Summary
The Israeli charge, as Barghouti presents it, that BDS “delegitimizes” Israel — a term Barghouti traces to a Tel Aviv think tank’s warning of a strategic, potentially existential threat, and which he answers by saying BDS strives to delegitimize oppression, apartheid and ethnic cleansing, not a people’s existence (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, PDF p.22, p.27-28).
Details
- JTA, as quoted: “The fear is that Israel is subject to a growing tide of delegitimization that, if unchecked, could pose an existential threat. The nightmare scenario has the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement gaining more traction and anti-Israel opinion moving from Western campuses to governments, followed by a lifting of the protective American diplomatic umbrella.” (PDF p.22)
- Netanyahu, reacting to the August 2010 Israeli artists’ boycott call: “The State of Israel is under an attack of delegitimization by elements in the international community. This attack includes attempts to enact economic, academic and cultural boycotts.” (PDF p.27)
- The term “was first used by a shady Tel Aviv “think tank” that described the international boycott of Israel as “increasingly sophisticated, ripe and coherent,” warning that the boycott is a “strategic threat,” even a “potentially existential threat,” to the state”; its report to the Israeli government prescribed “a consistent and honest Israeli commitment to end its control over the Palestinians, advance human rights, and promote greater integration and equality for its Arab citizens” as essential to fighting delegitimization (PDF p.27).
- Barghouti’s answer: “Indeed, BDS strives to delegitimize Israel’s settler-colonial oppression, apartheid, and ongoing ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian people, just as the South Africa boycott was aimed at delegitimizing apartheid there.” And: “In no other boycott against any state has the preposterous claim been made that this nonviolent tactic is intended to end the very physical existence of the target state.” (PDF p.27)
- The charge’s “most far-reaching—and entirely unsubstantiated—claim against BDS is that the movement aims to “supersede the Zionist model with a state that is based on the ‘one person, one vote’ principle”” (PDF p.28).
Related pages
Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, BDS movement, Legitimacy struggle, Apartheid