Omar Barghouti

From 'Operation Cast Lead' to the recent assault on the Gaza flotilla, both the severity and the notoriety of Israel's many human rights abuses have begun to seep into the public consciousness and convince a growing international audience of the apartheid nature of Israel as a Jewish state. Boycott, divestment and sanctions efforts (BDS) helped topple South Africa's brutal apartheid regime. In this timely collection, Palestinian writer Omar Barghouti makes the case for a renewed campaign to force the state of Israel to uphold international law and universal human rights.

Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions : the Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights

Jasper

Almost every day, the pale, slender woman complains to the ruthless, self-righteous ruffian about the miserable little shack she is confined to, not to mention the daily abuse she has to put up with. Sick of her endless whining, one day he brings in a goat to stay with them. Her complaints turn into desperate sobbing, quite expectedly, so he punches her until she bleeds. She cries in silence, mourning for the day when she had more space, without the goat crowding the miserable shack.

After weeks of her begging, he gets rid of the goat. Now she feels she has her space again. Everything is finally back to normal—just the usual dose of abuse and exploitation. For a day she is content with her accomplishment, but the next morning she wakes up with an eruption of long-suppressed memories, erasing her forgetfulness and disturbing her “peace.” She remembers when he first abducted her and forced her into slavery. She realizes how she has rationalized and internalized the battering as part of surviving, as the lesser evil. She could no longer care less about an extra few square feet here or there. She wants to feel whole again, and nothing less than her freedom—unmitigated, unconditional—would do. So she sets out to resist and calls out for support.

It has effectively succeeded in cynically exploiting the Nazi genocide of European Jewish communities, transforming the pain and guilt felt across the West into an almost invincible shield from censure and accountability.

In fact, many Jewish Israelis are now vociferous in protesting what they see as a rise of “fascism” in the state, accompanied by an entrenchment in racism and rejection of any meaningful peace.

A May 2010 report by the BBC in fact reveals how Israel, through its siege, has allowed only the “minimum calorie intake needed by Gaza’s million and a half inhabitants, according to their age and sex,” as a form of severe collective punishment. It has prevented not only candles, various types of medicines, books, crayons, clothing, shoes, blankets, pasta, tea, coffee and chocolate, but also musical instruments from reaching the 1.5 million Palestinians incarcerated in what has been called the world’s largest open-air prison and even a “prison camp,” in the words of British prime minister David Cameron.

The facade of democracy, not democracy itself, is what is truly collapsing in Israel, as democracy has never existed in any true form—nor could have existed—in a settler-colonial state like Israel.

...the precedent-setting statement did not mince words in condemning the complicity of Israeli academic institutions in violations of international law: “While Palestinians are not able to access universities and schools, Israeli universities produce the research, technology, arguments and leaders for maintaining the occupation.”

Despite all the compelling analyses showing the gradual decline of the power of the Israel lobby, it still commands indisputable weapons in its arsenal that allow it to commit character assassination, to end careers of dissidents—whether members of the US Congress or other parliaments or artists or academics or trade unionists—and to muzzle serious debate about Israel’s increasingly indefensible flouting of international law and basic human rights. Unfortunately, many still choose silence or toeing the line to avoid all this trouble.

BDS quotes

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