should add something more: the United States should also be
condemned and punished for providing the decisive military, economic, diplomatic and even
ideological support for these crimes. So long as it continues to do so, there is little reason to
expect Israel to relent in its brutal policies.
The distinguished Israeli scholar Zeev Sternhell, reviewing the reactionary nationalist tide in
his country, writes that the occupation will continue, land will be confiscated from its
owners to expand the settlements, the Jordan Valley will be cleansed of Arabs, Arab
Jerusalem will be strangled by Jewish neighborhoods, and any act of robbery and foolishness
that serves Jewish expansion in the city will be welcomed by the High Court of Justice. The
road to South Africa has been paved and will not be blocked until the Western world presents
Israel with an unequivocal choice: Stop the annexation and dismantle most of the colonies
and the settler state, or be an outcast.
One crucial question is whether the United States will stop undermining the international
consensus, which favors a twostate settlement along the internationally recognized border
(the Green Line established in the 1949 ceasefire agreements), with guarantees for the
sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of all states in the area and their
right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries. That was the wording of a
resolution brought to the UN Security Council in January 1976 by Egypt, Syria and Jordan,
supported by the Arab statesand vetoed by the United States.
This was not the first time Washington had barred a peaceful diplomatic settlement. The
prize for that goes to Henry Kissinger, who supported Israels 1971 decision to reject a
https://chomsky.info/20140702/

1/7

4/3/2016

On Israel-Palestine and BDS Those dedicated to the Palestinian cause should think carefully about the tactics they choose.

settlement offered by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, choosing expansion over securitya
course that Israel has followed with US support ever since. Sometimes Washingtons position
becomes almost comical, as in February 2011, when the Obama administration vetoed a UN
resolution that supported official US policy: opposition to Israels settlement expansion,
which continues (also with US support) despite some whispers of disapproval.
It is not expansion of the huge settlement and infrastructure program (including the
separation wall) that is the issue, but rather its very existenceall of it illegal, as determined
by the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice, and recognized as such by
virtually the entire world apart from Israel and the United States since the presidency of
Ronald Reagan, who downgraded illegal to an obstacle to peace.
One way to punish Israel for its egregious crimes was initiated by the Israeli peace group Gush
Shalom in 1997: a boycott of settlement products. Such initiatives have been considerably
expanded since then. In June, the Presbyterian Church resolved to divest from three US
based multinationals involved in the occupation. The most farreaching success is the policy
directive of the European Union that forbids funding, cooperation, research awards or any
similar relationship with any Israeli entity that has direct or indirect links to the occupied
territories, where all settlements are illegal, as the EU declaration reiterates. Britain had
already directed retailers to distinguish between goods originating from Palestinian
producers and goods originating from illegal Israeli settlements.
Four years ago, Human Rights Watch called on Israel to abide by its international legal
obligation to remove the settlements and to end its blatantly discriminatory practices in
the occupied territories. HRW also called on the United States to suspend financing to Israel
in an amount equivalent to the costs of Israels spending in support of settlements, and to
verify that tax exemptions for organizations contributing to Israel are consistent with U.S.
obligations to ensure respect for international law, including prohibitions against
discrimination.
There have been a great many other boycott and divestment initiatives in the past decade,
occasionallybut not sufficientlyreaching to the crucial matter of US support for Israeli
crimes. Meanwhile, a BDS movement (calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions) has
been formed, often citing South African models; more accurately, the abbreviation should be
BD, since sanctions, or state actions, are not on the horizonone of the many significant
differences from South Africa.

https://chomsky.info/20140702/

2/7

4/3/2016

On Israel-Palestine and BDS Those dedicated to the Palestinian cause should think carefully about the tactics they choose.

The opening call of the BDS movement, by a group of Palestinian intellectuals in 2005,
demanded that Israel fully comply with international law by (1) Ending its occupation and
colonization of all Arab lands occupied in June 1967 and dismantling the Wall; (2) Recognizing
the fundamental rights of the ArabPalestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and (3)
Respecting, protecting, and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their
homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.
This call received considerable attention, and deservedly so. But if were concerned about
the fate of the victims, BD and other tactics have to be carefully thought through and
evaluated in terms of their likely consequences. The pursuit of (1) in the above list makes
good sense: it has a clear objective and is readily understood by its target audience in the
West, which is why the many initiatives guided by (1) have been quite successfulnot only in
punishing Israel, but also in stimulating other forms of opposition to the occupation and US
support for it.
However, this is not the case for (3). While there is nearuniversal international support for
(1), there is virtually no meaningful support for (3) beyond the BDS movement itself. Nor is
(3) dictated by international law. The text of UN General Assembly Resolution 194 is
conditional, and in any event it is a recommendation, without the legal force of the Security
Council resolutions that Israel regularly violates. Insistence on (3) is a virtual guarantee of
failure.
The only slim hope for realizing (3) in more than token numbers is if longerterm
developments lead to the erosion of the imperial borders imposed by France and Britain after
World War I, which, like similar borders, have no legitimacy. This could lead to a nostate
solutionthe optimal one, in my view, and in the real world no less plausible than the one
state solution that is commonly, but mistakenly, discussed as an alternative to the
international consensus.
The case for (2) is more ambiguous. There are prohibitions against discrimination in
international law, as HRW observes. But pursuit of (2) at once opens the door to the standard
glass house reaction: for example, if we boycott Tel Aviv University because Israel violates
human rights at home, then why not boycott Harvard because of far greater violations by the
United States? Predictably, initiatives focusing on (2) have been a nearuniform failure, and
will continue to be unless educational efforts reach the point of laying much more
groundwork in the public understanding for them, as was done in the case of South Africa.

https://chomsky.info/20140702/

3/7

4/3/2016

On Israel-Palestine and BDS Those dedicated to the Palestinian cause should think carefully about the tactics they choose.

Failed initiatives harm the victims doublyby shifting attention from their plight to irrelevant
issues (antiSemitism at Harvard, academic freedom, etc.), and by wasting current
opportunities to do something meaningful.
Concern for the victims dictates that in assessing tactics, we should be scrupulous in
recognizing what has succeeded or failed, and why. This has not always been the case
(Michael Neumann discusses one of many examples of this failure in the Winter 2014 issue of
the Journal of Palestine Studies). The same concern dictates that we must be scrupulous
about facts. Take the South African analogy, constantly cited in this context. It is a very
dubious one. Theres a reason why BDS tactics were used for decades against South Africa
while the current campaign against Israel is restricted to BD: in the former case, activism had
created such overwhelming international opposition to apartheid that individual states and
the UN had imposed sanctions decades before the 1980s, when BD tactics began to be used
extensively in the United States. By then, Congress was legislating sanctions and overriding
Reagans vetoes on the issue.
Years earlierby 1960global investors had already abandoned South Africa to such an extent
that its financial reserves were halved; although there was some recovery, the handwriting
was on the wall. In contrast, US investment is flowing into Israel. When Warren Buffett
bought an Israeli toolmaking firm for $2 billion last year, he described Israel as the most
promising country for investors outside the United States itself.
While there is, finally, a growing domestic opposition in the United States to Israeli crimes, it
does not remotely compare with the South African case. The necessary educational work has
not been done. Spokespeople for the BDS movement may believe they have attained their
South African moment, but that is far from accurate. And if tactics are to be effective,
they must be based on a realistic assessment of actual circumstances.
Much the same is true of the invocation of apartheid. Within Israel, discrimination against
nonJews is severe; the land laws are just the most extreme example. But it is not South
Africanstyle apartheid. In the occupied territories, the situation is far worse than it was in
South Africa, where the white nationalists needed the black population: it was the countrys
workforce, and as grotesque as the bantustans were, the nationalist government devoted
resources to sustaining and seeking international recognition for them. In sharp contrast,
Israel wants to rid itself of the Palestinian burden. The road ahead is not toward South Africa,
as commonly alleged, but toward something much worse.

https://chomsky.info/20140702/

4/7

4/3/2016

On Israel-Palestine and BDS Those dedicated to the Palestinian cause should think carefully about the tactics they choose.

Where that road leads is unfolding before our eyes. As Sternhell observes, Israel will continue
its current policies. It will maintain a vicious siege of Gaza, separating it from the West Bank,
as the United States and Israel have been doing ever since they accepted the Oslo Accords in
1993. Although Oslo declared Palestine to be a single territorial unit, in official Israeli
parlance the West Bank and Gaza have become two separate and different areas. As usual,
there are security pretexts, which collapse quickly upon examination.
In the West Bank, Israel will continue to take whatever it finds valuableland, water,
resourcesdispersing the limited Palestinian population while integrating these acquisitions
within a Greater Israel. This includes the vastly expanded Jerusalem that Israel annexed in
violation of Security Council orders; everything on the Israeli side of the illegal separation
wall; corridors to the east creating unviable Palestinian cantons; the Jordan Valley, where
Palestinians are being systematically expelled and Jewish settlements established; and huge
infrastructure projects linking all these acquisitions to Israel proper.
The road ahead leads not to South Africa, but rather to an increase in the proportion of Jews
in the Greater Israel that is being constructed. This is the realistic alternative to a twostate
settlement. There is no reason to expect Israel to accept a Palestinian population it does not
want.
John Kerry was bitterly condemned when he repeated the lamentcommon inside Israelthat
unless the Israelis accept some kind of twostate solution, their country will become an
apartheid state, ruling over a territory with an oppressed Palestinian majority and facing the
dreaded demographic problem: too many nonJews in a Jewish state. The proper criticism
is that this common belief is a mirage. As long as the United States supports Israels
expansionist policies, there is no reason to expect them to cease. Tactics have to be designed
accordingly.
However, there is one comparison to South Africa that is realisticand significant. In 1958,
South Africas foreign minister informed the US ambassador that it didnt much matter if
South Africa became a pariah state. The UN may harshly condemn South Africa, he said, but,
as the ambassador put it, what mattered perhaps more than all other votes put together
was that of [the] U.S. in view of its predominant position of leadership in [the] Western
world. For forty years, ever since it chose expansion over security, Israel has made
essentially the same judgment.
For South Africa, the calculation was fairly successful for a long time. In 1970, casting its
https://chomsky.info/20140702/

5/7

4/3/2016

On Israel-Palestine and BDS Those dedicated to the Palestinian cause should think carefully about the tactics they choose.

firstever veto of a Security Council resolution, the United States joined Britain to block
action against the racist regime of Southern Rhodesia, a move that was repeated in 1973.
Eventually, Washington became the UN veto champion by a wide margin, primarily in defense
of Israeli crimes. But by the 1980s, South Africas strategy was losing its efficacy. In 1987,
even Israelperhaps the only country then violating the arms embargo against South Africa
agreed to reduce its ties to avoid endangering relations with the U.S. Congress, the
director general of the Israeli foreign ministry reported. The concern was that Congress might
punish Israel for its violation of recent US law. In private, Israeli officials assured their South
African friends that the new sanctions would be mere window dressing. A few years later,
South Africas last supporters in Washington joined the world consensus, and the apartheid
regime soon collapsed.
In South Africa, a compromise was reached that was satisfactory to the countrys elites and
to US business interests: apartheid was ended, but the socioeconomic regime remained. In
effect, there would be some black faces in the limousines, but privilege and profit would not
be much affected. In Palestine, there is no similar compromise in prospect.
Another decisive factor in South Africa was Cuba. As Piero Gleijeses has demonstrated in his
masterful scholarly work, Cuban internationalism, which has no real analogue today, played a
leading role in ending apartheid and in the liberation of black Africa generally. There was
ample reason why Nelson Mandela visited Havana soon after his release from prison,
declaring: We come here with a sense of the great debt that is owed the people of Cuba.
What other country can point to a record of greater selflessness than Cuba has displayed in
its relations to Africa?
He was quite correct. Cuban forces drove the South African aggressors out of Angola; were a
key factor in releasing Namibia from their brutal grip; and made it very clear to the apartheid
regime that its dream of imposing its rule over South Africa and the region was turning into a
nightmare. In Mandelas words, Cuban forces destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the
white oppressor, which he said was the turning point for the liberation of our continent
and of my peoplefrom the scourge of apartheid.
Cuban soft power was no less effective, including 70,000 highly skilled aid workers and
scholarships in Cuba for thousands of Africans. In radical contrast, Washington was not only
the last holdout in protecting South Africa, but even continued afterward to support the
murderous Angolan terrorist forces of Jonas Savimbi, a monster whose lust for power had
brought appalling misery to his people, in the words of Marrack Goulding, the British
https://chomsky.info/20140702/

6/7

4/3/2016

On Israel-Palestine and BDS Those dedicated to the Palestinian cause should think carefully about the tactics they choose.

ambassador to Angolaa verdict seconded by the CIA.

Palestinians can hope for no such savior. This is all the more reason why those who are
sincerely dedicated to the Palestinian cause should avoid illusion and myth, and think
carefully about the tactics they choose and the course they follow.

CHOMSKY.INFO

https://chomsky.info/20140702/

7/7