SHOULD PEOPLE BOYCOTT ISRAEL? and HAS ISRAEL MOVED TO THE RIGHT? Interview with Omar Barghouti

Omar Barghouti explains the aims of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay. I'm in Ramallah, Palestine. And now joining us from ["la-ROOJ"] Café in Ramallah is Omar Barghouti. He's a founding member of the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. Thanks for joining us.

OMAR BARGHOUTI, PALESTINIAN CAMPAIGN FOR THE ACADEMIC AND CULTURAL BOYCOTT OF ISRAEL: Thank you.

JAY: So what is this boycott about?

BARGHOUTI: The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel actually is one part of a general Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS for short. We started Academic and Cultural Boycott in 2004, and the general Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign was in 2005. The BDS campaign, from the very first moment, was endorsed by more than 170 of the main groups in Palestinian civil society, including the major trade unions, women's unions, political forces, NGOs, and so on and so forth. So this is a movement that has as close to a consensus as you can get, and it's not just among Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, Gaza, including East Jerusalem, but also Palestinians inside Israel, and the largest component of the Palestinian people, those in exile in the Diaspora.

JAY: And specifically what you're asking people outside of Israel to do is what?

BARGHOUTI: The main focus of the boycott campaign is to hold Israel accountable to international law by making it recognize our three basic rights. So it's a rights-based approach. The three rights are ending the occupation, the 1967 occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and other Arab territories, the Golan Heights and so on. The second is ending this system of racial discrimination within Israel. There's an institutionalized, legalized system of racial discrimination within Israel that we're calling for it to end.

JAY: For example?

BARGHOUTI: I'll get to that after I finish the third point, which is the right of return for refugees. And this is the key point. According to UN Resolution 194, Palestinian refugees have a right to return to their homes of origin. So these are the three components. The second one is the least understood, ending the system of racial discrimination. But people say, but isn't Israel a democracy? Well, actually, not even according to the US State Department. In the US [inaudible] not exactly a human rights beacon or reference. But even the US State Department human rights reports consistently have condemned Israel's legalized societal discrimination against its non-Jewish citizens, the Arab citizens of Israel, the Palestinians, the indigenous Palestinians of Israel. The discrimination is in almost all the vital domains of the state of Israel, from the way the state defines itself as the Jewish state rather than a state of its citizens—so this is the only state in the world that does not define itself as a state of its citizens.

JAY: Now, if you make that one of the issues that the boycott's about, then you're saying there's a boycott until there's no longer a Jewish state.

BARGHOUTI: No, we're not saying that. Until there's no discrimination. They can call themselves whatever they wish. But until discrimination ends, until legalized, institutionalized discrimination ends.

JAY: So give some examples of things you want to stop.

BARGHOUTI: For example, discrimination in land ownership. Palestinians inside Israel are not allowed to own, rent, or live on almost 93 percent of the state lands, which are reserved purely for the Jewish citizens of Israel or any Jew in the world. Israel has this system where only if you're Jewish you become a national. A Palestinian born in Israel who is a citizen is not a national of Israel. This distinction between citizen and national is where the discrimination comes in. So a Jewish Canadian can come to Israel tomorrow and have more rights than my wife, who was born in Haifa inside Israel, because he would be an Israeli citizen and a Jewish national.

JAY: What would be an example of a right this person would have that your wife doesn't?

BARGHOUTI: Ownership, for example, in most of the land of Israel. He can buy land almost anywhere, rent, and so on. My wife cannot.

JAY: Your wife can't own a condominium in—.

BARGHOUTI: In most places in Israel, I mean, in 93 percent.

JAY: Barred by law.

BARGHOUTI: By law.

JAY: What else?

BARGHOUTI: Jobs. At every level, if you're not Jewish, in most cases you're not entitled to even apply for these jobs.

JAY: For example, what would be a job you couldn't apply for?

BARGHOUTI: Most government jobs, most government jobs. We're talking about the total number of Palestinians who are employed in ministries, in all the government positions, is tiny, tiny minority, well below the number of Palestinians, the proportion of Palestinians in Israeli society. But even in issues like health, health-care, education—.

JAY: What would stop a Palestinian Israeli going to the high-end health-care hospital in a Jewish neighborhood? Is there anything that stops them from going?

BARGHOUTI: There are many bureaucratic rules that make it very difficult for you to get service in a clinic not in your place of residence. I'll give just one very concrete example: cancer research, something very benign. The state of Israel, the Ministry of Health, carried out a very long, multi-year research into the causes of cancer and the pollutants that might cause cancer, and see the correlation between pollutants and the rate of cancer. What they did throughout those years, they skipped every single Palestinian village and town inside Israel except for one. And this blatant racism, that you're not even researching cancer in Palestinian communities inside Israel, was questioned, and they said, oh, budget problems. But why did budget problems apply only to Palestinian communities? And some researchers reached the conclusion that in most of the pollutant sites, they're right next to Arab villages or Arab towns, so if you had studied them, you would have proven that the rate of cancer is rising so rapidly among Palestinians, double the Jewish population in many places, because all the pollutants are built near Palestinian towns.

JAY: So what effect is the boycott movement having now? Where is there some success? And what effect is it having on the Israeli economy or cultural life?

BARGHOUTI: Okay. So the boycott movement is five, six years old. It's too early to discuss how much impact it's having on the Israeli economy. It is having, but not a huge impact. At this stage, the point is not about making Israel's economy lose a lot. We cannot do this so rapidly. It's about presenting Israel for what it is, an apartheid state that is practicing occupation and colonization as well. It's a very unique combination of occupation, colonization, and apartheid. And this to counter Israel's brand in the West, if you will, as a democracy that has some problem of occupying a neighboring territory. It's not just about occupation; it's also about the system of apartheid within Israel and the most important form of injustice, the denial of Palestinian refugees their UN-sanctioned rights to return. We've had many successes in those five, six years. Actually, compared to South Africa, the anti-apartheid movement of South Africa, our South African comrades tell us we're going much faster in comparison, because in five, six years we've reached the mainstream in several Western societies, including Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Norway, and so on, not to mention South Africa. Our South African supporters, the world tour, the biggest civil society organizations in South Africa, have come out and supported the boycott. But even in Canada, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, for example—it's a national union—it has come out in support of the boycott. The Canadian Union of Public Employees in Ontario has come out in support, and several others, including—.

JAY: What about in the United States?

BARGHOUTI: In the United States we don't yet have unions, but there are many groups that have joined the boycott. One example is the academic and cultural boycott campaign in the US. It's called US ACPE. US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel has just released a statement that they reached 500 endorsers—academics and artists—in the US supporting this boycott. So by American standards 500 is a small number, but relatively speaking that's a big step forward.

JAY: There's been some critique from inside Israel, from professors and academics, particularly, who are critics of Israeli policy, like, for example, were against the attack on Gaza. But some of these professors are saying, you're isolating us from having contact, you're actually, for example, by saying Western universities shouldn't have anything to do with Israeli universities, you wind up also isolating progressive Israeli academics. What's your answer to that?

BARGHOUTI: I think they overestimate their proportion in the academic community in Israel. And they're very Israel-centric. I mean, the world revolves around them. It's about Palestinian rights and Israeli oppression and injustice and the role of the Israeli academy as a partner in the system of oppression. In fact, no Israeli university has ever come out against the occupation, ever. The total number of Israeli academics that have ever condemned the occupation, just the occupation, let alone apartheid in Israel or the denial of refugee rights, is a few hundred out of a community that's 9,000. Just very recently, in 2008, 4 Jewish-Israeli academics started a petition calling upon the Israeli military in the territories—they did not even call it "occupied territories"—in the territories to allow passage at military roadblocks to Palestinian academics and students going to their schools and universities—the most banal demand for academic freedom—and they sent it to all 9,000 academics, hoping almost everyone would sign. Any decent self-respecting academics should endorse this basic requirement. Only 407 signed this petition, out of 9,000.

JAY: Well, to be fair, their argument isn't that they're going to lose some privileges. At least that's not the argument they made. Their argument is that it weakens their hand inside Israel [inaudible]

BARGHOUTI: There is no left movement in Israel. They're individuals who are not that relevant in the Israeli society. If you look at the parliamentary elections, Israel is shifting fast to the far right, and to a certain extent to the fascist right in some parties in Israel—and I'm using that term very deliberately. There are fascist parties in Israel that resemble fascist parties in Europe and elsewhere. And Israeli society is shifting very far to the right, with ethnic cleansing becoming a mainstream term that's used in academia, in the media, in parliament, in conferences. It's openly called for, discrimination at all level.

JAY: Well, in the next segment of our interview let's talk about why there's this big move to the right in Israel. Please join us for the next segment of our interview with Omar Barghouti.

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HAS ISRAEL MOVED TO THE RIGHT?

Should people boycott Israel? Pt.2

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay. We're in Ramallah, Palestine. And now joining us again is Omar Barghouti. He's a founding member of the Palestine Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. So we left off the first segment of the interview talking about the rightward move in Israel to the extent that you can have ethnic cleansing as a public conversation involving the foreign minister of the country. How does Israel get there?

OMAR BARGHOUTI, PALESTINIAN CAMPAIGN FOR THE ACADEMIC AND CULTURAL BOYCOTT OF ISRAEL: That's a very good question. I think there are many factors. We cannot reduce it to one specific factor. There are many factors. But it's showing the real serious crisis in the Zionist project. Zionism is reaching a stage where it can no longer hide behind a facade of democracy. Zionism is showing its real face as a settler-colonial ideology based on exclusion and racism. For way too long, Zionism got away with this image of democracy, image of enlightenment, of this Western society implanted in the middle of the barbaric East, so to speak, and it's not flying any longer.

JAY: Why? I mean, where is the pressure causing it to go there?

BARGHOUTI: The pressure is from inside and outside. Israelis are feeling that they cannot get away with this in the world, with their attack on Lebanon, with their attack on Gaza, with committing war crimes. They've committed war crimes all along, but now it's becoming public with something like the UN report offered by Justice Richard Goldstone and his team—who happens to be Jewish, Zionist, with connections to Israel, and he still condemned Israel for committing war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity. So it's become public knowledge that Israel is committing war crimes. Apartheid within Israel is becoming much more talked about, much more debated around the world. And that was Israel's biggest secret. Israel always presented itself as a democracy that's also doing some occupation business which is bad. So with this revelation, of Israel's true system of oppression against the Palestinians, pressure from outside is increasing, at least civil society level. We're not seeing it at government levels [inaudible]

JAY: Yeah, not [inaudible] serious mainstream levels, either from the US or, really, for that matter, from Europe. But even if there was, why would that force a more overt racist right-wing position? You'd think there'd be more of a attempt to present a friendlier face.

BARGHOUTI: Well, not yet. I think this is the natural tendency for colonial societies. We've seen it in South Africa. We've seen it in Northern Ireland. We've seen it in many other colonialist situations, in Algeria, definitely. When a settler-colonial society feels that it's no longer able to carry on with its system of oppression and get away with it, with this image of civility around the world, it shifts to the extreme right until it loses any hope that it can maintain that, and then it starts thinking of how can I maintain any normalcy by giving up my oppression. White Afrikaners in South Africa, the worst period of the repression of the black majority was towards the very end.

JAY: To what extent do you think that Palestinian tactics coming from Hamas, but not only Hamas—suicide bombing, attacks on civilians rather than military targets—has this been a contributing factor to this strengthening of the far right in Israel?

BARGHOUTI: I think it played a role, but not a major role, because the violence of the oppressed is always a reaction to the violence of the oppressor. So it's never an action that causes a reaction inside Israel. Israel's shift of a very repressive system of mass killing, of ethnic cleansing, of destroying Palestinian infrastructure, and so on is what caused a Palestinian reaction, no matter what we think of that reaction in moral terms and legal terms. So it's always—.

JAY: I'm not asking the question, trying to judge it either morally or legally.

BARGHOUTI: No, I understand.

JAY: I'm—it's from the point of view of the interests of Palestinians that attempt to help create more unity in Israel and strengthen the right in Israel.

BARGHOUTI: No, that's what I'm saying. It's—the cause and effect are upside down. It's the other way around. It's Israel's shift to an agenda that's far more repressive is what caused this type of Palestinian resistance to emerge. It's not the other way around. Now, has this type of Palestinian resistance caused any further coherence within Israel? It might, but it's not a major factor. It's not a real major factor. And the proof is for the last couple of years we haven't had any such attacks on Israeli civilians, almost none, very, very, very rarely [inaudible]

JAY: And because of a decision by the Palestinian [inaudible]

BARGHOUTI: Decision by Hamas and other resistance movements that this is not the most effective form of resistance at this point. Personally, I feel it's not an effective or morally justified form of resistance at any time, now or ever. I believe that, yes, international law gives us the right to resist occupation by all means, including armed resistance, but we should stick to ethical guidelines and to international law in practicing our resistance.

JAY: Which means you don't target civilians.

BARGHOUTI: You don't target civilians. Exactly. And you pick the resistance that's more effective, as in boycott, as in popular resistance, as we're seeing in Bil'in and Ni'lin against the wall, as in so many other forms the Palestinians have been doing for hundreds of years. It's not something we just learned from South Africans or Indians. We also have had civil resistance throughout our history of combating settler colonialism.

JAY: To what extent is the pressure of the coming demographics that Olmert talked about the idea that if you're going to have a Jewish state, one, the Palestinian population inside Israel that can vote, and then the issue of what happens to the occupation? Sooner or later, Olmert said, you either have to have another state, or people are going to force us to give these Palestinians a vote, which means the end to the Jewish state. In terms of not knowing how to deal with this and still call yourself a democracy and still have a Jewish state, is this a kind of an internal process that winds up strengthening the right?

BARGHOUTI: I don't know if it strengthens the right, necessarily, but Olmert and even Barak have come to the conclusion that a Palestinian state is a necessity for Israel's continued existence, because otherwise we're heading towards apartheid. And of course they don't recognize that they are already apartheid within Israel itself, and including in the West Bank. But I think this recognition, this sounding of a big alarm in Israel, that we must give up some territory to get rid of Palestinians, not because of believing Palestinian rights, neither Olmert, Barak—I mean, there is no difference between right and left in the Israeli establishment: they all believe, we want to get rid of the Palestinians. It's a matter of how best to get rid of them. The right is saying, we want that land, that entire land, and the so-called left in Israel is telling them, well, then you have to live with millions of Palestinians that you control. So they're trying to find a bantustan solution, à la South Africa, and they're learning a lot from the South African experience.

JAY: But [Avigdor] Lieberman and the far right in Israel don't even want to have that conversation. You know, if you were serious about that conversation, you would have had some settlement freeze, at least enough to have a conversation go on, and even freezing settlements in Jerusalem. And they don't want to even go there. So, that one big segment of Israeli society doesn't even want to have this bantustan conversation.

BARGHOUTI: But the bantustan solution does not necessarily demand a freeze in settlements, because the bantustans are really the population centers without the fertile lands, without the water resources. All Israelis agree: we want the land and the water without the Palestinians.

JAY: But it needs to be done at least with the cover of negotiations and an agreement. You can't just—they can't unilaterally do it and think anyone's going to recognize it.

BARGHOUTI: Well, it depends how much they can get away with without US and European pressure, precisely why we're resorting to boycott, divestment, and sanctions, to pressure governments to take a position, 'cause, yes, they can get away with it if there isn't enough resistance. What would stop them?

JAY: Well, in the next segment of the interview, let's talk about resistance and what's happening in terms of the split with Fatah and Hamas and other forms of struggle amongst the Palestinian people. Please join us for the next segment of our interview with Omar Barghouti on The Real News Network.

End of Transcript

31-8-2010