Argentina’s cancellation of a friendly against Israel because of Israeli attempts to exploit the match politically is likely to reverberate far beyond the world of soccer and spotlights the risks of Israeli efforts to persuade the international community to recognize Jerusalem as its capital.
Washington, DC – Israel supporters in the US are gearing up for AIPAC’s much-vaunted annual policy conference, with measures to counter the widening campaign to boycott Israel and its West Bank settlements expected to feature prominently in the powerful lobbying group’s agenda.
This includes legislation that several Republican and Democratic Congress members have sponsored to curb the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which aims to pressure Israel into ending its occupation of Arab and Palestinian land.
Opinion– The Lorde saga has now reached new riveting heights. Just a few months ago on December 21st, 2017 two young female fans from Aotearoa, New Zealand wrote an open letter urging Lorde to cancel her Tel Aviv concert, scheduled for June of this year. A few days later Lorde a 21-year-old singer and songwriter canceled her Tel Aviv show. This quickly prompted outspoken celebrity Rabbi Shmuley Boteach to take out a full-page “ad” in the Washington Post to initiate a smear campaign against the New Zealand artist.
Opinion — Like its predecessor movement decades ago in South Africa, assessing the success of BDS against Israel today necessarily rubs up against the tension between Israeli hasbara (propaganda) and its reality as an effective organizing tool against it throughout the world.
This month, the Israeli government announced that activists affiliated with 20 organizations, including my organization Codepink, would be banned from entering Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories because of our support for the nonviolent boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights.
The African National Congress (ANC) in the Western Cape has called for greater solidarity with the Palestinian people while urging South Africa’s Minister of Home Affairs, Comrade Ayanda Dlodlo, to re-evaluate the country’s visa policy with Israel following the decision by the government in Tel Aviv to blacklist BDS South Africa along with dozens of other organisations.
Opinion — We know where Zionism has taken Israel. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 led the way. In that imperial and colonial document, the British promised the World Zionist Organization a “Jewish National Home” in Palestine. They did so, as Edward Said put it, in “flat disregard of both the presence and wishes of the native majority residents in that territory.”
Boycotting is a proven to be an effective tool to fight against the corporate state. But in a country like America, where we are so deeply conditioned to consume, it can be very tough.
That being said, there are pockets of boycott movements happening throughout the country. Whether it be demanding that banks divest from investing in fossil fuel projects or advocate groups going after the advertisers on hate-speech websites, it does exist.
The next step is for people to do what they can to not support corporations that are destroying us.
Dr. Ron Paul would generally agree that sanctions are incompatible with free trade. Whether one believes in free trade or not and generally I do not, one can at an objective level admit that government controlled sanctions are anathema to free trade in every sense of the word.
Big donor money is leading to a growing number of efforts to legislate BDS out of existence.
Palestine’s BDS National Committee (BNC) leads and coordinates the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. It has been the biggest year yet for BDS, but it has also been a big year for anti-BDS oppression.
