The Islamic Center

A principled stand

Fury as Methodists vote to boycott Israel

07.01.2010 | The Jewish Chronicle

The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council said the Methodists’ annual conference should “hang its head in shame” for passing a policy which calls for a boycott of goods from “illegal” Israeli West Bank settlements and blames Israeli occupation as the “key hindrance” to Middle East peace. Lord Sacks said the implications of the decision would “reverberate across the hitherto harmonious relationship between the faith communities in the UK”. He blasted the report as “unbalanced, factually and historically flawed” and offering “no genuine understanding of one of the most complex conflicts in the world today. Many in both communities will be deeply disturbed”. Delegates at the conference in Portsmouth overwhelmingly passed every recommendation of the report, which also included a call to review whether Zionism was compatible with Methodist beliefs. The Reverend Graham Carter, who chaired the working party that produced the report, said that while some people had wanted a boycott of all Israeli goods, “we did not feel that was the right thing to bring to conference”. Jewish organisations are particularly incensed that the Methodists disregarded advance warnings from the Council of Christians and Jews and other groups of the likely impact of the report on relations between Jews and Methodists. In a blistering joint statement, the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council said the report’s authors had “abused the goodwill of the Jewish community, which tried to engage on this issue, only to find our efforts were treated as an unwelcome distraction”. The conference “swallowed hook, line and sinker a report full of basic historical inaccuracies, deliberate misrepresentations and distortions of Jewish theology and Israeli policy,” they said. Calling the outcome “a very sad day” for Methodist-Jewish relations”, they said it would “cause the enemies of peace and reconciliation to cheer from the sidelines”. An internal church memo shows that the Methodist Church had rejected calls for a more “balanced” working party, whose members included Stephen Leah, the chairman of the York branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. David King, a delegate from Lancashire and one of a number of speakers at the debate who raised Jewish concerns, noted “a rise in antisemitic activity in the UK”. He said: “I’m concerned that in our acts as a church we are incredibly mindful of the wellbeing of the Jewish community in the UK.” But Mr Carter told the conference: “I want to state quite clearly that there is no hint of antisemitism in what we have said or what we intend… If we are concerned about antisemitism, why don’t we talk about the anti-Islam approach? We might be between a rock and a hard place.” Expressing his hope for continued dialogue with the Jewish community, he said: “I want us to continue to hold out the hand of friendship — and I hope it won’t be refused.” While the 54-page document mentions that Israelis had legitimate fears, it contains no more than a fleeting reference to Hamas. Jonathan Arkush, senior vice-president of the Board of Deputies, who witnessed the debate in Portsmouth, said afterwards: “It is hard to see how anyone genuinely concerned with the Middle East and interfaith dialogue can take the Methodist Church seriously.” The Methodist action reflects a tactic urged last year by Palestinian churches, which denounced Israel’s occupation as “a sin against God and humanity”.

It is five years since Palestinian civil society first made the call for a global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against the apartheid state of Israel. At the time, introducing such action in Australia seemed impossible when the public barely knew anything about the Palestinian struggle for justice and freedom. Education had to be a priority if there was to be any overturning of the long-accepted and indulged Zionist narrative.

A glimmer of hope emerged when a number of prominent Australians and others signed on to two significant nationwide newspaper advertisement campaigns run by Australian advocacy groups against a highly unorthodox motion taken in parliament to congratulate Israel on its 60 years of independence in 2008. The Labor government chose to ignore a strongly-supported request by church leaders, former ministers, judges and various other respected figures, to acknowledge the suffering of Palestinians. Nevertheless the people had spoken and by the time Israel had attacked Gaza at the end of that year, Australians were again signing on to another national newspaper campaign in the strongest outcry yet seen against Israel's unfolding slaughter of civilians.

While the newspaper campaigns are not boycotts, they have, in fact, galvanized more and more support for the Palestinian struggle amongst mainstream Australians. People are willing to donate, and even more importantly, they are no longer afraid to have their names openly associated with Palestine.

With a supine government and a media unwilling to investigate Israel's criminal acts, getting the message out to the public has been a real challenge. However, Australian unions look like they might be changing that. The Western Australian members of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA-WA) were the first to take action in response to Israel's three-week bombardment of Gaza in winter 2008-09 by refusing to handle goods arriving from or going to Israel. This year, the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) joined the international boycott of Israel, and when the Freedom Flotilla was attacked on 31 May, some 11 trade unions and regional trade councils followed the CFMEU in quick succession.

The resolutions passed by the trade unions to boycott Israeli goods from Israel's illegal settlements in the West Bank coincided with the tour of well-known Palestinian advocate Diana Buttu, whose visit was sponsored by six large Australian unions to speak precisely on boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and the apartheid conditions faced by Palestinians, not only under Israeli occupation but also in Israel itself.

Buttu's powerful presentations left no one in any doubt as to the urgency of implementing BDS across the board. In the last 18 months, activists have targeted Connex (a subsidiary of the French transportation giant Veolia which is involved in the building a light rail in occupied East Jerusalem), Israeli-owned Max Brenner chocolates, the Israeli-sponsored Melbourne International Film Festival, and the visits of the Jerusalem Quartet and Israeli tennis player Shaher Peer. But the recent union resolutions supporting the boycott of Israel will give a significant boost to the BDS movement.

However, much education still needs to be done. Australians for Palestine held an Apartheid Forum in Melbourne earlier in the year which was followed by another on "Apartheid and Boycotts" that included Diana Buttu, another eminent Palestinian, Professor Saree Makdisi and Jewish academic Dr. Ned Curthoys, who initiated the academic and cultural boycott of Israel in Australia with his father, Professor John Docker. And that is just the beginning. More information sessions are being organized around the country by many different groups, while a monthly display targeting the local Caterpillar dealership in Western Australia has already played its part in alerting the public to the use of Caterpillar bulldozers to demolish Palestinian homes.

Australia is still a long way off from the effective boycott strategies being implemented in the UK, Europe and the US, which includes an increasing number of divestments from Israeli companies by churches, municipal councils, colleges, unions, banks and pension funds and some countries are calling for sanctions on arms trade with Israel. Certainly, the Australian government is most unlikely to impose sanctions regardless of which political party takes over in the coming elections.

The power lies with activists, unionists and people of conscience to turn these first steps into a dynamic boycott movement much like what is already sweeping the world. The catastrophe facing the Palestinians demands that we give BDS our best shot, and indeed, history is on our side.

Sonja Karkar is the founder and president of Women for Palestine and one of the founders and co-convener of Australians for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia. She is also the editor of www.australiansforpalestine.com and contributes articles on Palestine regularly to various publications. She can be contacted at sonjakarkar A T womenforpalestine D O T org.

The boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is gaining significant momentum cross the United States and Europe, including at US campuses. In response, opposition to the movement is devising new ways to divert attention from efforts to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law and flagrant abuses of Palestinian human rights.

At Stanford University, the school I graduated from last year, the Stanford Israel Alliance has created a counter-divestment campaign called "Invest For Peace." Cloaked in the language of good intentions, Invest For Peace suggests that their campaign will work to uplift Palestinian society and economy by raising money to invest in micro-finance organizations in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Their mission states that in contrast to divestment, Invest For Peace makes positive contributions that "move beyond counterproductive rhetoric." Invest For Peace calls for campus unity by suggesting it aspires to the same goal as the divestment movements, but by different means. This campaign muddies the issue by conflating the goals of campus unity and advancing justice, not to mention aligning itself with the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The goal of divestment is to expose Israel's oppressive policies and bring pressure to bear on Israel to end them. Stanford's Invest For Peace campaign utterly denies Israel's integral role in the debilitation of the Palestinian economy and therefore can have no credibility as a force to ameliorate the conflict. It ignores the fact that Israel has systematically and deliberately devastated Palestinian civil and economic society through its decades of usurpation of resources and military occupation.

The similarity in rhetoric between Invest for Peace and the Netanyahu government is conspicuous. Last year, Netanyahu called for an "economic peace" with the Palestinians, as opposed to a peace based on negotiations, rights and justice. In spite of his talk of improving the standard of living among Palestinians, Netanyahu has continued and expanded Israel's policy of building settlements on Palestinian land in violation of international law while the siege of Gaza enters its 36th month. Netanyahu's talk of an "economic peace" is empty rhetoric designed to disguise nefarious policies.

Moreover, investing in micro-finance organizations while demanding continued unquestioned US aid to Israel and its military is like dropping a quarter in someone's tin cup after you've chopped off her hands. When Israel disconnects Palestinian orange groves from their water supplies, uproots its olive trees and cuts Gaza off from any potential trade, it commits intentional acts of destruction to the Palestinian economy. Invest For Peace speaks of the deterioration of the Palestinian economy as though it were a natural disaster, without specific and man-made origins, designed to ensure Palestinian economic dependency and penury.

In her book Failing Peace and other works, Harvard's Sara Roy chronicles the deterioration of the Palestinian economy as it relates directly to Israel's occupation and control of trade and borders. Roy identifies Israel's imposition of closure policies as well as its division of Palestinian land as the principle culprits of the rapidly declining Palestinian economy. She states that "The result is de-development -- a process I define as the deliberate, systematic and progressive dismemberment of an indigenous economy by a dominant one, where economic -- and by extension -- societal-potential is not only distorted but denied."

Roy is not alone in her assessment. The World Bank has indicted Israel's system of checkpoints, roadblocks, and obstructions to Palestinian movement as the chief source of the decaying economic life in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In a 2007 report entitled "Movement and Access Restrictions in the West Bank," the World Bank called for an overhaul in Israel's treatment of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, prescribing "a fundamental reassessment of closure practices, a restoration of the presumption of movement, and review of Israeli control of the population registry and other means of dictating the residency of Palestinians" ("West Bank Restrictions," [PDF]).

Considering the brutality of Israeli policies and the clear effects they have on the Palestinian economy, it is hard to take seriously the Invest For Peace campaign's assertion that it is seeking to take "effective action" to remediate poverty in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. In an op-ed published by the Stanford Daily, Stanford student and member of the Stanford Israel Alliance and Invest For Peace, Yishai Kabaker argued that "In my experience with divestment when applied to this conflict, damage is wrought, but nothing positive comes of it." He added: "In the past, divestment campaigns helped combat apartheid in South Africa and genocide in Darfur. However, the divestment campaign against Israel is a crass bludgeon, which reduces an incredibly complex situation to euphemisms and demonizations" ("We Choose to Invest," 4 May 2010). Yet, the dissolution of Israel's policies is precisely the "positive" outcome that divestment campaigns intend to achieve.

Historically, Israel-allied groups have inhibited Palestinian solidarity groups from gaining prominence on college campuses across the country. But that time is ending. The astonishing mobilization and collaboration that divestment efforts at schools like UC Berkeley, Hampshire College and Evergreen State College are generating reflect the broad support for divestment and the success that it will eventually achieve. Public opinion is catching up to the radical reality of Israeli policies in Palestine. The train for BDS has left the station, and you're not going to catch it if you're running in the opposite direction.

Charlotte Silver is a litigation assistant at the American Civil Liberties Union, Immigrant Rights Project and was active in the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement at Stanford. She lives in San Francisco and can be reached at charlottesilver A T gmail D O T com

We can support Imam al-Asi by building the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign against Israel by starting a local group. Let us also get involved in supporting grassroots political and social struggles in our communities to bring ordinary people (Arabs, Latinos, African Americans and South East Asians) into to BDS movement. By getting involved in local struggles we build the movement and people learn to see the links between their own struggles on the ground and the struggles of others elsewhere. They see the role of empire that stretches from the inside the mosque there, to the struggle on the sidewalk, in our neighbourhoods, workplaces (for those who still have jobs, churches and community halls and campuses. Let us act locally and think globally.