Omar Barghouti

"Barghouti is the future. He is intelligent, empowered, and non-violent. He is completely impressive. It would help Americans to see such a picture of Palestinian political engagement, when they have such a distorted image of who Palestinians are. Some day they will know him."—Phillip Weiss, author of Mondoweiss: The War of Ideas in the Middle East THIRTY YEARS ago, an international movement utilizing boycott, divestment, and sanction (BDS) tactics rose in solidarity with those suffering under the brutal apartheid regime of South Africa. The historic acts of BDS activists from around the world isolated South Africa as a pariah state and heralded the end of apartheid. Now, as awareness of the apartheid nature of the State of Israel continues to grow, Omar Barghouti, founding member of the Palestinian Civil Society Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, presents a renewed call to action. Aimed at forcing the State of Israel to uphold international law and universal human rights for the Palestinian people, here is a manifesto for change. “No one has done more to build the intellectual, legal and moral case for BDS than Omar Barghouti. The global Palestinian solidarity movement has been transformed and is on the cusp of major new breakthroughs.” —Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and No Logo “I commend this excellent book by Omar Barghouti…BDS is a call to refuse to be silent in the face of military occupation of the Palestinian people by the Israeli regime, apartheid, and colonialism. BDS is a nonviolent way in which each of us and our governments can follow our conscience and rightful moral and legal responsibility and act now to save Palestinian lives by demanding that the Israeli apartheid regime give justice and equality to all." —Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate (1976)

The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights

Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions

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.

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