BDS Movement, Zionism and the Way Ahead

Newsclick interviewed Omar Barghouti, founding member, The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, on the BDS Movement and the situation in Palestine.  Omar explained the history of the Israeli occupation and laid emphasis on how the peace talks act as a cover up for the misdeeds of Israel. He stressed how the Boycott Divestment movement has played a major role in the international community putting pressure on Israel. Referring to a report of the United Nations which highlighted a decrease of 46% in Israel’s 2014 FDI, he remarked that the BDS will leave a devastating impact on Israel’s economy if this settler’s colonialism continues. Omar stressed that a broader solidarity should be built up to expand the BDS movement and India needs to play a major role in it. 

Rough Transcript:

Prabir Purkayastha (PP): Hello and welcome to newsclick. Today we have with us Omar Barghouti well known in BDS campaign, the Boycott, Divestment Campaign against Israel. Omar good to have you with us.

Omar Barghouti (OB): Thank you.

PP: You have been here for the Jaipur Film Festival where you talked about what has been the Palestinian cause and what's happening in Gaza. What has been the response of the Indian audience.

OB: Well, great to be here in India. It is my first time in India and the response has been absolutely overwhelming. We had two panels at the Jaipur Literature festival. One on Gaza and one was titled after the Arab Spring. In the first panel on Gaza, I spoke about the boycott divestment movement BDS as giving hope to Palestinians especially under siege Gaza. The reaction from the more than 1500 people from the audience was more than overwhelming. Excellent responses, excellent questions especially by young Indian students, young professionals. It was a very lively discussion and a very positive vibe I felt, and I felt a certain thirst about more information about BDS in particular specially the fact that it is a human rights movement that is anchored in international law the universal declaration of human rights. It has no sectarian, religious, ideological identity. That surprised many people and interested many people.

PP: The question of Palestine right now is also connected to the what would be called the third Intifada uprising that is taking place. How do you look at the resistance that is springing up?

OB: I think we have to see the current upheaval phase of popular resistance as a phase in a whole process since the beginning of settler colonialism in Palestine since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 with the ruiance of the Palestinian society we had various waves of Palestinian resistance. So it was up and down, up and down and whenever Israel felt over huge Palestinian resistance, it would rise up again. Really like a Phoenix, when it is least expected and indeed phase of this popular resistance came were not to cause not expected. The repression level has intensified almost unprecedented levels specially in occupied Jerusalem in occupied Hebron and other places where Israel settled colonialism has gone on steroids. Confiscating land like there is no tomorrow, building settlements, Jewish only settlements of confiscated Palestinian land bringing people closer and closer to enclaves it's Bantus-tan if you will and confiscating most of the fertile land and it pushed people to the level where they could not tolerate. This level of repression. So seeing this upheaval as a part of continuation of Palestine resistance and it is important to see this continuum because that's where the BDS fits in. the boycott of West Bank sanctions which is a Palestinian led international movement fits right into this popular resistance except, it does not necessarily follow the waves of mass upheaval. It is ongoing, it is continuous.

PP: There has always been a talk after peace process, talks between Palestinian authority and Israel. Do you think this now completely sort of buried, does it periodically come up and does Palestinian authority in a position how to go forward on Palestinian cause?

OB:  No it is not buried. Unfortunately there is too much invested in the so called peace process sham process which is all talk and absolutely nothing. In fact, the peace process has acted as a fig leaf a perfect fig leaf to cover up Israel's on going colonization of Palestinian land and on going ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people. The ongoing siege of Gaza, the deny of refugee rights, the apartheid system that has been entrenched. The so called peace process acted as cover up as a smoke screen to help Israel project itself on the world stage as seeking pursuing peace while it is colonizing and ethnically cleansing because of United States and Europe and parts of rest of the world are so invested into this process, it is so important for them to subdue any possibility of Arab resistance in support of Palestinian rights, for Palestinian rights rising to a certain level to beoome more effective, they need to keep this sham going on. So although there have not been any negotiation serious negotiations since 2014, we can only expect more phases of negotiations to come. While we can not say that we trust a certain Palestinian officials whether they will continue with this process or not, we trust that Israle far right. Israel's far right government demonstrates in Israel's history we fully trust them. They will never ever offer anything that any Palestinian leader, no matter how moderate he or she might be can sell to his people as anything addressing their rights. Israel's shift to the far right, fascist regime including some fascist elements in the Israeli government I mean it by the test book definition of fascism, fascist elements in the government that are openly advocating the genocide.

PP: There is some argument that the settlers in the West Bank today really control the Israeli government. Though probably, the earlier labour governments and this government are more informed than garner than contentment. Would you say settler colonialism, settler pockets today or settler enclaves in West Bank today have become so powerful in domestic politics in Israle?

OB: Absolutely. It's been a trend and it reached it's peak at current in Netanyahu government where settlers and settler movements have almost a majority in the government in terms of the power. Many ministers are settlers themselves. But it's beyond that, absolutely you are right. It is not like the initial stage of the settler colonialism in Palestine was a right wing fanatic right wing movement. It was led by the so called Left the Zionist Left, the Zionist Left was the one which colonized Palestine initially that built most of the settlements. We have not seen initially major change in the colonization process in the ethnic cleansing process. Most of the ethnic cleansing was done by the labour. The so called Left of the Zionist spectrum which is really now Right. I mean the whole map has shifted Likud is far right and then you have fascist Right and then you have Labour which is Right. Meretz has become centre but not mainstream centre. So the mainstream is between the Right and the far Right in Israel. But I would not dismiss the change as a symbolic because although it is change in form not content, not policy, it is extremely important because Israel unlike any country on earth builds it's power not just fact on the ground than policy and relations than image. Unlike India, China, Brazil, Russia any country that you can think of, Israel's power is very much of it's pillar. So when the Israel dropped the mask and it has dropped the mask I have argued of my articles, Israel has effectively dropped the mask and showed it's true face as regime of occupation of settler colonialism and apartheids. This dropping the mask is not symbolic and it's not a minor issue. This means, Israel will lose increasingly the liberal mainstream across the world specially in the in the West, where it extracts most of it's power and specially with young Jewish American, with young Jewish Brits which is an extremely important constituency for Israel we know in the BDS movement, they are losing it.

PP: So essentially, the social capital on which Israel was built at least the Western support was built, that what it is really damaging by taking up open settler colonial ….

OB: Absolutely. Those who, I know we can get into details later, but those who dismissed BDS as symbolic is not yet really impacting the Israeli economy which by the way is not true we have indicated that it is impacting the Israeli economy but that's not the main point now, the main point now is revealing Israel's true face as a settler colonial state as a South Africa. We learnt lot of tactics from our South African comrades. In that anti apartheid movement then, I personally was active in that South African anti apartheid movement. Showing the toxicity of the regime is very much one of the main goals of the struggle at least in initial phases.

PP: You talked about the BDS campaign in the West really harming the Israeli economy, whether it is at the moment harming or not is significantly is another issue. But the Israeli government has now has started looking on it as the biggest threat to Israel because they don't look at Arab states as a threat. Particularly what's happening in the Arab world. They do not look up the Palestinian as a bigger threat militarily or IN police terms but they do think that the BDS campaign is a big threat to the Israeli campaign. Would you comment on that?

OB: Sure, since 2013, the Israeli establishment started looking at BDS as a strategic threat that was the first term they used because since 2005 when BDS was initiated by the absolute majority of the Palestinian society in historic Palestine as well as in exile, they initially dismissed it as irrelevant as Gandhi once said or reported to have said first they ignore you, then they laugh at you then they fight you and then you win. We are in the fighting part, they have ignored us, they have laughed at us, they dismissed us as a nuisance, Okay good luck with that, morality, human rights, international law, where Israel a powerful state with nuclear weapons supported by the US Congress, EU and what not how can you ever impact us. Well, a few years later they started to see the impact and then they knew that they ignored us for too long. The Israel's first reaction was the brand Israel campaign which they launched in 2005 actually responding to the then growing boycott by presenting Israel's artists, academics gay activists to the world to white wash to cover up Israel's on going colonization and apartheid and they thought by trying to present a prettier face, that's the term, Israel's prettier face they can counter the effects of boycott because no one wants to boycott Israel's liberal state that's giving women's rights, gay rights, that's also vibrant culture so to speak. But when you commit a few massacres here and there, when you kill more than thousand civilians in Lebanon in 2006, and in Gaza in 2008-2009 and then again and again and again it does not help. No matter how much propaganda you invest in, image is not enough that would not cut it. Your image is based on your propaganda but also based on your policy. You can not commit massacre that are televised and expect people to ignore that and say oh they have nano technology scientists and a few good Beethoven musicians. It does effect your image eventually. So we have reached a stage where the Academic and Cultural Boycott that have been growing and accumulating reach the effecting a chunk of the mainstream around the world to the extent that is effecting the economy. So I will give you a few examples to explain why they are seeing it as a strategic threat that may develop into an existential threat for Israel's regime for occupational apartheid. The United Nations conference on Trade and Development a few months ago released an information that for a direct investment in Israel in 2014 decreased in comparison to 2013 by 46%. that is almost half. As you know, Israel depends enormously on foreign direct investment. It is not China, it is Israel. So extremely dependent on Foreign Investment. Another a very important study was by the RANT corporation in United States. Not exactly our allies, a conservative think tank, a respected established think tank in US came up with scenarios what would happen to Israel if peace is not reached with Palestinians as they put it. And in one of those scenario, if there is no peace agreement, and BDS continues to grow at it's current pace, RANT Corporation expects BDS to cause Israel over ten year between 1% to 2% of it's GDP annually.

PP: What would you say when people from Indian and other parts say well we have problems for ourselves, we have so many problems in the world, okay, Palestine good cause but how do we or why should we get involved?

OB: Okay I can address this at several planes. The first point that you mentioned, a sense of international solidarity. We talk about Indians, they were not following, they were leading international solidarity in so many causes around the world. Be it South Africa or every progressive cause on earth, Indian was at the forefront of the Non -Aligned Movement and it led international solidarity for many causes and played an extremely important role. So there is this sense that this international solidarity is needed on a moral level to start with. But beyond morality, I think it is very important for an average Indian. In Jaipur, I had several discussions with young brilliant students who are arguing playing devil's advocate you know, some might say, Israel is a powerful country, India wants to become powerful, so it is only natural to build this military relationship, very intimate military relationship in intelligence, homeland security, relationship with Israel, to gain from Israel's technique and technology an experience. And I said is this the model that you want for India you want to follow, you want India to become such a racist, such an intolerant apartheid state that's the last thing you want India. So that's first. The second point is that an average Indian citizen I am sure would rather see that billions of dollars invested in health care, in education, in creating jobs, in infrastructure development and not in buying useless weapons that can not solve any problem. Be it Kashmir, the problem with Pakistan, everyone knows it will not be settled on the battle field. Ultimately, there has to be a peaceful negotiation, the people of Kashmir have a say in their self determination and eventually, it has to be settled peacefully. So all this billions of dollars that India is investing in weapons a lot of it coming from Israel, Israel is making a killing out of Indian expenditure on the military. Is that useful for 99% of Indian society? Absolutely not. It is beneficial for the one percent on top or benefiting from this militarization of Indian society. It can not possibly in the absolute majority of Indians. So the question of Palestine is a moral issue. Yes, Prof. John Dugard of the South Africa says it is the litmus test for human rights around the world today. It is the test whether international law will succeed or fail. If it fails the Palestinians again then no one in the globe will have any interest in this legal system that was established by the United Nations but it is also an intersectional issue. Our interest and interests of most Indians intersects. We have an interest that India shifts this massive investment to social investment rather than militarization and also it serves Indian interests as well.

PP: Thank you very much for being with us and I hope that next time you will find a little more time with us in India and not with Jaipur Lit festival.