{"id":71526,"date":"2016-04-04T12:39:35","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T11:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=71526"},"modified":"2016-04-04T12:39:35","modified_gmt":"2016-04-04T11:39:35","slug":"fighting-israeli-occupying-forces-is-terrorism-boycotting-is-anti-semitism-whats-allowed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/04\/fighting-israeli-occupying-forces-is-terrorism-boycotting-is-anti-semitism-whats-allowed\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting Israeli Occupying Forces Is \u201cTerrorism.\u201d Boycotting Is \u201cAnti-Semitism.\u201d What\u2019s Allowed?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"glenn<\/a>3 Apr 2016 – <\/em>That \u201cterrorism\u201d is a malleable term of propaganda<\/a>, with no fixed meaning or consistent application<\/a>, is now quite well-established<\/a>. Still,\u00a0its recent application to a spate of violence targeting Israel\u2019s occupying soldiers in the West Bank is so manipulative and extreme that it\u2019s well worth highlighting.<\/p>\n

Israel has militarily occupied the West Bank for decades (it\u2019s also still functionally occupying Gaza, as this two-minute video proves<\/a>). The West Bank<\/a>\u00a0\u201coccupation is illegal under international law and the United Nations has repeatedly told the country\u2019s government to vacate Palestinian territory.\u201d Even ardent defenders of Israel admit<\/a> that \u201cthe West Bank is under a legal regime of belligerent occupation\u201d and \u201cIsrael\u2019s settlement enterprise is, and has always been, grossly illegal under international law.\u201d Despite this world consensus, Israeli settlements\u00a0continue to grow rapidly<\/a>. Israel is not engaged in any meaningful efforts<\/a> to negotiate an agreement to end the occupation, and leading Israeli ministers now\u00a0openly oppose such efforts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"israel<\/a>

Israeli soldiers stand near the body of a Palestinian who was shot and killed by a soldier while lying wounded on the ground after a stabbing attack in Hebron in the West Bank on March 24, 2016.<\/p><\/div>\n

In response to this, there has been a series of attacks over the past year by Palestinians on Israeli occupying soldiers in the West Bank. In the Israeli<\/a> and American press<\/a>, the Palestinians attacking these occupying soldiers<\/a> are invariably called<\/a> \u201cterrorists<\/a>\u201d and their attacks are denounced<\/a> as \u201cterrorism\u201d (\u201cThe two soldiers were stabbed<\/a> while at a guard post at the Har Bracha settlement, located in the northern West Bank. \u2026 Troops were searching for the terrorists\u201d).<\/p>\n

For those (such as myself) who have long contended that the term \u201cterrorism\u201d now has little meaning beyond\u00a0\u201cviolence by Muslims against the West and its allies,\u201d and no purpose other than to delegitimize violence by one side while legitimizing the other side\u2019s, can there be any better proof than this?<\/p>\n

\"israel<\/a><\/p>\n

There have been Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians of course (while\u00a0far more Palestinian civilians have died<\/a> at the hands of the Israeli army), but in these<\/em>\u00a0specific cases, these Palestinians are attacking purely military targets, not civilians. Those military targets are soldiers deployed to their soil as part of an illegal occupying army. In what conceivable sense can that be \u201cterrorism\u201d? If fighting an\u00a0occupying army<\/em> is now \u201cterrorism\u201d simply because the army belongs to Israel and the attackers are Palestinian, is it not incredibly obvious how\u00a0this term is exploited?<\/p>\n

The U.S. has frequently done the same: invade and occupy countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan and then label anyone who fights their occupying armies<\/a> as \u201cterrorists,\u201d even putting some in Guant\u00e1namo for that<\/a>. Similarly, attacks against military bases<\/a> of the U.S., U.K., and other Western countries are routinely labeled \u201cterrorism.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

Needless to say, both Americans and Israelis (along with most others in the world) reserve for themselves the absolute right to fight against any foreign army that occupies their land. Indeed, Hollywood, in the 1980s,\u00a0produced a film called Red Dawn<\/em>, which imagined an occupation of the U.S. by the Soviet Union and its Nicaraguan and Cuban allies. It told the story of the heroic U.S. citizens, led by high school students, who waged a guerrilla war against the occupying troops, killing dozens upon dozens of them. Imagine the widespread confusion, and outrage, that would have resulted if someone accused the filmmakers of glorifying \u201cterrorism\u201d by demonizing\u00a0the fictional American\u00a0resisters\u00a0as\u00a0\u201cterrorists\u201d:<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1_I4WgBfETc<\/p>\n

The film was updated in 2012 with a sequel depicting \u201cone group of unlikely [American] heroes\u201d who waged guerrilla warfare against North Korean forces who had invaded and occupied the U.S. (the film originally depicted these American heroes attacking and killing an occupying army from China, but, in\u00a0post-production, the producers changed the identity of the occupiers to North Korean in order to preserve access to Chinese\u00a0theaters):<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zDLEeAzIbwc<\/p>\n

When Americans resist military occupation by fighting against occupying troops on their soil, they are noble heroes. But when Palestinians do this, they are \u201cterrorists.\u201d This discourse, by design, equates Palestinians resisting occupation by fighting against an occupying army with al Qaeda and ISIS, and thus posits that any use of force by Palestinians to resist Israeli occupation \u2014 even when done on Palestinian soil, aimed exclusively at Israeli military targets there \u2014 is illegitimate.<\/p>\n

So\u00a0if violent resistance is illegitimate \u201cterrorism,\u201d\u00a0what\u00a0about other alternatives for resisting the decades-old, still-expanding illegal Israeli occupation? The nonviolent route embraced by Palestinian activists and their anti-occupation allies around the world is a campaign of boycott, sanctions, and divestment (BDS) aimed at Israel, modeled after the campaign that helped end South Africa\u2019s\u00a0apartheid regime in the 1980s (a regime that, just by the way, was a close ally of both the U.S. and Israel).<\/p>\n

But there is a highly successful campaign by Israel and its U.S. allies not only to decree this nonviolent boycott campaign illegitimate, but literally to outlaw it.<\/em>\u00a0Official bodies are enacting rules to\u00a0censor and officially suppress it by equating the campaign with \u201canti-Semitism\u201d even though, as fervent Israel supporter Eric Alterman wrote in the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0this week<\/a>, \u201cit is filled with young Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Intercept<\/em>\u00a0and other outlets<\/a> have\u00a0repeatedly reported<\/a> on official governmental and university actions<\/a>\u00a0to ban BDS activism<\/a> by equating it with \u201canti-Semitism.\u201d\u00a0In California, the regents of the nation\u2019s largest university system just enacted a resolution<\/a> strongly implying that BDS activism is anti-Semitic and thus in violation of university rules. In New York last week, dozens of state legislators, from both parties,\u00a0have demanded the de-funding<\/a>\u00a0of a pro-Palestinian group at CUNY, a move denounced<\/a> by the campus free speech group FIRE.\u00a0Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, when running for office, announced<\/a> that BDS \u201chas no place on Canadian campuses.\u201d In France, people are literally arrested as criminals<\/a>\u00a0under \u201chate speech\u201d laws for wearing T-shirts<\/a> advocating BDS. Measures in the U.K.\u00a0have been enacted<\/a> to legally bar support for such boycott movements. Laws and proposed bills in Israel ban advocacy of the movement<\/a> and bar supporters from entering Israel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So look at what has happened here. When Palestinians fight against occupying troops on their soil, they are denounced \u2014 and often killed<\/a> \u2014 as \u201cterrorists.\u201d\u00a0Meanwhile, nonviolent campaigns to end the occupation through a South Africa-style boycott are demonized as \u201canti-Semitism\u201d and officially barred \u2014\u00a0censored \u2014 in all sorts of ways, in numerous countries around the world.<\/p>\n

If\u00a0fighting Israeli occupying forces is barred as \u201cterrorism,\u201d and nonviolent boycotts against Israel are barred as \u201canti-Semitism,\u201d then what is considered a legitimate means for Palestinians and their allies to resist and end the decadeslong, illegal Israeli occupation? The answer is: nothing. Palestinians are obliged to submit to Israeli occupation in a way that none of the people demanding that would ever themselves submit to occupation of their land. All forms of resistance to Israeli occupation are deemed illegitimate.\u00a0That<\/em>, manifestly,\u00a0is the whole point of all of this.<\/p>\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

Glenn Greenwald<\/a> – \u2709glenn.greenwald@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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

3 Apr 2016 – That \u201cterrorism\u201d is a malleable term of propaganda, with no fixed meaning or consistent application, is now quite well-established. All forms of resistance to Israeli occupation \u2014 violent and nonviolent \u2014 are deemed illegitimate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71526","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=71526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}