These articles were printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer 01/29/12

Point Counterpoint: Aim to promote human rights of the Palestinians.
By Ali Abunimah
READER FEEDBACK

I am coming to the University of Pennsylvania this week to incite violence against the State of Israel - pro-Israel groups and commentators have contended - and, along with hundreds of students and other speakers who will attend the 2012 National Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Conference, to engage in an "act of warfare."
Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, we are coming together to push forward an inclusive movement that supports nonviolent action to promote the human rights of the Palestinian people, because only full respect for these rights can lead to peace. Today, millions of Palestinians live without basic rights under Israeli rule. This intolerable situation is at the root of problems that affect the whole world.
People everywhere, whether they consider themselves "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestinian" or both, want to see justice and peace. Yet, in recent years, the U.S.-brokered peace process has seen failure after failure.
Amid election-year politics, President Obama and his Republican rivals are pledging ever more unconditional support for Israel, even as Israel openly flouts U.N. resolutions and U.S. policy by building Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land and depriving Palestinians of their rights, including hundreds of children who languish in Israeli military prisons.

There's no chance that the United States will use the billions of dollars it gives Israel in aid as leverage to compel an end to these practices and respect for Palestinian rights. So should we just give up?
The answer from Palestinian civil society is a clear "no." All of us can play a role in ending this terrible situation and securing equal rights for Palestinians rather than superior rights for Jewish Israelis.
In 2004, the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands, ruled that the wall Israel built across Palestinian lands in the occupied West Bank was illegal and was aimed at confiscating more land. Frustrated by the inaction of governments, 170 Palestinian civil society organizations, including labor unions, student groups, and cultural and social organizations, came together to issue the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) on Israel in 2005.

Modeled explicitly on the tactics used to help end apartheid in South Africa, Palestinians urge that Israel be sanctioned until it respects Palestinian rights and international law in three specific ways: an end to the occupation of all Palestinian lands seized by Israel in 1967; full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel; and full respect for the rights of Palestinian refugees.

This call doesn't prescribe a specific political solution - for example, a single democratic state, or a two-state solution - but it recognizes that full rights have to be at the core of any resolution. And implementing these rights does not threaten any legitimate rights of Israelis, unless one considers discrimination against Palestinians simply because they are not Jews to be a "right." In just the same way, granting full legal and political rights to African Americans in the United States did not threaten any legitimate rights of white citizens.
The all-too-frequent claim that the BDS goal is to "destroy Israel" or "incite violence" - rather than win rights - or that it is motivated by "anti-Semitism," is just as offensive and simplistic as saying that participants in the Montgomery bus boycott wanted to "destroy Alabama" and simply "hated white people."

And just like that celebrated bus boycott, BDS is not an end in itself; it is a tactic designed to bring about change. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in support of a divestment effort on behalf of Palestinian rights, "We could not have won our freedom in South Africa without the solidarity of people around the world who adopted nonviolent methods to pressure governments and corporations to end their support for the apartheid regime. Faith-based groups, unions, students, and consumers organized on a grassroots level and catalyzed a global wave of divestment, ultimately contributing to the collapse of apartheid."

But let us remember that in the 1980s, not everyone supported sanctions on South Africa. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were strongly opposed to sanctions and insisted on "constructive dialogue" that went nowhere, just like the U.S.-brokered Middle East peace process. What helped turn the tide in the United States was a young member of Congress who broke ranks with Reagan to support boycott and sanctions on the apartheid regime. His name was Newt Gingrich.

Tragically, Gingrich today notoriously contends that the Palestinians are an "invented people" - a way of suggesting they have no rights, and certainly no claim to the land they've tended since long before Israel existed.
As the growth of such extremist rhetoric diminishes the chances for a constructive U.S. role, it is all the more important that we as citizens take action. That's what our conference is about, and everyone who shares a belief in human equality is welcome to attend.

Ali Abunimah is the author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. The BDS conference is scheduled for Friday to Sunday at the University of Pennsylvania. To attend Ali Abunimah's keynote address at 7 p.m. Saturday, visit http://pennbds.org. Admission is free to members of the Penn community; $5 for others.

Point Counterpoint: Anti-Israeli agenda expected at Penn conference
By R. James Woolsey and Jonathan Schanzer
READER FEEDBACK

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a complex issue, one that deserves serious scholarship and open, civil debate. Expect to see none of that next weekend on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, where the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement is staging a "conference."

Instead, as we should have learned from many past BDS events at colleges around the country, this will be an exercise in disinformation and propaganda, a call for political and economic warfare, and an attempt to foment hatred of Israel. That is obviously bad for Israelis. It is - perhaps less obviously - bad for Palestinians as well.
One simple fact that will be avoided next weekend: Almost all Israelis agree, in principle, to a "two-state solution." They favor the Jewish state and a Palestinian state living as neighbors and living in peace. Palestinian leaders have explicitly rejected that approach.

Hamas, which rules Gaza, is openly committed to annihilating Israel. The Hamas Covenant states clearly that there can be "no solution . . . except through Jihad," adding, in case there is any misunderstanding, that the goal is to "obliterate" Israel.

The Palestinian Authority, which rules on the West Bank, is generally thought of as more moderate. But PLO official Nabil Shaath said clearly: "The story of 'two states for two peoples' means that there will be a Jewish people over there and a Palestinian people here. We will never accept this." Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently added: "Don't order us to recognize a Jewish state. We won't accept it."
Also, as the Arab-Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh recently reported: "Abbas' Fatah faction has declared war on all informal meetings between Israelis and Palestinians." The Abbas/Fatah objection to such meetings, Toameh explained, is that they promote " 'the culture of peace' and are designed to 'normalize' relations between Israelis and Palestinians." Palestinian leaders can't have that, can they? You think any of this will come up at the Penn BDS conference?

The timing of this event makes it especially jarring: At this moment, just across Israel's northern border, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is slaughtering Syrian dissidents. Since March, as many as 6,000 people have been killed. Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have said that Syrian forces have committed "crimes against humanity." The United Nations reports "patterns of summary execution, arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearance, [and] torture, including sexual violence."

Even the Arab League, long known for inaction when member states violate international laws, has sent observers into the country in an unsuccessful effort to halt the violence and, finally, suspended Syria's membership. For years, Assad has been host to Hamas and patron of Hezbollah. Assad has used Hezbollah mercenaries from Lebanon against Syrian soldiers who refuse to fire on unarmed civilians. Do the BDS advocates support international sanctions against the Assad dictatorship? Will such issues even be discussed next weekend? Why not?

Also conspicuously absent from the BDS agenda is the regime that rules and oppresses Iranians. After blatantly fraudulent elections in June 2009 handed a second presidential term to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, security forces violently suppressed Iran's opposition, the Green Movement, whose members poured into the streets in protest. The regime's storm troopers - the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - arrested at least 4,000, while authorities executed hundreds. Unknown numbers of protesters were beaten, raped, and tortured. The reason we don't know the exact numbers is because Iran has a stranglehold on its media.

Iran represses religious minorities, ethnic minorities, gays, and anyone who dares challenge the country's extremist religious code. Iran has been designated as a state sponsor of terrorism since 1984. Its government supports, arms, and instructs Hamas and Hezbollah - to an even greater extent than Syria.

The government in Tehran is responsible for training, arming, and financing groups in Iraq and Afghanistan that have killed and maimed hundreds of American soldiers. It has ordered a series of terrorist attacks against Americans and other Westerners over the last 30 years, not to mention the assassinations of Iranians in exile abroad. Recently, the Iranian government was implicated in a failed plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States while he dined in a restaurant in Washington.

And then there is the issue at the core of America's current crisis with Iran: the government's unwavering efforts to build a nuclear weapon in violation of agreements it has signed, all the while threatening genocide against Israel and vowing that "a world without America . . . is achievable." Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently said he was convinced Iran's rulers would have "no hesitation of using nuclear weapons if they see them achieving their religious or political purposes."

The United States has tried everything from "engagement" to passing oil sanctions, and it is now implementing sanctions against Iran's central bank. Do those who advocate sanctions against Israel support such measures against Iran's rulers?

Why is it, do you think, that the BDS movement is unconcerned about Arab victims when the oppressors are Arabs, and Muslim victims when the oppressors are Muslim? Why do they focus only on Israelis who would like nothing more than to achieve peace with their neighbors and who are willing to make painful sacrifices to achieve a lasting settlement of the conflict?

R. James Woolsey was director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1993 to 1995 and now is chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).
Jonathan Schanzer is vice president for research at FDD.
Contact the writers via www.defenddemocracy.org.