Toronto
Robert Pollin believes that the biggest problem with the Boycott,
Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) strategy is that it targets only one side in
the conflict. For Pollin, this is a conflict between equally guilty
parties deserving of equal punishment. It is not. Israel is the party
that displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948, annexed
more of their land in 1967 and continues to occupy the land today.
Occupiers and occupied people do not share the same responsibilities,
which is why the duties and responsibilities of an occupying power are
laid out in the Geneva Conventions--laws Israel violates with impunity.
Even if I were to accept Pollin's argument that any sanction should
punish both sides equally, we face a rather large problem. How does
Professor Pollin propose that we punish Gazans more than they are being
punished already? In case he has failed to notice, there is already a
fierce campaign of boycotts and sanctions under way, and it is
completely one-sided. I am referring, of course, to Israel's brutal
eighteen-month siege of Gaza, launched to teach Gazans a lesson for
voting for Hamas in US-backed elections. As a direct result of this
siege, Gazans have been deprived of lifesaving medicines, cooking fuel
and paper--not to mention food. This is far more than a mere boycott;
it's "collective punishment," as described by Richard Falk, United
Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian
Territories. By contrast, the kind of legal boycott being called for by
the BDS campaign would deprive Tel Aviv of some international concerts
and, if it really got going, would cost Israel some foreign investment.
It would not starve and sicken an entire people. In this context of
actual one-sided punishment inflicted on Palestinians, sanctioned by the
so-called civilized world, to complain of one-sided boycotts against
Israel is, frankly, obscene.
As for the proposed $10 billion for a redevelopment/relocation fund,
there is no doubt that if a just peace agreement is ever to be reached,
a generous peace dividend will be required to make it work. But before
we start handing out rewards for a nonexistent peace, Israel first has
to decide that endless war is too costly. And that's what the BDS
strategy is for: to help Israel come to that eminently reasonable
conclusion.
NAOMI KLEIN
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