DailyKos Poll 72% Support Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Against Israel 23% No, 5% Avoid

Naomi Klein: Boycott and Divest from Israel UPDATED w/ POLL
by Christopher Day
Sun Jan 11, 2009 at 01:59:00 PM PST

Author and activists Naomi Klein has written a call for a campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel to be modelled on the successful international campaign waged against the apartheid regime in South Africa.

In the wake of the recent bipartisan US House and Senate votes endorsing the ongoing massacre in Gaza it should be abundantly clear that the single-minded focus here on electing more Dems is not going to buy the Palestinian people any reprieve, despite the overwhelming opposition to Israel's actions on the part of grassroots Dems. What is needed now is a grassroots movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people like the one that transformed apartheid South Africa into a pariah state and contributed to the final collapse of the apartheid regime.

* Christopher Day's diary :: ::
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Naomi Klein makes the argument for such a movement in a piece that appeared in the The Nation and UK Guardian:

The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa. In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era". The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions was born.

Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause - even among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors in Israel. It calls for "the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions" and draws a clear parallel with the anti-apartheid struggle. "The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves ... This international backing must stop."

Yet even in the face of these clear calls, many of us still can't go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. But they simply aren't good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tool in the non-violent arsenal: surrendering them verges on active complicity.

Klein then lays out and persuasively refutes the arguments that have most commonly been raised against the BDS strategy:

1. Punitive measures will alienate rather than persuade Israelis.

2. Israel is not South Africa.

3. Why single out Israel when the United States, Britain and other Western countries do the same things in Iraq and Afghanistan?

4. Boycotts sever communication; we need more dialogue, not less.

I won't recapitulate her arguments. People can read them for themselves here at The Nation.

What is critical here is that this is a proposal for concrete action that we can take now in response to what is happening in Gaza. We don't have to wait for elected Dems to heed our calls and e-mails. We can start now the work of building the sort of grassroots movement that was so effective against the apartheid regime. (For those who wince at this association it is worth remembering that when most of the rest of the world was striving to isolate the apartheid regime, Israel was bolstering its relations with the racist regime.)

The genius of the BDS campaign is that it recognizes the different political realities facing people in different places. In the US we are a long way from being able to demand sanctions against Israel and can expect considerable resistance even to calls for municipal or university divestment. But there is no reason that small groups can't begin the work of buildig awareness and support for such measures now by promoting the boycott of Israeli-produced goods. Information on how to identify such goods can be found here. The UPC barcode on goods of Israeli origin all begin with the number 729. There is no good reason that any individual here can't get together a couple friends, investigate which Israeli goods are sold at their local supermarket and initiate a campaign in their area to encourage the supermarket (or department store or...) to stop carrying such goods.

Information on the initial call for a BDS campaign against Israel can be found here.

UPDATE: Recommended? That marks a real sea change in the attitude here towards the discussion of Israel and Palestine. Individuals or organizations who want to endorse the call for the campaign should go here to do so.
Poll

Do you support a campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel?

Yes
72% 658 votes

No
23% 208 votes

I think I can avoid taking a stand on this issue.
5% 44 votes

| 910 votes