Readers Respond

A NOTE ON LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:
We welcome your responses to our articles. Send your letters to the editor to letters@tikkun.org. Please remember, however, not to attribute to Tikkun views other than those expressed in our editorials. We email, post, and print many articles with which we have strong disagreements, because that is what makes Tikkun a location for a true diversity of ideas. Tikkun reserves the right to edit your letters to fit available space in the magazine.

Is BDS Effective?

Tony Klug’s “The Arab Awakening and the Israeli-Palestinian Connection” (Tikkun, Fall 2011) is a very good and reflective article, containing some valuable insights. The one item I take exception to is this: “Israel might find itself increasingly isolated as the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement extends its appeal globally and governments around the world vent ineffectual fury.” Why “ineffectual”? BDS is the only serious nonviolent means that civil society can use to get Israel to feel the reality of the consequences of its criminal occupation while the major world powers continue to back Israel. It is in fact very effective, and growing in its necessity, if only to counteract Israel’s lobbies, such as AIPAC (the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) and BICOM (the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre), and the whole machinery of hasbara. It is an effective challenge to Israel’s determination to project the image of a Western, hi-tech, and advanced democracy. That image fails while Israel’s breaches of international law are revealed and Israel acts like a rogue state out of control. There must be consequences for its actions!

Abe Hayeem
London, United Kingdom

Tony Klug replies:

“Ineffectual” was used in my article to describe not the BDS movement but other governments’ likely responses to possible future unilateral steps by Israel. Nonetheless, the letter writer’s bold assertion that BDS is “very effective” is questionable, partly because its measure of effectiveness is less than clear. While it is true that it gives people who want to object non-violently to Israeli policies something to do, this is not the same as affecting those policies or the positions taken by their own governments.

As for any campaign, the key to successful pressure is clarity of goal. The BDS campaign’s basic weakness is that it appears to be a coalition of two broad factions, one that campaigns for the end of the Occupation and the other for the end of Israel. They cannot agree on the objective, so they agree on the strategy. But strategies, to be effective, need to be driven by their objectives.

An objective that could command widespread popular support, including crucially among many Israelis and Jews, as well as potentially state governments, is one that focuses on resurrecting the old Green Line, differentiating clearly between the international legitimacy of the Israeli state within its 1967 borders and the illegitimacy of its continuing and apparently indefinite occupation of Palestinian territory, and in particular its colonization project. Such an objective would give rise to a strategy that distinguishes unambiguously between boycotting the settlements (and their products, etc.) and boycotting Israel proper and Israelis in general. The apparent inability of the BDS campaign to clearly make these distinctions is likely, eventually, to be its Achilles’ heel.

Trauma in Israel

I share Rae Abileah’s longing for peace in the Middle East. Would that pink baskets of toiletries or ribbons or banners could achieve these noble goals. Would that Israel could simply declare peace on its own. Would that this season of repentance could bring an end to violence and hatred.

But as I read through her eloquent remarks in “Fresh Tactics and New Voices in the Movement for Justice and Freedom in the Middle East” (Tikkun, Fall 2011), I can’t help but note that Rae makes no mention of the endless attempts at peace negotiations undertaken by Israel, some of which (e.g., Camp David) came pretty darn close to giving away the farm, all to no avail. She makes no mention of the fact...