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<div dir="ltr" style="display: block;" id="reader-header"
class="header"> <b><small><small><small><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/17/why-bds-cannot-lose-a-moral-threshold-to-combat-racism-in-israel/"
id="reader-domain" class="domain"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/17/why-bds-cannot-lose-a-moral-threshold-to-combat-racism-in-israel/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/17/why-bds-cannot-lose-a-moral-threshold-to-combat-racism-in-israel/</a></a></small></small></small></b>
<h1 id="reader-title">Why BDS Cannot Lose: A Moral Threshold to
Combat Racism in Israel</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">by <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/author/ramzy-baroud/"
rel="nofollow">Ramzy Baroud</a> March 17, 2016<br>
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<p>A foray of condemnations of the boycott of Israel seems
to have fallen on deaf ears. Calls from Western
governments, originating from the UK, the US, Canada and
others, to criminalize the boycott of Israel have hardly
slowed down the momentum of the pro-Palestinian Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS). On the
contrary, it has accelerated.</p>
<p>It is as if history is repeating itself. Western
governments took on the pro-South African Anti-Apartheid
Movement, fighting it at every corner and branding its
leaders. Nelson Mandela and many of his comrades were
called terrorists.</p>
<p>Once he passed away in 2013, top US politicians vied
for the opportunity to list the late African leader’s
great qualities in their many press conferences,
speaking of his commitment to justice and human rights.
However, Mandela’s name was not removed from the US
terrorism watch list till 2008.</p>
<p>The Reagan administration called the African National
Congress – the main platform for the anti-apartheid
struggle – a terrorist group, as well. The ANC’s
strategy against the Apartheid government was
“calculated terror”, the administration said in 1986.</p>
<p>Many South Africans would tell you that the fight for
equality is far from over, and that the struggle against
institutional apartheid has been replaced by equally
pressing matters. Corruption, neoliberal economics, and
disproportionate allocation of wealth are only a few
such challenges.</p>
<p>But aside from those who are still holding on to the
repellent dream of racial superiority, the vast majority
of humanity looks back at South Africa’s Apartheid era
with revulsion.</p>
<p>The South Africa experience, which is still fresh in
the memory of most people, is now serving as a frame of
reference in the struggle against Israeli Apartheid in
Palestine, where Jews have been designated as a
privileged race, and Palestinian Muslims and Christians
are poorly treated, oppressed and occupied.</p>
<p>While racism is, unfortunately, a part of life and is
practiced, observed and reported on in many parts of the
world, institutionalized racism through calculated
governmental measures is only practiced – at least,
openly – in a few countries around the world: Burma is
one of them. However, no country is as adamant and open
about its racially-motivated laws and apartheid rules as
the Israeli government. Almost every measure taken by
the Israeli Knesset that pertains to Arabs is influenced
by this mindset: Palestinians must remain inferior, and
Jews must ensure their superiority at any cost.</p>
<p>The outcome of Israel’s racist pipe dream has been a
tremendous amount of violence, palpable inequality,
massive walls, trenches, Jews-only roads, military
occupation, and even laws that outlaw the very
questioning of these practices.</p>
<p>Yet, the greater its failure to suppress Palestinian
Resistance and to slow down the flow of solidarity from
around the world with the oppressed people, the more
Israel labors to ensure its dominance and invest in
racial segregation.</p>
<p>“The whole world is against us,” is quite a common
justification in Israel itself, of the international
reaction to Israel’s Apartheid practices. With time, it
becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and feeds on past
notions that are no longer applicable. No matter how
many companies divest from Israel – the latest being the
world’s largest security corporation G4S – and, no
matter how many universities and churches vote to
boycott Israel, Israeli society remains entrenched
behind the slogan and its disconcerting sense of
victimization.</p>
<p>Many Israelis believe that their country is a ‘villa in
a jungle’ – a notion that is constantly enforced by top
Israeli leaders. Right-wing Prime Minister, Benjamin
Netanyahu, is purposely advancing the crippling fear in
his own society. Unable to see the unmistakable crimes
he has carried out against Palestinians for years, he
continues to perpetuate the idea of the purity of Israel
and the wickedness of everyone else.</p>
<p>In February, he spoke of the need to create yet more
fences to keep his ‘villa in the jungle’ safe, and, to
quote, “to defend ourselves against the wild beasts” in
neighboring countries. The statement was made only a few
weeks before the launch of the annual Israel Apartheid
Week in numerous cities around the world. It is as if
the Israeli leader wished to contribute to the global
campaign which is successfully making a case against
Israel as being an Apartheid state that ought to be
boycotted.</p>
<p>Israel is, of course, no ‘villa in the jungle’. Since
its inception over the ruins of destroyed and occupied
Palestine, it has meted out tremendous violence,
provoked wars and harshly responded to any resistance
carried out by its victims. Similar to the US and the UK
designation of Mandela as a ‘terrorist’, Palestinian
Resistance and its leaders are also branded, shunned,
and imprisoned. Israel’s so-called ‘targeted killings’ –
the assassination of hundreds of Palestinians in recent
years have often been applauded by the US and other
Israeli allies as victories in their ‘war on terror.’</p>
<p>Comforted by the notion that the US and other western
governments are on their side, most Israelis are not
worried about exhibiting their racism and calling for
more violence against Palestinians. According to a
recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center and
revealed on March 08, nearly half of Israel’s Jewish
population want to expel Palestinians to outside of
their historic homeland.</p>
<p>The study was conducted between October 2014 and May
2015 – months before the current Intifada began in
October 2015 – and is described as a first-of-its-kind
survey as it reached out to over 5,600 Israeli adults
and touched on myriads of issues, including religion and
politics. 48% of all Israeli Jews want to exile Arabs.
However, the number is significantly higher – 71% –
among those who define themselves as ‘religious’.</p>
<p>What options are then left for Palestinians, who have
been victimized and ethnically cleansed from their own
historic homeland for 68 years, when they are described
and treated as ‘beasts’, killed at will, and suffer
under a massive system of apartheid and racial
discrimination that has never ceased after all of these
years?</p>
<p>BDS has, thus far, been the most successful strategy
and tactic to support Palestinian Resistance and
steadfastness while, at the same time, holding Israel
accountable for its progressively worsening policies of
apartheid. The main objective behind BDS, an entirely
non-violent movement that is championed by civil society
across the globe, is not to punish ordinary Israelis,
but to raise awareness of the suffering of Palestinians
and to create a moral threshold that must be achieved if
a just peace is ever to be realized.</p>
<p>That moral threshold has already been delineated in the
relationship between Palestinians and South Africans
when Mandela himself said, “We know all too well that
our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the
Palestinians.”</p>
<p>He was not trying to be cordial or diplomatic. He meant
every word. And, finally, many around the world are
making the same connection, and are wholeheartedly in
agreement.</p>
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<p class="author_description"> <em><strong>Dr. Ramzy Baroud</strong>
has been writing about the Middle East for over 20
years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a
media consultant, an author of several books and the
founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My
Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto
Press, London). His website is: ramzybaroud.net</em> </p>
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