[News] Economic Boycott of Israel is Justified - Norman G. Finkelstein

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Why an Economic Boycott of Israel is Justified

This article appears in the January 14 issue of the Norwegian 
newspaper Aftenposten.?

By Norman G. Finkelstein

01/15/06 "Aftenposten" -- -- The recent proposal that Norway boycott 
Israeli goods has provoked passionate debate. In my view, a rational 
examination of this issue would pose two questions: 1) Do Israeli 
human rights violations warrant an economic boycott? and 2) Can such 
a boycott make a meaningful contribution toward ending these 
violations? I would argue that both these questions should be 
answered in the affirmative.

Although the subject of many reports by human rights organizations, 
Israel's real human rights record in the Occupied Palestinian 
Territory is generally not well known abroad. This is primarily due 
to the formidable public relations industry of Israel's defenders as 
well as the effectiveness of their tactics of intimidation, such as 
labeling critics of Israeli policy anti-Semitic.

Yet, it is an incontestable fact that Israel has committed a broad 
range of human rights violations, many rising to the level of war 
crimes and crimes against humanity. These include:

Illegal Killings. Whereas Palestinian suicide attacks targeting 
Israeli civilians have garnered much media attention, Israel's 
quantitatively worse record of killing non-combatants is less well 
known. According to the most recent figures of the Israeli 
Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories 
(B'Tselem), 3,386 Palestinians have been killed since September 2000, 
of whom 1,008 were identified as combatants, as opposed to 992 
Israelis killed, of whom 309 were combatants. This means that three 
times more Palestinians than Israelis have been killed and up to 
three times more Palestinian civilians than Israeli civilians. 
Israel's defenders maintain that there's a difference between 
targeting civilians and inadvertently killing them. B'Tselem disputes 
this: "[W]hen so many civilians have been killed and wounded, the 
lack of intent makes no difference. Israel remains responsible." 
Furthermore, Amnesty International reports that "many" Palestinians 
have not been accidentally killed but "deliberately targeted," while 
the award-winning New York Times journalist Chris Hedges reports that 
Israeli soldiers "entice children like mice into a trap and murder 
them for sport."

Torture. "From 1967," Amnesty reports, "the Israeli security services 
have routinely tortured Palestinian political suspects in the 
Occupied Territories." B'Tselem found that eighty-five percent of 
Palestinians interrogated by Israeli security services were subjected 
to "methods constituting torture," while already a decade ago Human 
Rights Watch estimated that "the number of Palestinians tortured or 
severely ill-treated" was "in the tens of thousands - a number that 
becomes especially significant when it is remembered that the 
universe of adult and adolescent male Palestinians in the West Bank 
and Gaza is under three-quarters of one million." In 1987 Israel 
became "the only country in the world to have effectively legalized 
torture" (Amnesty). Although the Israeli Supreme Court seemed to ban 
torture in a 1999 decision, the Public Committee Against Torture in 
Israel reported in 2003 that Israeli security forces continued to 
apply torture in a "methodical and routine" fashion. A 2001 B'Tselem 
study documented that Israeli security forces often applied "severe 
torture" to "Palestinian minors."?

House demolitions. "Israel has implemented a policy of mass 
demolition of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Territories," 
B'Tselem reports, and since September 2000 "has destroyed some 4,170 
Palestinian homes." Until just recently Israel routinely resorted to 
house demolitions as a form of collective punishment. According to 
Middle East Watch, apart from Israel, the only other country in the 
world that used such a draconian punishment was Iraq under Saddam 
Hussein. In addition, Israel has demolished thousands of "illegal" 
homes that Palestinians built because of Israel's refusal to provide 
building permits. The motive behind destroying these homes, according 
to Amnesty, has been to maximize the area available for Jewish 
settlers: "Palestinians are targeted for no other reason than they 
are Palestinians." Finally, Israel has destroyed hundred of homes on 
security pretexts, yet a Human Rights Watch report on Gaza found that 
"the pattern of destruction?strongly suggests that Israeli forces 
demolished homes wholesale, regardless of whether they posed a 
specific threat." Amnesty likewise found that "Israel's extensive 
destruction of homes and properties throughout the West Bank and 
Gaza?is not justified by military necessity," and that "Some of these 
acts of destruction amount to grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva 
Convention and are war crimes."

Apart from the sheer magnitude of its human rights violations, the 
uniqueness of Israeli policies merits notice. "Israel has created in 
the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based on 
discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same area 
and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality," B'Tselem 
has concluded. "This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, 
and is reminiscent of distasteful regimes from the past, such as the 
apartheid regime in South Africa." If singling out South Africa for 
an international economic boycott was defensible, it would seem 
equally defensible to single out Israel's occupation, which uniquely 
resembles the apartheid regime.

Although an economic boycott can be justified on moral grounds, the 
question remains whether diplomacy might be more effectively employed 
instead. The documentary record in this regard, however, is not 
encouraging. The basic terms for resolving the Israel-Palestine 
conflict are embodied in U.N. resolution 242 and subsequent U.N. 
resolutions, which call for a full Israeli withdrawal from the West 
Bank and Gaza and the establishment of a Palestinian state in these 
areas in exchange for recognition of Israel's right to live in peace 
and security with its neighbors. Each year the overwhelming majority 
of member States of the United Nations vote in favor of this 
two-state settlement, and each year Israel and the United States (and 
a few South Pacific islands) oppose it. Similarly, in March 2002 all 
twenty-two member States of the Arab League proposed this two-state 
settlement as well as "normal relations with Israel." Israel ignored 
the proposal.?

Not only has Israel stubbornly rejected this two-state settlement, 
but the policies it is currently pursuing will abort any possibility 
of a viable Palestinian state. While world attention has been riveted 
by Israel's redeployment from Gaza, Sara Roy of Harvard University 
observes that the "Gaza Disengagement Plan is, at heart, an 
instrument for Israel's continued annexation of West Bank land and 
the physical integration of that land into Israel." In particular 
Israel has been constructing a wall deep inside the West Bank that 
will annex the most productive land and water resources as well as 
East Jerusalem, the center of Palestinian life. It will also 
effectively sever the West Bank in two. Although Israel initially 
claimed that it was building the wall to fight terrorism, the 
consensus among human rights organizations is that it is really a 
land grab to annex illegal Jewish settlements into Israel. Recently 
Israel's Justice Minister frankly acknowledged that the wall will 
serve as "the future border of the state of Israel."

The current policies of the Israeli government will lead either to 
endless bloodshed or the dismemberment of Palestine. "It remains 
virtually impossible to conceive of a Palestinian state without its 
capital in Jerusalem," the respected Crisis Group recently concluded, 
and accordingly Israeli policies in the West Bank "are at war with 
any viable two-state solution and will not bolster Israel's security; 
in fact, they will undermine it, weakening Palestinian 
pragmatists?and sowing the seeds of growing radicalization."?

Recalling the U.N. Charter principle that it is inadmissible to 
acquire territory by war, the International Court of Justice declared 
in a landmark 2004 opinion that Israel's settlements in the Occupied 
Palestinian Territory and the wall being built to annex them to 
Israel were illegal under international law. It called on Israel to 
cease construction of the wall, dismantle those parts already 
completed and compensate Palestinians for damages. Crucially, it also 
stressed the legal responsibilities of the international community:

all States are under an obligation not to recognize the illegal 
situation resulting from the construction of the wall in the Occupied 
Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem. They 
are also under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in 
maintaining the situation created by such construction. It is also 
for all States, while respecting the United Nations Charter and 
international law, to see to it that any impediment, resulting from 
the construction of the wall, to the exercise by the Palestinian 
people of its right to self-determination is brought to an end.

A subsequent U.N. General Assembly resolution supporting the World 
Court opinion passed overwhelmingly. However, the Israeli government 
ignored the Court's opinion, continuing construction at a rapid pace, 
while Israel's Supreme Court ruled that the wall was legal.

Due to the obstructionist tactics of the United States, the United 
Nations has not been able to effectively confront Israel's illegal 
practices. Indeed, although it is true that the U.N. keeps Israel to 
a double standard, it's exactly the reverse of the one Israel's 
defenders allege: Israel is held not to a higher but lower standard 
than other member States. A study by Marc Weller of Cambridge 
University comparing Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory 
with comparable situations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, East 
Timor, occupied Kuwait and Iraq, and Rwanda found that Israel has 
enjoyed "virtual immunity" from enforcement measures such as an arms 
embargo and economic sanctions typically adopted by the U.N. against 
member States condemned for identical violations of international 
law. Due in part to an aggressive campaign accusing Europe of a "new 
anti-Semitism," the European Union has also failed in its legal 
obligation to enforce international law in the Occupied Palestinian 
Territory. Although the claim of a "new anti-Semitism" has no basis 
in fact (all the evidence points to a lessening of anti-Semitism in 
Europe), the EU has reacted by appeasing Israel. It has even 
suppressed publication of one of its own reports, because the authors 
-- like the Crisis Group and many others -- concluded that due to 
Israeli policies the "prospects for a two-state solution with east 
Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine are receding."

The moral burden to avert the impending catastrophe must now be borne 
by individual states that are prepared to respect their obligations 
under international law and by individual men and women of 
conscience. In a courageous initiative American-based Human Rights 
Watch recently called on the U.S. government to reduce significantly 
its financial aid to Israel until Israel terminates its illegal 
policies in the West Bank. An economic boycott would seem to be an 
equally judicious undertaking. A nonviolent tactic the purpose of 
which is to achieve a just and lasting settlement of the 
Israel-Palestine conflict cannot legitimately be called anti-Semitic. 
Indeed, the real enemies of Jews are those who cheapen the memory of 
Jewish suffering by equating principled opposition to Israel's 
illegal and immoral policies with anti-Semitism.?

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