Negotiations about negotiations
When Secretary of State John Kerry began his peace initiative last summer with a goal to reach a final agreement on the two state solution by April, 2014, many informed observers were skeptical, including many members of the Palestine Israel Network. With April now approaching Secretary Kerry has moved the goal posts to an unknown date, pushing instead for acceptance of a framework for a future agreement. And even if both sides agree on the framework, they will be allowed to dissent from portions of it if they don’t like or agree with it. Hello? A senior Palestinian official, and an Episcopalian, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, offered a bleak assessment in an article in the New York Times. A framework that allowed each side to voice reservations, she said, would be “self-negating,” adding, “It will be a nondocument.” Any document not based firmly on international law, she said, “will become a box of chocolates: You can pick and choose what you want.”
Now President Obama is using his muscle to get an agreement on the framework, on which either side can disagree. Meanwhile, the Palestinians are sidelined from pursuing redress through international courts and the United Nations, where they now have recognition as an observer state. And Israel continues with renewed vigor its colonialist expansion of settlements in the West Bank and sensitive areas of Jerusalem. And HAMAS is mostly keeping to an Egyptian brokered ceasefire in Gaza. When there might be a third Intifada is anyone’s guess.
Enter BDS
Lurking in the background of all this is the BDS movement, which stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. According to the BDS website, BDS was initiated by Palestinian voices from civil society, “endorsed by over 170 Palestinian political parties, organizations, trade unions and movements. The signatories represent the refugees, Palestinians in the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories), and Palestinian citizens of Israel.”
BDS has three stated goals.
1. Ending [Israel’s] occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in June 1967 and dismantling the Wall;
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian 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.
Opponents to BDS are desperate to frame it as a campaign to delegitimize the State of Israel. Recent columnists of note Roger Cohen and Tom Friedman have said as much without providing any evidence. Repeat it often enough and it will be taken as fact. Framing BDS as an attack on Israel itself is meant to discredit the movement. But if BDS is correctly framed as a non-violent resistance movement to the Occupation as well as demanding equal rights for Israeli Palestinians, then it might begin to gain traction in the U.S., as it is in Europe.
Nowhere does the BDS movement mention delegitimizing the State of Israel. Some will argue that the return of refugees will amount to the end of a Jewish State. But the right of return is enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution 194 (and was, incidentally, adopted by the Episcopal Church’s General Convention in 2000). The form of implementation will have to be resolved through negotiations.
Some interesting people have expressed opinions over the growth of the BDS movement. One of them is Secretary Kerry. “For Israel, there’s an increasing delegitimization campaign that has been building up. People are very sensitive to it. There are talk of boycotts and other kinds of things.” This was meant to stress the importance of Israel to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians. His comments were met with a barrage of invective from the Israeli right even though Kerry used the “de-legitimate” word.
And some notable Israeli politicians have warned about the BDS campaign according to the New York Times: “Yair Lapid, the centrist finance minister warned in a speech here Wednesday (January 28) that if the talks fail, a European boycott could ensue that would cost Israel about $5.7 billion, threatening 9,800 jobs, and “substantially hurt the checkbook of every Israeli.””
An article on the BDS movement appeared in the Times on February 12 in which the writer, Jodi Rudoren likened the BDS campaign to the anti-Semitic boycotts of Nazi Germany. Dr. Ashrawi responded in a letter to the Times that “B.D.S. is, in fact, a legal, moral and inclusive movement struggling against the discriminatory policies of a country that defines itself in religiously exclusive terms, and that seeks to deny Palestinians the most basic rights simply because we are not Jewish.” Prime Minister Netanyahu railed about BDS when he addressed AIPAC, the U.S. lobby for Israel in Washington, D.C., on March 3, using much the same language as Rudoren.
Now AIPAC is taking up the cause of opposition to BDS, creating a marketing campaign to oppose it. Mark Landler, writing in the New York Times on February 28 says “At one level, giving the boycott movement such attention seems odd. While it has gained some traction in Europe, where a Dutch pension fund recently cut ties to Israeli banks that do business with Jewish settlements, it remains largely a nonstarter in the United States….There is another reason for Aipac to keep the boycott movement front and center: It is a reliable way to fire up its rank and file.”
Landler adds: Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian human rights activist and a B.D.S. leader, wrote recently in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times that the Israeli government’s strident response “reveals its heightened anxiety at the movement’s recent spread into the mainstream.”
The Church and BDS
As the BDS movement is spreading into the mainstream in the U.S., albeit slowly, it presents a challenge to the Church. When the Prime Minister of Israel gives BDS six minutes in his address to AIPAC, it is a clear sign that BDS is gaining momentum. The important point to note about BDS is that it is defined as a movement. And like all movements, if you are standing still, the movement will pass you by, and you could be left standing on the wrong side of history.
The Episcopal Church actually has been in the forefront of using economic pressure, having called for withholding of foreign aid from Israel in 1991 and 1994 until it ends its settlement policy. That position is still in effect. In 1994 TEC filed a shareholder resolution with Motorola asking the company not to provide communication products or services to settlements built in the Occupied Territories. That was 11 years before Palestinian civil society launched the BDS movement. The Episcopal Church was clearly an early leader in supporting the use of economic pressure to end the Occupation.
But in February 2013 the Executive Council took the extraordinary step of stating that “this Church does not support boycott, divestment, and economic sanctions against the state of Israel nor any application of the Church’s corporate engagement policies toward such ends.” Perhaps this stems from a vehement argument that BDS is a nonstarter in the context of what’s going on in Washington, D.C. and that any group supporting BDS would have no credibility in Washington. Now no one argues that Congress would ever consider economic sanctions against Israel. Or that AIPAC isn’t an effective lobby for any policies the Israeli government wants. The pro-Israel bias in Washington D.C. is a given.
But is that the basis on which the Episcopal Church will make its witness in standing for a just resolution of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict?
One small example of a BDS action might help illuminate the issue. Soda Stream, a soda making machine product that bears the label Made in Israel, is, in fact, made in a settlement on occupied Palestinian land. Given that all settlements are a violation of international law, it stands to reason that any product made in an illegal settlement is also in violation of international law. Calling for a boycott of Soda Stream to protest this use of Palestinian land is simply upholding international law. Just last week the Methodists acted on their boycott policy by targeting Soda Stream.
The General Convention is the Church’s primary policy making body. Executive Council also sets policy between Conventions as well as being responsible for carrying out policies of General Convention. As events unfold and the BDS movement begins to materialize on U.S. campuses and among various NGOs, including in the religious community (the Methodists and Presbyterians are active), how will TEC position itself? Will it remember its history from the civil rights movement and the anti –Apartheid movement, and be willing to place itself on the side of the oppressed? One thing we know. Whatever it does or doesn’t do, the God of history will judge accordingly.
The demand for the 'right of return' of millions of Palestinian descendants of the 1948 refugees is a call for ending Israel's existence through demographic means.
But, why depend on inference? Let the BDS activists speak for themselves and you will see just how much BDS seeks to end Israel's existence as the nation-state of the Jewish people:
“BDS does mean the end of the Jewish state… Ending the occupation doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t mean upending the Jewish state itself.” Ahmed Moor, leading BDS activist, U.S.
“There should not be any equivocation on the subject. Justice and freedom for the Palestinians are incompatible with the existence of the state of Israel.” As’ad Abu Khalil, leading BDS activist, U.S
"The only ethical solution is a (single) democratic, secular and civic state in historic Palestine” which means “by definition, Jews will be a minority." - Omar Barghouti, BDS spokesperson and co-founder, Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
"We have to be honest, and I loathe the disingenuousness. They [BDS Movement] don’t want Israel. They think they’re being very clever, they call it their three tier – we want the end of the occupation, we want the right of return and we want equal rights for Arabs in Israel. And they think they’re very clever because they know the result of implementing all three is what? What’s the result? You know and I know, what’s the result? There’s no Israel… there’s no Israel, full stop…" Norman Finkelstein (anti-Zionist activist, critical supporter of BDS movement)
Clearly, BDS sees Israel's destruction, and the disempowerment of the Jewish people, as its goal. Either you are intellectually dishonest, or are trying to pull the wool over the eyes of your readers. Or both.