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Viewpoint - May 5, 2011

THE BOYCOTT ISRAEL MOVEMENT; AN INTERVIEW WITH OMAR
BARGHOUTI

The movement has three demands: an end to Israel's occup-
ation of Palestinian lands and the dismantling of the
separation barrier, equality for Palestinian citizens of
Israel and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
To meet these goals, the BDS movement advocates boycotting
Israeli products and institutions, divesting from companies
profiting from the occupation and government sanctions on
Israel.

Boycott Israel Movement Creates 'Sea Change': An Interview
with Palestinian Human Rights Activist Omar Barghouti
By Alex Kane

Modeled on the international campaign of economic and
political pressure that helped bring an end to South
African apartheid nearly two decades ago, the growing
boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement targeting
Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories has notched
notable victories of late.

Achievements include the announcement in April that the
flagship London outlet of Ahava, an Israeli cosmetics
company that reportedly manufactures its products in an
illegal West Bank settlement, is losing its lease in
response to years of protest. In February, legendary folk
singer Pete Seeger joined a roster of artists honoring
the boycott of Israel, including Elvis Costello, Dustin
Hoffman, Gil Scott-Heron, Johnny Depp and the Pixies.

Defenders of Israel dismiss these victories as minor
irritants, but the government has reacted with alarm.
In February the Knesset gave initial approval to a bill
criminalizing advocacy of BDS. Israeli commentators,
including the influential Tel Aviv-based Reut Institute,
have called the BDS movement a "strategic threat" to the
state of Israel. And the United States, Israel's patron,
has joined the chorus of critics. "When academics from
Israel are boycotted ? this is not objecting to a policy ?
this is anti-Semitism," Hannah Rosenthal, the State Depart-
ment's envoy on combating anti-Semitism, said in an April 2
speech.

Rosenthal's statement came right after the U.S. Consulate
in Jerusalem approved a long-delayed visa for Omar
Barghouti, a leading figure in the BDS movement. Author
of the new book, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions: The
Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, Barghouti was
forced to postpone a tour of U.S. college campuses after
his visa was held up for four months. In response an
international campaign bombarded the consulate with phone
calls and emails.

The attempt at scuttling Barghouti's tour comes as no
surprise in the context of increased U.S. and Israeli
government scrutiny of the BDS movement's growing
popularity. Barghouti is a founding member of the
Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural
Boycott of Israel, and award-winning journalist Max
Blumenthal refers to Barghouti as "one of the BDS
movement's most effective strategists and promoters."

I met up with Barghouti after his publisher, Haymarket
Books, rescheduled his tour for April. Sitting in a
crowded coffee shop in Manhattan, Barghouti talked about
building on his experience as an anti-apartheid campaigner
by focusing his attention on U.S. college campuses. "When
I was in the anti-apartheid movement, we knew that we
won when Columbia, Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton
divested. That was the beginning of the end for the
apartheid system in South Africa."

Barghouti describes his book as "about a movement that's
still growing very rapidly, in fact, and changing and
transforming and gaining many more supporters. [The book
is] taking stock of the main intellectual basis for the
movement, the main achievements, the main challenges and
where we go forward from here."

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The movement has three demands: an end to Israel's
occupation of Palestinian lands and the dismantling
of the separation barrier, equality for Palestinian
citizens of Israel and the right of return for
Palestinian refugees. To meet these goals, the BDS
movement advocates boycotting Israeli products and
institutions, divesting from companies profiting
from the occupation and government sanctions on
Israel.

Critics of BDS allege that the movement seeks to
"delegitimize" Israel. Barghouti dismisses such charges:
"It's at best hypocritical, unfounded and totally base-
less. In the anti-apartheid movement in the South African
days ? which I was a part of ? no one claimed that opposing
apartheid in South Africa was delegitimizing South
Africans, Afrikaners, whites, English South Africans. It
was seen as delegitimizing apartheid, as it was... We're
delegitimizing occupation, apartheid and denial of rights.
We're not delegitimizing any people as such."

It's clear from the responses of powerful governments
that the BDS movement is chipping away at key bastions
of support for Israel in the West ? exactly the movement's
goal, says Barghouti. "I think we've already won the battle
for hearts and minds in many places in the West, especially
in Western Europe. ...Recent polls show Europeans view
Israel, together with North Korea, Iran and Pakistan, as
the most important threats to world peace. So, Israel is
down there in that league, and the BDS movement has played
a key role."

But in the United States the stakes are even higher.
Barghouti says, "It's too early to mention a real,
substantial shift in the [mainstream] discourse in
the U.S. on the Palestinian-Israeli colonial conflict,"
but at the grassroots level and on college campuses
there is "a sea change in terms of the discourse."

For example, New York University's Students for Justice
in Palestine just kicked off a divestment campaign on
their campus, and students at the University of Arizona
have recently launched a similar effort.

The BDS movement in the United States is up against power-
ful forces. At the urging of the Israeli government,
organizations such as the Jewish Federations of North
America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs have
pledged to spend $6 million in the next three years to
combat BDS initiatives. Nonetheless, left-wing Jewish
groups such as the Zionist group Meretz USA have begun to
embrace the logic of boycott. A prime example is Jewish
Voice for Peace, which is currently leading a campaign to
pressure the TIAA-CREF retirement fund to drop holdings
from companies that profit from the occupation.

"Many Jewish groups who were previously sitting on the
fence before the Israeli massacre in Gaza took sides in
support of Palestinian rights after Gaza. Increasingly,
they're moving in the direction of BDS," says Barghouti.

Some activists have argued that the BDS movement may now
also benefit from the Arab uprisings, which have captivated
and inspired many Americans, as seen by the union protests
in Wisconsin.

"Most of the Arab uprisings give credit to the Palestinian
intifada, the first intifada, as the main inspiration for
their revolutions. In turn, we are very inspired by the
peoples' revolutions, especially in Tunisia and Egypt.
Most importantly, there's been a drastic, irreversible
transformation in the balance of powers after the Egyptian
revolution," Barghouti says.

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