Compromise, Legitimize And Win A Prize With BDS

 

Anti Zionists of the BDS movement do not seem to be anti Zionist for the simple reason that they are not anti Israelis. How they define Zionism is to take a stance against it, without being against Israel -but we don’t know since –as far as we know – it is Zionism that made Israel exist when it worked hand in hand with colonialism.

It is the first time that we hear of such separation between Zionism and Israel. Usually it is advisable to separate Zionists from the Jewish religion even if the great majority of Jews are Zionists, but we never heard of a separation between Israel and Zionism which seems to be some sort of an innovation on behalf of one of the 171 NGOs that form the BDS movement which is a boycott movement of exchange with Israel.

There is a mushrooming of NGOs no doubt around the Palestinian Cause, and the barren Palestinian and Arab intellectuals of the west need to feed on the cause in one way or another. The BDS that groups many of those is a shady organization – or rather- movement with unclear motives and shady objectives that are contradictory if not suspicious.

These people – among them academicians and intellectuals – want to boycott everything that is Israeli without boycotting Israel, and they work along this line. For them Israeli goods are not acceptable, and any exchange with Israel is not acceptable, where as Israel in itself -as a country and entity – is accepted and acceptable. The prince of Qatar himself -who is funding now the building of Israeli settlements- could not have come up with a better idea to serve his allies the Israelis.

There is a level of normalization here under the position of boycott that should not be taken lightly. According to the NGOs of the BDS, it is not accepted that Israel does this and does that, or builds walls and expands, but it is accepted for Israel to exist as a Jewish state on usurped Palestinian Arab land. This, the NGOs/ BDS do not question under any circumstance, but admit as an irreversible fact, giving thus Israel the right to be there and to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, and giving the Jews the right for a homeland where they can live and prosper without any imposition except that maybe of behaving with lesser cruelty towards Palestinians.

This difference made between Zionism and Israel is in order to give the impression that Israel existed before Zionism and therefore draws its legitimacy from the religion itself and could exist therefore bereft of the Zionism and colonialism that created it and catered to it. And while these BDS accuse Ken O’Keefe of being Anti Semite because he condemns the state of Israel, there is nothing less we can do in response than accusing them of racism since they approve of the Establishment of a racist Jewish State on usurped Palestinian Arab land, giving thus to Israel – under the cover of boycott -a legitimacy that it is not within the jurisdiction of any NGO or anyone else to grant or give.

• The BDS Cultural Boycott and Integrity
• Israel Academic Boycott Leader Studies at Tel Aviv Uni/B.D.S.
• Postcolonial Theory, Whiteness & Palestine

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian  
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by Daniel Mabsout
Saturday, June 2nd, 2012