Sep 9, 2010

#BDS: The reasons the BDS movement is ‘gaining speed’

On September 5, 2010 the Israel newspaper Haaretz published an article the headline of which read "Anti-Israel Economic Boycotts are Gaining Speed." The subtitle went on to state that "the sums involved are not large, but their international significance is huge." Actually, what seems to have triggered the piece was not international. Rather, it was the decision of a "few dozen theater people" to boycott "a new cultural center in Ariel," an illegally settled town in the Occupied Territories. This action drew public support from 150 academics in Israel. The response from the Israeli right, which presently controls the government and much of Israel’s information environment, was loud and hateful.

Though this affair was domestic, it provided a jumping off point for Haaretz to go on and examine the larger international boycott of Israel which is indeed "gaining speed." It noted that Chile had recently pledged to boycott products from the Israeli settlements and Norway’s state pension plan had divested itself of companies involved in construction in the Occupied Territories. The Haaretz article pointed out that these incidents (and there are others that can be named in such countries as Ireland and Venezuela) are signs that the boycott movement –so long the province civil society– is now finding resonance at the level of national governments. The Israeli paper declared that "the world is changing before our eyes. Five years ago the anti-Israel movement may have been marginal. Now it is growing into an economic problem."

The article puts forth two explanations for this turn of events one of which is problematic, and the other incomplete. Let’s take a look at them.

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