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href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/landmark-un-report-backs-israel-boycott">https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/landmark-un-report-backs-israel-boycott</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">Landmark UN report backs Israel boycott</h1>
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<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ali Abunimah</a></span> <span
class="field field-blog">-</span>
<span class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime"
content="2017-03-15T14:01:05+00:00">15 March 2017</span></span>
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<p>A new UN report offers explicit backing for the
Palestinian-led <a href="https://bdsmovement.net/call">boycott,
divestment and sanctions</a> (BDS) campaign to end
Israeli <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/apartheid">apartheid</a>
and support a just peace.</p>
<p>The landmark report’s endorsement of boycotts, economic
sanctions and other grassroots initiatives comes at a
moment when Israel is desperately attempting to <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/lobby-group-laments-israel-travel-ban-victory-bds">criminalize
and suppress international support</a> for Palestinian
rights.</p>
<p>Published by the UN’s Economic and Social Commission
for Western Asia (ESCWA), the report concludes that
“Israel has established an apartheid regime that
dominates the Palestinian people as a whole.”</p>
<p>It finds “beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is
guilty of policies and practices that constitute the
crimes of apartheid” as defined in international law.</p>
<p>It urges national governments to “support boycott,
divestment and sanctions activities and respond
positively to calls for such initiatives.”</p>
<h2>Racial regime</h2>
<p>The UN report – “<a
href="https://www.unescwa.org/publications/israeli-practices-palestinian-people-apartheid-occupation">Israeli
Practices towards the Palestinian People and the
Question of Apartheid</a>” – is not a comparison
between Israel and apartheid <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/south-africa">South
Africa</a>, but an evaluation of Israel’s practices
against the 1973 <a
href="http://legal.un.org/avl/ha/cspca/cspca.html">International
Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the
Crime of Apartheid</a> and other key human rights
laws.</p>
<p>The convention defines the crime of apartheid as
“inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing
and maintaining domination by one racial group of
persons over any other racial group of persons and
systematically oppressing them.”</p>
<p>International law defines racial discrimination to mean
“any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference
based on race, color, descent or ethnic or national
origin,” the report notes.</p>
<p>The Zionist movement’s “claim to Palestine as the
exclusive homeland of the Jewish people rests on an
expressly racial conception of both groups,” the report
states. “This means that Jews and Palestinians are
‘racial groups’ ” for the purposes of applying the
apartheid convention.</p>
<p>“The mission of preserving Israel as a Jewish state has
inspired or even compelled Israel to pursue several
general racial policies,” the report says.</p>
<p>These include “demographic engineering, in order to
establish and maintain an overwhelming Jewish majority
in Israel.”</p>
<p>This encompasses the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ethnic-cleansing">ethnic
cleansing</a> of almost 800,000 Palestinians in 1948,
the denial of the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/right-return">right
of return</a> for Palestinian refugees and “a range of
other policies designed to restrict the size of the
Palestinian population.”</p>
<p>Although they can vote, the rights of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/palestinians-israel">Palestinian
citizens of Israel</a> – about a fifth of the state’s
citizens – are also systematically restricted, while
full rights are granted only to Jews.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Israel’s discriminatory “Law of Return”
automatically grants citizenship to Jews from anywhere
in the world, “while denying citizenship even to those
Palestinians who have a documented history of residency
in the country.”</p>
<h2>Sham democracy</h2>
<p>“As in any racial democracy,” the report argues, “such
a majority allows the trappings of democracy –
democratic elections, a strong legislature – without
threatening any loss of hegemony by the dominant racial
group.”</p>
<p>In a stark illustration of the racial logic espoused by
Israel’s leadership, the country’s defense minister <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/avigdor-lieberman">Avigdor
Lieberman</a> this week reiterated the view that the
Jewish state should eventually be ethnically cleansed of
virtually all Palestinians.</p>
<p>“There is no reason why Sheikh Raed Salah, Ayman Odeh,
Basel Ghattas or Haneen Zoabi should continue to be
Israeli citizens,” <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/1.777115">he
said</a> in reference to prominent Palestinian
politicians, three of them members of Israel’s
parliament, the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/israeli-knesset">Knesset</a>.</p>
<p>Israel prohibits anyone from using its ostensibly
democratic system to challenge the regime’s
fundamentally racist set-up. Its Basic Law – the closest
thing that Israel has to a written constitution – bars
parties from running on a platform that explicitly or
implicitly includes “negation of the existence of the
State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”</p>
<p>“Voting rights lose their significance in terms of
equal rights when a racial group is legally banned from
challenging laws that perpetuate inequality,” the report
states. “Israeli law bans organized Palestinian
opposition to Jewish domination, rendering it illegal
and even seditious.”</p>
<p>This is not the first analysis to find that Israeli
policies meet the legal definition of apartheid: a <a
href="http://www.hsrc.ac.za/en/media-briefs/democracy-goverance-and-service-delivery/report-israel-practicing-apartheid-in-palestinian-territories">2009
study</a> by South Africa’s Human Sciences Research
Council concluded that Israel practices apartheid in the
occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.</p>
<p>But the new UN study goes much further, finding that
Israel’s apartheid system dominates the entire
Palestinian people. It concludes that the “strategic
fragmentation” of the Palestinian people into separate
territorial units and legal regimes – as citizens with
limited rights within Israel, as stateless persons in
the West Bank and Gaza, as “permanent residents” in <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/east-jerusalem">East Jerusalem</a>,
or as refugees and exiles with no right of return – “is
the principle method by which Israel imposes an
apartheid regime.”</p>
<p>The 2009 study was overseen by political scientist <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/virginia-tilley">Virginia
Tilley</a>. Tilley and the <a
href="http://www.global.ucsb.edu/orfaleacenter/fellows/Falk.html">eminent</a>
professor of international law <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/richard-falk">Richard
Falk</a> are co-authors of the new UN report.</p>
<h2>Ending a “criminal enterprise”</h2>
<p>Governments have a legal obligation to act immediately
to end the crime of apartheid. This includes refusing to
recognize an apartheid regime as lawful, refusing to aid
a state in maintaining such a regime and cooperating
with UN bodies and other states to end it.</p>
<p>The report urges UN bodies to act, and even suggests
seeking a formal opinion from the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/international-court-justice">International
Court of Justice</a> on Israel’s apartheid system.
National governments should also back BDS and allow
“criminal prosecutions of Israeli officials demonstrably
connected with the practices of apartheid.”</p>
<p>But given that states and official bodies are not
likely to take the lead, the report recognizes that
“civil society institutions and individuals have a moral
duty to use the instruments at their disposal to raise
awareness of this ongoing criminal enterprise.”</p>
<p>They must use these tools to “exert pressure on Israel
to dismantle apartheid structures and negotiate in good
faith for a lasting peace that acknowledges the rights
of Palestinians under international law and makes it
possible for the two peoples to live together on the
basis of real equality.”</p>
<h2>Transnational movement</h2>
<p>Recalling an earlier era, the report notes that
research and legal analyses by UN bodies – such as the
United Nations Center Against Apartheid – were critical
resources for civil society activists in their efforts
aimed at “legitimating boycott, divestments and
sanctions, and contributing to the overall formation of
a transnational movement against apartheid in South
Africa.”</p>
<p>One of the report’s key aims today is to encourage
“practical measures in accordance with international law
to exert pressure on Israel to dismantle its apartheid
regime.”</p>
<p>“Efforts should be made to broaden support for boycott,
divestment and sanctions initiatives among civil society
actors,” the report recommends.</p>
<p>Private sector firms should be “reminded of their
legal, moral and political responsibility to sever ties
with commercial ventures and projects that directly or
indirectly aid and abet the apartheid regime.”</p>
<p>All of this confirms the reasoning and tactics of the
Palestinian-led BDS movement – support for which <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/eu-recognizes-right-boycott-israel">even
the staunchly pro-Israel European Union</a> has
belatedly recognized as a democratic right.</p>
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