{"id":178873,"date":"2021-02-08T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2021-02-08T12:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=178873"},"modified":"2024-06-12T21:24:45","modified_gmt":"2024-06-12T20:24:45","slug":"freedom-is-never-voluntarily-given-palestinian-boycott-of-israel-is-not-racist-it-is-anti-racist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/02\/freedom-is-never-voluntarily-given-palestinian-boycott-of-israel-is-not-racist-it-is-anti-racist\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Freedom Is Never Voluntarily Given\u2019: Palestinian Boycott of Israel Is Not Racist, It Is Anti-Racist"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Martin Luther King Jr. chairs the boycott campaign in Montgomery in 1955.
(Photo: File)<\/p><\/div>\n

3 Feb 2021 – <\/em>Claims made by Democratic New York City mayoral candidate<\/a>, Andrew Yang, in a recent op-ed<\/a> in the Jewish weekly, \u2018The Forward\u2019,<\/em> point to the prevailing ignorance that continues to dominate the US discourse on Palestine and Israel.<\/p>\n

Yang, a former Democratic Presidential candidate, is vying for the Jewish vote in New York City. According to the reductionist assumption that all Jews must naturally support Israel and Zionism, Yang constructed<\/a> an argument that is entirely based on a tired and false mantra equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.<\/p>\n

Yang\u2019s pro-Israel logic is not only unfounded, but confused as well. \u201cA Yang administration will push back against the BDS movement which singles out Israel for unfair economic punishment,\u201d he wrote, referring to the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.<\/p>\n

Yang compared the BDS movement to the \u201cfascist boycotts of Jewish businesses\u201d, most likely a reference to the infamous Nazi boycott<\/a> of Jewish businesses in Germany, starting in April 1933.<\/p>\n

Not only does Yang fail to construct his argument in any historically defensible fashion, he claims that BDS is \u201crooted in anti-Semitic thought and history.\u201d<\/p>\n

BDS is, in fact, rooted in history, not that of Nazi Germany, but of the Palestinian General Strike<\/a> of 1936, when the Palestinian Arab population took collective action to hold colonial Britain accountable for its unfair and violent treatment of Palestinian Muslims and Christians. Instead of helping Palestine achieve full sovereignty, colonial Britain backed the political aspirations of White European Zionists who aimed to establish a \u2018Jewish homeland\u2019 in Palestine.<\/p>\n

Sadly, the efforts of the Palestinian natives failed, and the new State of Israel became a reality in 1948, after nearly one million Palestinian refugees were uprooted and ethnically cleansed<\/a> as a result of a decidedly violent campaign, the aftershocks of which continue<\/a> to this day. Indeed, today\u2019s ongoing military occupation and apartheid are all rooted in that tragic history.<\/p>\n

This is the reality that the boycott movement is fighting to change. No anti-Semitic, Nazi \u2013 or, according to Yang\u2019s ahistorical account, \u2018fascist\u2019 \u2013 love affair is at work here; just a beleaguered and oppressed nation fighting for its most basic human rights.<\/p>\n

Yang\u2019s ignorant and self-serving comments were duly answered most appropriately, including by many anti-Zionist Jewish intellectuals and activists throughout the US and the world. Alex Kane, a writer in \u2018Jewish Currents\u2019 tweeted<\/a> that Yang made \u201ca messed up, wrong comparison\u201d, and that the politician \u201ccomes across as deeply ignorant about Palestine, Palestinians and BDS\u201d. US Muslim Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar<\/a>, and the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) added<\/a> their voices to numerous others, all pointing to Yang\u2019s opportunism, lack of understanding of history and distorted logic.<\/p>\n

But this goes beyond Yang, as the debate over BDS in the US is almost entirely rooted in fallacious comparisons and ignorance of history.<\/p>\n

Those who had hoped that the unceremonious end of the Donald Trump Administration would bring about a measure of justice for the Palestinian people will surely be disappointed, as the American discourse on Palestine and Israel rarely changes, regardless which President resides in the White House and what political party dominates the Congress.<\/p>\n

So, reducing the boycott debate to Yang\u2019s confused account of history and reality is, itself, a reductionist understanding of US politics. Indeed, similar language is regularly infused, like that used<\/a> by President Joe Biden\u2019s nominee for United Nations envoy, Linda Thomas-Greenfield while addressing her confirmation hearing at the Senate\u2019s Foreign Relations Committee on January 27. Like Yang, Thomas-Greenfield also found boycotting Israel an \u201cunacceptable\u201d act that \u201cverges on anti-Semitism.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the presumptive envoy supported the return of the US to the Human Rights Council, UNESCO and other UN-affiliated organizations, her reasoning for such a move is merely to ensure the US has a place \u201cat the table\u201d so that Washington may monitor and discourage any criticism of Israel.<\/p>\n

Yang, Thomas-Greenfield and others perpetuate such inaccurate comparisons with full confidence that they have strong support among the country\u2019s ruling elites from the two dominant political parties. Indeed, according to<\/a> the latest count produced by the pro-Israel Jewish Virtual Library website, \u201c32 states have adopted laws, executive orders or resolutions that are designed to discourage boycotts against Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, the criminalization of the boycott movement has taken center stage of the federal government in Washington DC. Anti-boycott legislation was passed with overwhelming majorities in both the Senate<\/a> and the House of Representatives<\/a> in recent years and more are expected to follow.<\/p>\n

The popularity of such measures prompted former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, to declare<\/a> the Israel boycott movement to be anti-Semitic, describing it at as \u2018a cancer\u2019 at a press conference in November, alongside Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, while in the illegal settlement of Psagot.<\/p>\n

While Pompeo\u2019s position is unsurprising, it behooves Yang and Thomas-Greenfield, both members of minority groups that suffered immense historical racism and discrimination, to brush up on the history of popular boycott movements in their own country. The weapon of boycott was, indeed, a most effective platform to translate political dissent into tangible achievements for oppressed Black people in the US during the civil rights movement in the mid-20th century. Most memorable, and consequential of these boycotts was the Montgomery Bus Boycott<\/a> of 1955.<\/p>\n

Moreover, outside the US, numerous volumes have been written about how the boycott of the White supremacist apartheid government in South Africa ignited a global movement which, combined with the sacrifices of Black South Africans, brought apartheid to an end<\/a> in the early 1990s.<\/p>\n

The Palestinian people do not learn history from Yang and others, but from the collective experiences of oppressed peoples and nations throughout the world. They are guided by the wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr., who once said that \u201cWe know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The boycott movement aims at holding the oppressor accountable as it places a price tag on military occupation and apartheid. Not only is the Palestinian boycott movement not racist, it is essentially a rallying cry against racism and oppression.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of <\/em>The Palestine Chronicle. His last book is <\/em>The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London) and his forthcoming book is <\/em>These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is <\/em>www.ramzybaroud.net<\/a><\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 ramzybaroud.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

3 Feb 2021 – The boycott movement aims at holding the oppressor accountable as it places a price tag on military occupation and apartheid. Not only is the Palestinian boycott movement not racist, it is essentially a rallying cry against racism and oppression. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":178874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[2221,120,1829,1030,87,267,1029,487,2395,88,771,1027,427,85,109,287,1572,985,880,292,70,126,1025,886],"class_list":["post-178873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide","tag-checkpoints","tag-conflict","tag-coronavirus","tag-fatah","tag-gaza","tag-geopolitics","tag-hamas","tag-human-rights","tag-international-criminal-court-icc","tag-israel","tag-nakba","tag-oslo-accords","tag-palestine","tag-palestine-israel","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-settlers","tag-social-justice","tag-state-terrorism","tag-un","tag-usa","tag-violence","tag-west-bank","tag-zionism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178873"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264206,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178873\/revisions\/264206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}