Mark says:
The author of the following article published in the British Independent is Benjamin Pogrund. (Please pardon the fact that I took most of the biographical information on him from Wikipedia.) The South African-born author began his career as a journalist in 1958, writing for the Johannesburg Rand Daily Mail, eventually becoming its deputy editor. The Rand Daily Mail was the only newspaper in South Africa at that time to report on events in black South African townships. In the course of his work he came to know the major players in the apartheid struggle and gained the respect and confidence of leaders such as Nelson Mandela. Pogrund's reporting of police conduct in the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 was considered a "breakthrough." He was chief author of a 1965 series on beating and torture of black inmates.
During his career reporting on apartheid in South Africa he was put on trial several times, put in prison once, had his passport revoked, and was investigated as a threat to the state by security police. Pogrund moved to London in 1985 after the Rand Daily Mail ceased publication (I presume that means it went out of business) and became the chief foreign sub-editor of The Independent. He immigrated to Israel in 1997 and is founder-director of Yakar's Center for Social Concern. He has written books about Robert Sobukwe, Nelson Mandela, and the South African press under apartheid, and he was co-editor of "Shared Histories: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue."
I have also included three of the reader comments to this article — out of the 263 that were submitted. They are by no means a representative sample nor do I include them for "balance." I just found them "interesting" counterpoints to Pogrund's article. "Interesting," of course, is in the eye of the beholder.
Go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/24/israel-boycotts-right-traumatised?commentpage=1 if you want to read all the comments — and beware that it often gets pretty nasty — and that doesn't include the comments that were removed by the moderator.
As you read this article and the comments I included (or all of them if you wish) I would ask you to consider the following points:
- Why is it that many of those who support a boycott of Israel are usually the same people who are against boycotting Iran or Hamas in Gaza or were against boycotting Iraq under Saddam Husayn?
- Why is it that many of those who are against a boycott of Israel because boycotts are "ineffective" support boycotts of Iran and Hamas and supported the boycott against Iraq under Saddam Husayn?
- In both cases is the purpose or aim of those who support boycotts to make the countries or the organizations against which they are directed change their policies or is their aim or purpose ultimately to eliminate those countries or organizations?
- If their purpose is to make them change their policies, why are boycotts justified in some cases but not justified in other cases?
- If the purpose of the boycotts is to eliminate any of those countries or organizations is it all of them or just certain ones?
- If it is against just certain ones, why not the others?
Boycotts only harden Israeli opinion
Far from saving this traumatised nation, boycotts are a gift to the fearmongers — we must educate and persuade Israelis instead
By Benjamin Pogrund
The Guardian (UK)
August 24, 2009
The most inaccurate way to describe Israel today is as an apartheid state. That's the exact opposite of what Neve Gordon said on Cif last week. Level whatever criticisms you want against Israel — start with West Bank occupation and oppression of Palestinians, and go on to the domestic discrimination suffered by the Arab minority — but the simple fact is that none of it is the apartheid of the old South Africa. Abundant evidence of this is readily available, in the Guardian and elsewhere.
Why then is the comparison so often made? One reason, in a different context, is in the words of American comedian Stephen Colbert: "Remember kids! In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant."
For some, the apartheid accusation is the way to destroy Israel. If Israel can be linked with apartheid then it can be denounced as illegitimate as was white-ruled South Africa and hence be wide open to international sanctions.
Those who pursue this couldn't care less about facts. They have an agenda and are unscrupulous about distortion, lying and exaggeration. Their ultimate purpose is exposed by how they answer a basic question: whether or not they accept the fact of Israel's existence.
Others use the apartheid label because they are genuinely affronted and angered by Israeli behaviour — from the occupation to the attack on Gaza — and it seems an easy way to reduce to digestible size the complexities of the national-religious struggle between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians over a small piece of land. It's wrong and it's lazy but that's how many people behave.
It is surprising, and disappointing, to find Gordon in these ranks. He is a professor of politics at a good Israeli university and one expects a more informed approach. I have never met him but see from his writing that he is a man of conscience. He condemns Israeli misdeeds and has long worked for peace, although to be sure he seems to be at the outer fringe of Israel's peace camp. So active is he that rightwing extremists rant at him and try to pressure his university to get rid of him.
Now, however, not only does he take over the apartheid line but he supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement aimed at Israel. That presumably includes the academic boycott that he has previously opposed; he thus becomes both the arrow and the target. He still has to explain how he will resolve this personal contradiction.
Equally the "double standard" which he rightly describes as a problem. Why not boycott China for its egregious violations of human rights, he asks. To which he could add the US because of its many human rights sins, Greece and Romania for mistreating their Roma people, India for Dalits, Turkey for Kurds, Lebanon's denial of rights to Palestinians, Cuba, Libya etc etc. He puts a good question, but does not give an answer.
The explanation for his new outlook is: "The Israeli peace camp has gradually dwindled so that today it is almost non-existent, and Israeli politics are moving more and more to the extreme right."
He is venting the left's despair. The left's influence has probably never been lower. Its efforts to foster peace with Palestinians are ignored. It has been ineffective in halting the rise of the right wing. It is powerless against an aggressively rightwing government whose leaders abusively blame it for Palestinian terrorism. Its warnings of settlement growth on the West Bank are trashed.
In dealing with this situation we are entitled to look to a professor of politics for insights and understanding of why it has happened, if only because therein lies possible solutions. It has not come about in a vacuum. But again, nothing.
However, the factors at work are obvious, such as the absence of a brave and visionary leadership (both Israeli and Palestinian). There is also, at bottom, the Jewish psyche shaped by history: the centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust, the triumph of the creation of Israel in 1948 and the immediate invasions by Arab neighbours to eradicate it and the unceasing rejectionism, wars and attacks since then.
The terrorism that Palestinians have resorted to has deeply traumatised Israelis. Suicide bombings have driven many or most Israelis to the right. Thousands of rockets fired by Hamas from the Gaza Strip and missiles by Hezbollah from Lebanon, add to the national anxiety. There is more than buffoonery in Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wanting to wipe Israel off the map: his nuclear ambitions are scary.
There is certainly Jewish over-sensitivity and over-reaction; some Jews misuse and manipulate antisemitism and the Holocaust to stoke up fears for their own purposes. But allowing for all this, the fact of antisemitism is still a potent and dangerous reality, whether in Arab bloodthirsty threats or the UN Human Rights Council singling out Israel for attack, or a stupid Swedish newspaper article alleging the stealing of human organs.
Day after day, Jewish paranoia is buttressed and justified: Jews see themselves in a world of menace in which their existence is always under threat. In this situation, boycotts, sanctions and divestment are not the way to persuade individual Israelis to change. To believe that it will do the trick is to fail to understand use of boycott as a tactic to achieve defined aims. Applied in this case it will harden Israeli opinion, and make people more determined to tell the world to go to hell. Far from saving Israel from itself, as Gordon wants, it will be a gift to the right wing who will trade on it to foster fear.
That doesn't mean all pressure is useless: it's of a different order when applied, for instance, by the US government through threat of withdrawal of loan guarantees or arms supplies, as has occurred in the past. Such action forces the leaders in government to justify themselves and explain to the public why they have landed the country in such trouble with its most powerful friend.
South Africa offers some lessons. Boycotts were but one of the measures that brought down apartheid and they had variable effects. Sports boycotts sapped the morale of whites; cultural boycotts mainly hurt elites who mostly opposed apartheid; disinvestment, causing loss of jobs, hit the black people whom it was intended to help; industry was not laid low — when Kodak left, Fuji came in; when Ford left, other car makers took over. The most effective action was probably the refusal by US banks in 1985 to roll over loans; that struck the foundations of the economy and was the beginning of the end. Then came the effects of the end of the cold war.
In the case of Israel, resorting to mass boycotts is an admission of failure. It's a cathartic response to despair and floundering. Israelis have turned their backs on Gordon so he blindly lashes out.
Yet there is an alternative. It's old-fashioned: educate and persuade. There is already a head start: opinion polls consistently show a majority of Israelis — and Palestinians too — accept a two-state solution as the means to peace. That must be built on: convince Israelis that they are not going to be murdered and thrown into the sea, and that their children — not only Gordon's two sons — can look forward to a secure future. Convince them that the world — or at least much of it — does not view them as more evil than any other people but wishes them well. Encourage and help maximum contact and co-operation between Israelis and Palestinians.
It's often boring, tedious work, with results that are not always immediately apparent. But it's an affirmation of hope about what can be achieved.
Selected Reader Comments
exiledlondoner
24 Aug 09, 12:37pm (about 8 hours ago)
Mr Pogrund,
The most inaccurate way to describe Israel today is as an apartheid state.I don't agree Neve Gordon's description of Israel as an Apartheid state, as I said on his thread. In Israel, behind the green line, there is a functioning democracy — there may be discrimination, but Apartheid doesn't merely describe discrimination; it describes a policy of forced separation of the races, and the denial of political rights on the basis of skin colour or race.
That's the exact opposite of what Neve Gordon said on Cif last week. Level
whatever criticisms you want against Israel — start with West Bank occupation
and oppression of Palestinians, and go on to the domestic discrimination
suffered by the Arab minority — but the simple fact is that none of it is the
apartheid of the old South Africa. Abundant evidence of this is readily
available, in the Guardian and elsewhere.
However, I would have no problem in describing the situation in the occupied West Bank as Apartheid-like, especially between the green line and the wall. It seems to me that the proliferation of Jewish only settlements, Jewish only roads, roadblocks and checkpoints for Palestinians, and barriers between the two groups are remarkably similar to Apartheid.
The other issue is the future. As Olmert conceded, a failure to create a Palestinian state alongside Israel comes with the risk of a form of Apartheid developing. If Israel is to continue indefinitely to control all of the land west of the Jordan, then it will either have to grant Palestinians rights, or it will have to rule them as second-class citizens. The ever-expanding settlements make the third option — a legal occupation — unachievable.
Day after day, Jewish paranoia is buttressed and justified: Jews see
themselves in a world of menace in which their existence is always under threat.
In this situation, boycotts, sanctions and divestment are not the way to
persuade individual Israelis to change. To believe that it will do the trick is
to fail to understand use of boycott as a tactic to achieve defined aims.
Applied in this case it will harden Israeli opinion, and make people more
determined to tell the world to go to hell.
I agree with a lot of what you say.
For any proposal to be adopted, it first needs to pass one simple test — will it work? The South African experience would seem to suggest yes, but I believe that's deceptive — boycotts didn't bring down Apartheid; targetted sanctions did. As there's no realistic prospect of the sort of sanctions maintained against SA being applied against Israel, calls for boycotts seem to offer little more than a way of making activists feel good.
Secondly, boycotts are indiscriminate — at a time when the conflict is crying out for moderate Israelis to reverse the extremist tide, it simply doesn't make sense to penalise them for nothing else than being Israeli.
I would support sanctions, but only if they were targetted against specific issues — arms sales, the mislabelling of west bank produce, "charitable" support for the settlement program, or settlement building. The problem is not Israel — it's Israel's actions in the occupied territories.
Yet there is an alternative. It's old-fashioned: educate and persuade.Yes, but I don't think it's either/or — carrots and sticks both have their uses. Israel's reaction to any suggestion that Iran should only be educated and persuaded is instructive — they don't believe it works.
There is already a head start: opinion polls consistently show a majority of[R]eassuring as that is, I'm not convinced that you're comparing apples with apples. I suspect that the Palestinian majority is for an agreement on the green line, with a substantial right of return, and full statehood, while the Israeli majority is for an agreement on the wall, little or no right of return, and something that falls way short of Palestinian statehood.
Israelis — and Palestinians too — accept a two-state solution as the means to
peace.
The devil, as always, is in the detail....
DrJohnZoidberg
24 Aug 09, 1:23pm (about 8 hours ago)
quiller-
How can you persuade against the blind politico"GOD PROMISED US THIS LAND". "IT SAYS IN THE TORAH OR BIBLE"
theological arguments:
and if you disagree, you are an anti semite, a Jew hater, etc
The various Qur'anic revelations and Prophetic statements concerning the blessed land of Palestine endeared the land to the Companions (Sahabah) of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) to such an extent that when `Umar ibn Al-Khattab entered the region for the first time he announced that all the lands of Palestine would be part of the Islamic Waqf (endowment) for the Muslim generations to come.
http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:QdBdyECj0zoJ:www.islamonline.net/fatwaapplication/english/display.asp%3FhFatwaID%3D74021+waqf+palestine&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
and your point is caller? if it's 'all pixie superstisions are crap', then i'm with ya bro...if not, then it looks like your being selective to suit your own agenda....and i won't make any implication...
afancdogge
24 Aug 09, 7:35pm (about 8 hours ago)
Hello Ragworm
I totally oppose the occupation — biggest mistake Israel ever made. It has become a monster with a mouth at both ends biting everybody.
I am trying to understand what those calling for boycott and sanctions are supporting as a positive outcome. One state — two states — an end to Israeli control of Gaza and WB?
There are so many suggested solutions — on the tail of how many over the past 42 years? — it is now impossible to know who is calling for what. This just opens up more ravines into which the WBankers can fall. It also helps to delay serious negotiations — simply adds more hurdles.
I don't know the answer — in fact there is no one solution simply because we are up against so many entenched attitudes, beliefs and aspiration all round. Pressure from one direction causes a pushing back and increased determination to pursue a destructive agenda.
Both sides lack leadership with any vision or it seems goodwill towards the other. In the meantime people suffer and die.
Leni
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