August 24, 2009
You Don't Really Care for Music Do You?
Campaign & Advocacy
In Israel, some singer/songwriters, like King David, are born into controversy, others, like Leonard Cohen, have controversy thrust upon them. It had nothing to do with his Jewish heritage, nor his profound, melancholic lyrics. The 74-year-old musician, known as much for his left-leaning politics as for his melodic ballads, drew harsh criticism from Palestinian groups for partnering with Amnesty International to stage a concert in Ramat Gan, Israel. Cohen plans to donate the proceeds of his Israeli performance to a charity for Israeli and Palestinian children. Moderates on both sides hailed it as an important cultural event, and a hopeful sign of progress towards a peaceful solution in Israel. But the plans foundered when hard-line critics blasted the concert as an attempt to divert attention away from Israel’s human-rights record.
In an attempt to quell the controversy Cohen agreed to perform a companion-show in Ramallah in the West Bank. But due to the fervent opposition of Palestinian groups the gig was quickly cancelled. "Ramallah will not receive Cohen as long as he is intent on whitewashing Israel's colonial apartheid regime by performing in Israel," said the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).
After weeks of intense criticism, including an anti-Israel protest at Cohen’s concert in Belfast, Amnesty International ultimately withdrew its co-sponsorship. This capitulation, seen as a victory by extremists, is another example of the failure of diplomatic efforts between hardliners on both sides.
The uproar over the Cohen concert is just the latest example of the growing anti-Israel campaign. The movement was formulated in 1944 by the Arab League, an organization of twenty-three Middle-Eastern and African countries, and has taken the form of boycotts and divestment and sanction campaigns, commonly referred to as BDS. These campaigns aspire to mirror the economic pressure put on South Africa’s apartheid regime in the 1980s.
Pro-Israel opponents of this BDS movement call the efforts anti-Semitic and hypocritical. They cite evidence that Arab states sponsoring the boycotts of Israel are oftentimes worse violators of human rights.
The crux of the historical case against Israel centers on the treatment of Palestinian refugees both during and after Israel’s war for independence. Arab groups contend that this mistreatment continues to this day. This gross oversimplification notwithstanding, the underlying causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are deep-seated and highly complex. Furthermore, the reasons for continued violence are hotly debated and make justifications of economic sanctions against either side tenuous as best.
The Boycotts
There are two main categories of boycotts against Israel: cultural and economic. The former—predominately instigated by European professors—calls for universities and research institutions to disassociate culturally and academically from their Israeli counterparts. The latter seeks to sever economic ties with Israel through trade boycotts and divestiture—actively selling off any personal or endowment investments in Israeli companies.
The cultural boycott began gaining traction in 2002, when The Guardian touched off a firestorm by publishing a letter by two prominent British professors calling for the cutting of all research ties with Israeli academic institutions. Though not as incendiary in Europe as in the US, this move was still highly controversial, with anger stemming not only from the audacity of suggesting a boycott of an entire nation, but also from the fact—raised by several moderates—that Israeli universities are some of the most progressive organizations in the country, and are often the harshest critics of Zionism. The letter gained 700 cosigners—mostly fellow academics—and engendered an opposing letter, penned by professor Leonid Ryzhik of the University of Chicago, which gained 1,000.
Controversy was reignited in 2005 when the executive council of the UK’s Association of University Teachers (AUT) enacted academic boycotts on two Israeli institutions, Bar-Ilan and Haifa Universities. This provocative action by the AUT’s leadership suffered from a lack of support from general membership and was later overturned.
Despite the outrage raised by previous anti-Israel efforts, promulgation of academic boycotts persists. Last January, another open letter—again in The Guardian, and again signed by several hundred British university professors—proposed similar BDS actions. This will certainly not be the end of the academic boycott debate given that the conflict shows no signs of abeyance.
Trade boycotts take a different approach and, while less prominent, have potentially harsher implications. The Arab League launched the original boycott of Jewish Palestine in 1944 and later formalized it in 1948 after Israel gained its independence.
From its inception, this boycott presented a serious dilemma for US companies that wished to do business in the Middle East. If they chose to follow the Arab League boycott they missed out on a business opportunity in Israel and faced domestic repercussions from the powerful pro-Israel lobby. However, if they ignored the boycott and conducted business in Israel they risked being blacklisted by the Arab League.
In a response intended to protect US companies abroad from this ideological extortion as well as Jewish Americans who were adversely affected by the boycott, Congress passed anti-boycott statutes stipulating that US companies that cooperated with the boycott were subject to fines or criminal charges. The legislation mandated that a company must report if it received a request to comply with the boycott and from where the request originated.
In reality, various trade boycotts against Israel over the years have seen little success in the US, where Israel has a strong base of support. Capitulation to the economic sanctions is considered less objectionable in Europe, where anti-Israel sentiment is more widespread and no anti-boycott legislation exists.
Trade boycotts of Israel exist almost exclusively on a small-scale, usually enacted by trade unions or religious groups. The Presbyterian Church adopted the controversial BDS measures in 2004 but later amended and weakened its stance in 2006. Similar measures by religious organizations have been few and far between but highly controversial nonetheless. In Canada in 2006, the Ontario branch of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) voted to begin a divestment campaign. Trade unions in Ireland and the UK have approved similar anti-Israel economic sanctions.
Significance of BDS efforts
BDS efforts are neither new nor uncommon. Historically, they have had mixed results and accordingly would seem to hold little consequence in the Israel-Palestine conflict. However, targeting Israel adds a unique gravity to the situation. Israel was founded as a Jewish state and, as such, any action against it is, as Harvard President Larry Summers said, “anti-Semitic in effect, if not intent.” That is not to say that these efforts are targeting the religion, per se, but since Israel is the center of Judaism, and Jews are defined by both ancestry and religious belief, an attack on the nation is, inherently if unintentionally, an attack on the religion. While many nations are inextricably associated with a specific religion, few religions are as completely manifested in a single nation as Judaism is in Israel. Consequently, it is difficult, indeed impossible, to draw effective parallels, religiously or politically, to this situation. As the cornerstone for a major world religion—historically, geographically and symbolically—an attack on Israel is unique in the breadth of its implications, both intended and unintended.
History adds yet another dynamic to the equation. Both sides of the debate recall historical atrocities attempting to elicit an emotional response in their favor. Anti-Israel activists invoke the specter of apartheid South Africa, an assuredly far-fetched parallel given the record of crimes committed by both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict and Israel’s existence as the most democratic society in the Middle East according to The Economist. Some pro-Israel supporters, most notably Harvard University’s Alan Dershowitz, compare the rabid anti-Israel groups to Nazism in pre-WWII Germany—a hyperbolic claim of its own, as Israel is a sovereign nation with a world-class military that does not face the kind of existential threat that it did under the Nazis.
All hyperbole aside, conflicts between Jews and Muslims have been ubiquitous in the Middle East over many centuries. The fact that these current campaigns are non-violent and have garnered a large base of support only proves that Israel’s enemies are prepared to employ all means of antagonism available. The BDS movement represents nothing more than the historical conflict manifested in economic rather than military aggression.
Cause for Concern?
There are legitimate reasons to be concerned by the anti-Israel campaign. By singling out Israel, boycott proponents assume an inconsistent, if not hypocritical, position. Human rights abuses are commonplace in Arab League countries—the originators of the boycott—and none in the Arab League has a legislature that includes Jews, as Israel includes Arabs. Consequently, Western organizations that adopt the boycott are necessarily turning a blind-eye on the human-rights violations of the Arab states while criticizing the violations of Israel.
What is now, and has always been, exceedingly clear is that the struggle between Israel and Palestine is deep-rooted, religiously and culturally sensitive, and seemingly intractable. With that in mind, it seems arrogant that the assembly of a Canadian trade union or an American church could so facilely conclude that it has the solution to this age-old conflict. If a Western organization is going to interject itself into the heart of a historically and ethnically complex battle of politics, religion and ideology it should do so with the utmost discretion. Instead, discretion has apparently been jettisoned in favor of affectation, and consideration replaced by pretension.
A JOINT PROGRAM OF
