Tag Archives: Dershowitz

Responses to Trump’s Moving the American Embassy Policy – Part I

Responses to Trump’s Moving the American Embassy Policy – Part I

by

Howard Adelman

I was proud to see that my analysis of Trump’s announcement to move the American embassy in the foreseeable future and to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, as distributed Wednesday afternoon, generally held up very well with other analyses, with one clear exception. Though I accepted that the policy statement was nuanced, that it was impelled by domestic realities, I was out of synch with some commentators who thought the move was reasonable and realistic internationally as well as domestically. I was on the side of those who believed that Trump’s initiative in setting in motion steps to move the American embassy to Jerusalem and, more importantly, immediately recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, would add to the difficulty of advancing progress on the peace front.

This blog will primarily focus upon commentators who agreed with me with respect to the lack of realism internationally regarding the announcement. Usually, they went further and made the judgement that the move was ill-advised or considered it a clear setback to negotiations. Subsequently, not even counting the leadership of all the major political parties in Israel, I will deal with analysts who viewed the initiative as a reasonable one and generally welcome at this time.

In beginning with critics, I will not include any analysis of those who saw the move as part of Zionist and colonialist efforts to deny Palestinians their rights to self-determination and their rightful ownership of Palestine or other more moderate stances of countries in the Middle East who were outraged but still supported a two-state solution.  In dealing with those who agreed with me on the international repercussions, I will say very little about those who were unequivocally apoplectic and loudly denounced and demonstrated against the new policy because they found it indecent and contrary to international law.

For example, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) organized a petition and a series of demonstrations declaring their shock and outrage. CJPME opposed any initiatives of countries to move their embassies to Jerusalem. They declared that, Trump ignored “all previous UN resolutions and an international consensus on Jerusalem.” Trump did not ignore previous resolutions. His statement was made in opposition to such resolutions, and specifically the one in December in the Security Council which President Obama did not veto which weighed in on the negotiations and declared ALL settlements on the other side of the old Green Line to be illegal. As I had analyzed the initiative, Trump’s move was intended to counter Barack Obama’s failure or refusal to use the veto.

Nor did I contend that Trump’s decision undermined all Middle East peace efforts calling for a negotiated settlement on the status of Jerusalem. Trump specifically qualified his recognition of Jerusalem as the capital by insisting that recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the plan to move the embassy did not address the issue of Jerusalem’s borders but that such a decision must result from negotiations between the two parties. I was interested in critics on the left who were more analytical, though a few were also clearly very upset.

I distinguish between analyses and appraisals. For although I might have agreed with some critics’ analyses with respect to the international dimensions, I disagreed on their ultimate evaluation. For whether one agreed or disagreed with Trump, whether one has a very low regard for Trump as I do, I thought the policy statement was well crafted and nuanced.

Let me begin with some of the very bright lights among the critics. I start with Peter Beinart who is very sharp analytically but seemed to be almost as apoplectic and hysterical about Trump’s announcement when I watched him on CNN as anti-Zionists. He had expressed his extreme displeasure in the past with respect to Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to build 2,500 more new housing units in parts of Jerusalem that were once on the other side of the Green Line as well as with Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Beinart repeatedly insisted that these moves were incendiary and would cost Israeli lives.

In contrast, Alan Dershowitz, who has a liberal pedigree but in the last few years has sounded like he was more on the right, argued that, “Violence should not determine policy.” Any instigated violence should be met by counter-measures by the police and the military. “The reason violence  – whether rock-throwing or more lethal forms of terrorism  – is used because it works… as a way to extort concessions from the world. And it works because policy makers often make or refrain from making controversial decisions based on the fear of violent reactions.”

For Dershowitz, unlike Beinart, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem was not unreasonable nor was recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. According to Dershowitz, Jerusalem is and will remain Israel’s capital. It is a fact and not a matter for debate. When such moves explicitly insist that this in no way predetermines the boundaries of Jerusalem or who should have sovereignty over the Old City, for Dershowitz that is not only a reasonable move, but a prudent one.

For Dershowitz, it does not matter whether the threat of violence comes from Palestinians, from Islamic demonstrators in Malaysia or from settlers on the West Bank. Policy should not be determined by such threats. As an example, Dershowitz cites the threats and the actual violence that resulted when, in 2000-2001, President Bill Clinton and then Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, put forth what was for Israel an extremely generous set of concessions. The threat – and the response: the Second Intifada! Dershowitz was even critical of the Israeli government for backing down under the threat of violence to its initiative in installing security cameras on what Jews call the Temple Mount (Har HaBáyit) and Muslims call Haram esh-Sharif. Dershowitz is fond of quoting Yitzhak Rabin. “We will pursue the peace process as if there no terrorism, and respond to terrorism as if there were no peace process.”

Other commentators supporting the Dershowitz position cite opposite moves that were far more widespread than recognizing the central site as special to Muslims as well as Jews. The UN General Assembly went further in the other direction in October of last year when it recognized the central holy site in Jerusalem as Muslim, supported Muslim claims and ignored Jewish ones.

The Dershowitz position could be questioned because it did not go far enough but also because it went too far in declaring Trump’s rationale to be reasonable. Was the diplomatic initiative reasonable? The peace offer of Barak was reasonable – whether or not one agreed with it. The installation of cameras on the Temple Mount (Har Habayit), however, broke an agreement between the Israeli authorities and the Muslims who administered the plaza of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Golden Dome. Israel had concurred that any changes with respect to the Temple Mount would take place as a product of consultations and joint initiatives. Unilateral actions on the part of Israelis, even those that on the surface seemed very reasonable, were read and interpreted as additional steps reducing Islamic authority on a site which they considered very holy.

Was the initiative to move the American embassy and to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, without prejudging the boundaries of that capital, unreasonable in breaking with previous agreements and seemingly both symbolically and on the ground advancing Israeli claims of sovereignty at the expense of Palestinian claims? That is the nub of the issue. America’s allies by and large took that position. At this time, such an initiative was “unhelpful”. The Czech Republic initially followed the Russian example of recognizing West Jerusalem as Israeli’s capital which, for many Israelis, seemed implicitly to deny Israeli claims on other parts of Jerusalem, even when qualified by assertions that the move did not signal any assessment on the ultimate boundaries of the capital of the Jewish state. In any case, the next day the Prime Minister rescinded the statement of the president of The Czech Republic.

Dershowitz’s argument in defence of the move and his rant against threats of violence, and Beinart’s apoplectic responses to the initiative and fears for “Jewish” lives, both depended on the assessment of a prior issue – was the initiative reasonable? More importantly, was it reasonable now? Canada was not agnostic on this question, even though the Canadian government refrained from criticizing the American initiative. Canada simply reiterated its position that any unilateral initiatives at this time would further complicate the difficulties in advancing the peace process and that our country would refrain from taking any unilateral steps.

The moderate and experienced negotiator on the Palestinian side, Saeb Erekat, backed up by Abbas, did not threaten violence and at least rhetorically called only for peaceful demonstrations. He did pronounce not only the peace process, but even the prospect of a two-state solution, dead. The only possibility, he insisted was now fostering a one state solution with equal rights for both Jews and Palestinians in the whole territory. However, he spoiled his threat by getting the facts wrong in asserting that Donald Trump had recognized a “united” Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. Trump did no such thing.

Dershowitz asked all bystanders not to “be fooled by those who say that the two-state solution is dead or that it is time to adopt a one-state solution.” Why? Because under any resolution, “Jerusalem would be recognized as the capital of Israel and its holiest places would remain under Israeli control.” That may be a realist prophecy. That may even be a realistic policy. But since it was at the heart of the dispute over Jerusalem, it would be all the more reason not to signal a pre-emptive outcome at this time. Even Donald Trump never went that far in putting forth his position. If Donald Trump had done so, if he had kept his promise to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital without qualifying that initiative as not preempting any outcome on the borders of Jerusalem that could result from an agreement, then a Palestinian rejection should be viewed as reasonable and not just “the latest excuse by Palestinian leaders to refuse to sit down, negotiate and make the painful compromises necessary for a complete resolution of the outstanding issues.”

However, Dershowitz offered another argument why an initiative, without the qualification of not predetermining the sovereignty over the holy sites, was the reasonable one. It goes back to the point I made at the beginning of this blog that Trump was indeed attentive to previous UN resolutions. “President Trump’s decision merely restores the balance that was undone by President Obama’s decision to engineer a one-sided Security Council Resolution that changed the status quo.” That is, of course, why I criticized the failure of the US, when Obama was already a lame-duck president, to veto the Security Council resolution that Israeli settlements were illegal. The motions of the Security Council, unlike those of the UN General Assembly, do have legal status. With the U.S. landmark decision not to join the other 14 votes in favour of declaring all settlements illegal but to abstain, an initiative was permitted to take place which did preempt declarations on the outcome of the negotiations.

The Obama White House had rationalized its abstention which had far more significance than Donald Trump’s moving the embassy or recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, again without predetermining the borders of Jerusalem. For one, it was accompanied by a press release explaining the American failure to veto the resolution was determined by “the absence of any meaningful peace process.” That meant that the US was declaring Israel to be the main culprit in sabotaging the peace process. But if one defended the Obama initiative and, thereby, its rationale that the peace process had reached a dead end, then Donald Trump’s initiative should have posed no problem since, unlike the UN resolution, there was no presumptions about a final outcome.

Of course there was a presumption in both moves. Both the Obama and the Trump initiatives signaled an understanding of who was to blame for the stalled peace process. The UN resolution went even further in weighing in, not only on the agent to blame, but on the substance of negotiations, for that resolution declared that areas of West Jerusalem, such as French Hill, illegal as well. The resolution stated that Israel’s settlements had been placed “on Palestinian territory,” that the area captured in the 1967 war and occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, was Palestinian, and the occupation had “no legal validity.” Though the resolution only demanded a halt to “all Israeli settlement activities” as “essential for salvaging the two-state solution,” and did not demand a roll-back of previous actions, it made the quest for a two-state solution even more difficult. For the process was now under an international determination that the settlements were illegal and Israel, whichever party formed the government, would resist participating in negotiations that, in advance, undermined the Israel position that the settlements were not illegal.

There was another voice on the left that criticized Trump’s initiative, not for its content, but for failing to demand any quid pro quo from the Israeli government for what is broadly considered to be a bold American move. Tom Friedman, the Pulitzer Prize- winning columnist for The New York Times, seemed to criticize the initiative, not for its substantive content, but for the failure to link the American concession to a demand that Israel halt its settlement activities. For Friedman, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital had been understood as a concession that would be offered in return for Israeli concessions on other issues, such as settlements. Trump had awarded Israel a prize a) at a time when Israel did not deserve it; b) without extracting balancing concessions; and c) while offering Palestinians nothing of consequence in exchange.

In fact, the Trump initiative had been accompanied by a number of prior moves in the opposite direction – the expansion of Israel building more housing units on territory on the other side of the Green Line, such as in Gilo, which, under any peace agreement, was expected by all parties to remain part of Israel. There were other moves – the downgrading of the PLO “embassy” in Washington, the withdrawal of financial support by Congress to the Palestinian Authority because of its implicit support for terrorism in awarding recognition and providing the families of these “martyrs” with pensions. This was seen as a move towards defining the PA as a supporter of terror. The ground was being laid for subjecting the PA to US sanctions.

 

To be continued – Those Who Applaud Trump’s Initiative

 

Tomorrow: to be continued – Plaudits for Trump’s Initiative

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A Framework for Comprehending Sovereignty

A Framework for Comprehending Sovereignty

by

Howard Adelman

As in a recipe for baking a layered cake, I begin with the ingredients. In a cake, the two main elements are usually, but not necessarily, flour and water. The two main elements in the case of sovereignty are state and nation. That does not mean that both are always present. When Louis XIV of France said, “L’État c’est moi,” France still consisted of a number of ethnic and linguistic groups, the Basques in the south, the descendants of the Ligures in the south-east, the Normans in the north descended from the Vikings, and the major group of Gauls and Belgae that were dominant in the territory that became France. There was no singular French nation at the time. But there was a state, and Louis XIV was the quintessential absolute monarch of that state.

While the nation was multiple, the state and the sovereign were one. That meant that the ability to raise taxes, to require the citizens of the French state to pay monies to the state, belonged to Louis XIV as the embodiment of the French state. This was the material dimension of sovereignty. At the same time, Louis insisted on a monopoly on coercive power within the territory of the state. As absolute ruler, any lords of the realm had to pledge their control and use of military power to Louis XIV’s purposes. This was the coercive dimension of sovereignty and the move towards the state having a monopoly on the use of coercive power. Finally, Louis XIV had absolute jurisdiction in making the laws of the land. Combining all three, Louis XIV controlled the exercise of three key elements of the state – material wealth, coercive power and legal authority.

Sometimes the state precedes the constitution of a nation. This was true in France. This was true in the United States. This was true in Canada. Some countries, such as Canada, never did forge a singular strong nationality, but a layered one in which all citizens could belong to the Canadian nation, but many could be Québécois, Ojibway, Cree or Inuit as well. Further, that sense of common identity developed and shifted over time. The bond formed was not primarily external and expressed through the formal and legal mechanism of citizenship, as in a state, but could be said to be intuitive characterized by informal bonds that tie together the members of a nation.

A nation has a national consciousness – a shared sense of group identity. That is its heart. A nation has a governing idea. In contemporary Canada, it may be the concept of a mosaic and a collective concern for the well-being of each of its members as manifested in one realm, a single payer system for guaranteeing health care. In the U.S., it may be a very different conception – a melting pot and a realm independent and separate from the power of the state, such as the idea of a frontier that is more about the personality of the nation than an actual territorial boundary. That is its heart.

In a nation, there are rules as well as ruling ideas, but those rooted not so much in formal authority as in a sense of authentic authority. In Canada, it may be the reputed civility, the politeness of Canadians. In America, it may be bluntness and the wide scope given to the expression of free speech so that Alan Dershowitz could insist that the American Civil Liberties Union intervene on behalf of Donald Trump against the charge of inciting violence at his rallies because, unless a direct connection between his words and the actions of the individuals committing the assault against a peaceful protester in the midst of the rally, can be established, the command to, “Get her out,” does not constitute incitement to violence unless the individuals committing the assault were paid agents of the Donald Trump campaign. In America, even though its extent is debated, the right of freedom of speech is much more broadly defined than in other political jurisdictions. Behind the constitution, this inchoate sense of the nation is often cited to justify legislation and interpretations of the formal legal system.

In addition to its heart and head, a nation is a source of empowerment through the exercise of its sense as a nation and its members’ identification with and service to that nation. These are the guts of a nation.

If a state consolidates its material foundation, its legal system and its ability to use coercive power over time, the process is directed towards making the unit more effective, more coherent and more unified. In the case of the nation, its dynamic, its changing qualities and characteristics, are much more on display and in play. The formation of a nation can almost always be said to be an activity in motion. When sufficient numbers share a singular identification to become a source of collective energy working for a common goal, a nation is formed that can be characterized by a unique energy source rooted in creative rather than coercive power.

State                                        Nation

Power                   Coercive                                     Creative

Authority               Formal or Legal                        Authentic

Influence               Material                                     Intellectual

While most states consolidate, their formation is independent of and usually precedes the formation of the nation that dominates within a state. This was not true of the ancient Hebrew nation-state or of the modern Dutch nation-state where the group developed a sense of itself as a nation before it constituted itself as a state. The Torah provides the narrative of the formation of the Israelite nation before there ever was a state. A nation is constituted by a set of reigning ideas that provide a profound intellectual influence on the spirit of a nation. The will of that nation becomes the source of authority for defining a nation, its historical purpose and the use of the spirit of a nation or its collective creative energy.

Opening Friday’s roundtable on sovereignty, Tom Axworthy cited Jean Bodin as his primary historical authority for defining sovereignty. Jean Bodin, a sixteenth century French jurist, philosopher and professor of law at Toulouse, was best known for his theory of sovereignty which defined sovereignty in terms of formal legal rule backed up by a monopoly on coercive power for governing a defined territory. What is less well known is that Bodin also wrote on the economy in a 1568 treatise, Réponse de J. Bodin aux paradoxes de M. de Malestroit in which he clarified that a state not only depended upon a legislated regime backed by coercive force, but a material foundation in which monetary policy (the amount of money in circulation) and the productivity of the regime were to be kept in some form of reasonable balance. Material wealth was not simply about the quantity of money – the increasing importation of silver and gold from South America at that time – but about the ability of the state to organize the production of goods and services consonant with the money supply.

However, in Bodin, the stress on these three dimensions of state sovereignty ignored the role of the sovereignty of the nation. Bodin provided a rationale for the consolidation of power, legislative authority and material wealth in a singular and dominant authority. Though Axworthy, in his presentation of a realist view of sovereignty, ignored the material dimension, his most significant omission was his obliviousness to the sovereignty of the nation and blindness to other ways in which the sovereignty of the state could be grasped.

Elizabeth Riddell-Dixon’s account stood in sharp contrast because she stressed the importance neither of military power nor the direction of material acquisition nor even of state legislated laws. International law set the foundation for recognizing the boundaries of a state in the north of Canada – in this case, the international law of the sea – backed up by scientific research that provided the intellectual substance for applying those norms. All this was part of the expression of the spirit of a nation even in a realm where there were no members requiring protection.

This is also why an international legal regime needs to be developed governing climate change based on extensive scientific research. Not for expanding our wealth, but for making the need to resort to coercive force obsolete and for ensuring human survival. Sara French-Rooke in her discussions of sovereignty when applied to northern peoples stressed the central place of personal security rather than state security, the emphasis again on survival rather than the accumulation of wealth ad infinitum.

This involved a very different conception of sovereignty, one rooted in a universal sovereign in which nations and states are simply trustees for a segment of territory on behalf of an eternal sovereign. The state and the nation may both come into existence in history, but behind and before that emergence there needed to be a magisterium universalis.

When there is an effort to make the universal sovereign the actual ruler, you then move towards an idealistic conception of sovereignty. For the ultimate authority, which would determine whether a state treated its citizens adequately, would be a source of universal governance. This was the intent of R2P. It was neither the intent nor the mechanism of the law of the sea, for the latter always depends on states opting into the process and, in the end, making the consent of the relevant states critical to the implementation of the universal norms.

There are clear implications of pushing one doctrine rather than another. In the realist or Bodin construction, policy would suggest that Canada needs a robust sea presence in terms of updated or new icebreakers reinforced by navy patrols and air surveillance to exercise its sovereignty. But Riddell-Nixon argued that neither coercion, the quest for material accumulation nor formal domestic legislation have been critical in determining the boundaries of sovereignty of Canada in the arctic region.

This framework also allows us to understand both shared and shattered sovereignty. In shared sovereignty, agents share formal authority and usually defend that shared authority by joint action of military forces. Revenues from resources may also be shared as between Sudan and South Sudan. Shared sovereignty may be between a domestic jurisdiction below the state level – such as a province – or there may be shared authority between a state and an external agent. Thus, Canada in matters of defence has largely surrendered its autonomous control of coercive power, at least where it concerns the defence of the North American continent, to the overwhelming might of America. When Canadians were debating over whether to have or get rid of nuclear-tipped Bomarc missiles in Sudbury in the Diefenbaker-Pearson era, this was a decoy. Americans had already deployed nuclear-armed missiles across the north of Canada, something few Canadians knew anything about at the time.

Sovereignty also shatters. It may be among Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq or repressed as in the case of Turkey dealing with its Kurdish minority or a source of rivalry as between the Dinka and Neuer in South Sudan. Kenya has yet to forge a fully unified nation from its dominant tribes. In the UK, the Scots are seeking independence and, in Northern Ireland, there is some degree of shared sovereignty between Ireland and Great Britain. Shared sovereignty over control of the old city of Jerusalem has been proposed to resolve a major impasse in the peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Shared sovereignty is sometimes a positive response to the problem of a shattered state that stresses divisions rather than unity among the nations that make up a state.

Failed states usually result from the shattering of national identity, not simply because of its multiplicity. The tensions in America are deeply embedded in the mistreatment of America’s black population. I finally watched the marvellous documentary, 13th. The film is based on the thesis that the 13th amendment to the constitution passed to end slavery in the U.S., contained a loophole which allowed discrimination against blacks to be reinstated in new forms of legal coercion when the old forms became intolerable. The 13th amendment reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The loophole is in italics.

When slavery ended, the legal system in the south was used to arrest blacks in large numbers for spurious or minor offences. Southern states used this new form of slavery to build public works through the labour of chain gangs. When that practice was disallowed, the South switched to the use of Jim Crow laws legislating separation of the races and raising the hurdle for exercising voting rights. When Jim Crow was ended with the civil rights movement, the coercive system of black subjugation, though far weaker, persisted and switched to using the law and coercive powers of the state to raise the prison population in the U.S. Even though a task force constituted by Nixon recommended addressing the root causes of drug abuse through therapy rather than incarceration, Nixon introduced a war on drugs knowing it was irrelevant to reducing the drug issue, but as a mechanism for winning the south vote by identifying blacks with drugs and winning support for his unpopular Vietnam War by libelling hippies as stoned potheads.

The war on drugs continued and was enhanced by each presidential regime, including Clinton’s, so that by the year 2014 the prison population had exploded from numbers in the range of 300,000 to numbers in excess of 2.4 million. 40% were blacks. Law and coercion were used to disenfranchise blacks by alleging a spurious massive voter fraud and raising barriers to access voting to both demonize blacks as cheaters as well as retain support among white voters indoctrinated to fear blacks as rapists. The point is that the coercive might of the state, its legislative powers and its material interests can combine to repress a part of the nation and define that part as Other. That effort may turn to Mexican illegal and legal migrants as well, including Hispanic children born in the U.S., who, like blacks of old, were demonized by Donald Trump as rapists and criminals even though the rate of convictions of Hispanics was lower than the rate for native-born white Americans.

There is a material motive to undertaking such efforts since, in the partnerships of government and private business, large numbers of private corporations now have a vested interest in the economics of incarceration and the profits that flow from production facilities in prisons.  Thus, material interest can be united with a state’s control over coercive power and its legislative authority to repress part of a nation to enhance the identity of another part and unite that part through inculcation of the fear of the Other.

A healthy nation-state tries to ensure that all its citizens can identify with a nation that will be treated equally by the state, whatever the sub-national grouping. However, the coercive powers of the state, its legislative powers and its objective of facilitating the acquisition of material wealth can be combined to throw stones at and eventually crack and even shatter the windshield of the state.

 

With the help of Alex Zisman

Canada, thankfully, is travelling a path in the opposite direction.

A Performance Critique of BDS – Part II

A Performance Critique of BDS – Part II

by

Howard Adelman

                                                                                                           

 “More than any other tactic of the Palestinian liberation movement, the BDS campaign has succeeded in creating a global outpouring of support for Palestinian rights and placed Israel’s violations of them under international scrutiny like never before.” This is the boast that appears on the BDS website in an essay written by Sherry Wolf entitled, “What’s behind the rise of BDS?” The answer presumably is a record of success. How is success measured? By the following:

  • moving the issue of Palestinian rights from the margins into mainstream discourse
  • instead of a discussion of obscure territorial border issues and competing narratives, debate has now opened up in the media, in corporate board rooms and in academia

For the moment, let’s presume the truth of both claims. How then do such “successes” relate to the goal of ending the occupation and colonizing of all Arab lands? Wolf makes no effort to draw any connection. Like magic, a campaign for the rights of Palestinians will lead inevitably to the roll back of the armies of the colonizers and the surrender of all land seized back to the Palestinians. One need only utter the connection to recognize how absurd and preposterous any claim for such a connection using the means that BDS employs. Instead of an argument and evidence, we get repetition upon repetition of the three aims of the BDS movement as if they were a mantra rather than realizable political objectives.

The anti apartheid movement against South Africa is usually offered as the forerunner of the BDS campaign. But everyone knows the context, the histories and the global situation were radically different. The Boers, for example, had lived in South Africa for centuries unlike the Zionists who had really been in Palestine for less than half a century before they gained control initially of just over half the land and then in the 1948 war increased that to over 70%. The Zionists became, through the forced exodus of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, the majority in their own state. In contrast, the Boers never achieved majority status in their areas of occupation, even if the English white population was added to their own numbers. In ethnic, religious and racial conflicts, minorities have a choice – rule over the rest or be ruled, but do not pretend that, as a minority, you can rule as a minority for very long without external support and/or internal ruthlessness.

Further, the Jewish Zionists were much cleverer than the advocates of apartheid. Apartheid was not practiced in Israel primarily through the rule of law and the denial of the right to vote as it was in South Africa and in the Southern United States. The exclusively Jewish Israeli government let Palestinians in Israel become full citizens and cast ballots and practiced any apartheid through informal rather than legally coercive measures. The BDS charges the Zionists with racism and preaching racial superiority with no evidence to support such a claim. The Zionists are much cleverer than that. They practice the superiority of their power, not the superiority of their blood. The latter offends the world as it did for the advocates of apartheid in South Africa, Alabama and most of the Deep South in the USA. The superiority of power, in contrast, is often widely admired even when the group controlling and wielding the power is repulsive. More importantly, the only real way to challenge power is with countervailing forces that are stronger, more committed and have the vision of the long run rather than pandering to liberal doctrines of rights to get mushy liberals on one’s side.

In putting forth this liberal non-violent mode of fighting what is really a hundred years war, the BDS movement distorts and deforms Palestinian history. The militant Palestinian movement never envisioned winning its battle against the hostile forces arraigned against it “through the mobilization of Palestinians alone.” Quite the contrary. Initially, the Palestinian leadership placed too much reliance on the efforts of others. And then when it took its destiny into its own hands, instead of raising the morale of its partners so they could enter the fray with enthusiasm and an all-out effort, the PLO ended up getting into one conflict after another with them even as the PLO agreed to non-interference in those Arab states in return for financial support, something which BDS acknowledges. Instead of mobilizing other Arabs and Muslims to fight on their side, the Palestinian leadership counted on governments that were already insecure in their own power without taking on Israel and its Western backers. The Palestinian leadership, indeed, did not work alone, but got in bed like prostitutes with regimes without deep roots in the will of the people and without any stamina for a long and necessarily sacrificial struggle.

The problem was not that the militants went their own way, but that they went the wrong way, pussyfooting around the central issues rather than directly confronting them and rallying the resources and the will to accomplish the real goals. The BDS movement opts for non-violence in its actions, but violence in its goals and aspirations. The position is inherently contradictory and doomed to be an even greater failure than the weak militancy of the PLO leadership even as BDS celebrates its rare pyrrhic victories.

Look at the contrast between reality and the following BDS claims:

  1. Success as evidenced by the admission of Israeli and Zionist leaders that BDS is “delegitimizing” Israel and threatens Israel’s authority and prestige;
  2. The shift in American public opinion so that a majority now view Israel unfavourably;
  3. Success because of Israel’s own brutal actions in activities such as Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009) and in Operation Protective Edge (2014) in Gaza, activities which BDS puts on display and amplifies.

In other words, BDS admits that its successes have largely depended on Israel and Zionists shooting themselves in the foot rather than any role BDS plays except magnifying and publicizing Israel’s self-inflicted wounds.

But what is the reality? For purposes of space, I will concentrate only on the claimed successes with respect to U.S. attitudes and support and set aside both an examination of successes outside America and whether BDS has taken sufficient advantage of Israel shooting itself in the foot.

I begin with the first claim, that Israeli and Zionist leaders have recognized BDS as a central threat. Wolf wrote, “At the 2014 conference of the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC), unquestionably the most influential pro-Israel group in the United States, speakers from Secretary of State John Kerry to Netanyahu felt the urgency to deride BDS. In his keynote address to AIPAC, Netanyahu mentioned BDS no fewer than eighteen times. To rousing cheers, Netanyahu called on Zionists to ‘fight back’ against boycott advocates, ‘to delegitimize the delegitimizers.’ [16] Many BDS activists rightly took this to be a form of distorted respect from an enemy that previously ignored the movement’s existence.”

How revealing! Success is marked by recognition of one’s existence, not by the degree to which specific goals have been achieved within an overall larger strategy. It is as if the black flies of northern Ontario announced that they were winning the war against human encroachment on nature in general and their habitat in particular because they are such an irritant to the increasing number of humans invading their territory. The BDS movement has shown it can be a bothersome irritant. The BDS has shown that it can become a focus of attention by the current Zionist leadership that continues to repeatedly shoot itself in the foot. Swatting the back of its neck may be perceived as a form of shooting oneself in the foot, but it can also be recognized as a minor distraction, not only for the Zionists but for the goals of those who really see Zionism as the imperialist colonizer. The real question is whether serving as a gnat will stop the continuing invasion. Claiming that Israel has become a global pariah does not make it so.

Let us look hard at claims of enhanced support for the Palestinians and the branding of Israel as a pariah. I neither have the space nor time to undertake a world survey, but an examination of shifting attitudes in the key battleground for the BDS movement, the United States, offers very little encouragement and belies the BDS claim that Israel has become a pariah. A swarm of mosquitoes or an attack of black flies are certainly bothersome, but they cause little change in the actual forward march of the colonizer and occupier.

Note the following:

  1. U.S. military aid to Israel has not decreased but has steadily increased beginning with the establishment of the PLO until it more or less flat-lined and achieved a plateau over the last thirty years:
  2. The U.S. Congress, including Democrats and Republicans, remain unwavering in support for Israel even when the Prime Minister of Israel challenges the President of the U.S. not simply on U.S. soil, but in the U.S. Congress.[1]
  3. There was absolutely NO significant media coverage that Congress continued to vote support for shipping sophisticated weaponry to Israel, even if some held their noses at the extent of the destruction in Gaza.
  4. In various surveys, although there is a vocal and significant minority opposed to such military aid, there is a clear majority in America who support supplying Israel with the same level of weaponry into the future; that support has not declined because of Israel’s actions in Gaza; further, in spite of the revelations of Edward Snowden, the Obama administration has supplied Israel with covert support by sharing intelligence, and there is little sign of any significant objection.
  5. Almost 40% of Americans continue to support a two state solution, a number unchanged in spite of the Gaza wars between 2008 and 2014.
  6. Also unchanged is the number – estimated at 18% – who support a one state solution with the Zionists in control.
  7. What has changed as the prospect of a two state solutions recedes is the number supporting Israel evolving into a bi-national state with Arabs having equal citizenship if, and for many who take this position, only if the two state solution really is dead.
  8. Since the PLO has shifted tactics and set aside the bilateral pursuit of peace with the U.S. as a mediator, at least while Netanyahu and his ilk hold power, and has shifted to the international diplomatic route more in line with the BDS approach, only 25% of Americans want the U.S. to support such an effort.
  9. On sanctions, in spite of a majority of Americans opposing expansion of Israeli settlements, most oppose imposing sanctions; BDS efforts have not seemed to have been proven effective in getting support for sanctions aligned with opposition to settlements.
  10. More telling than any of the above polls perhaps is the fact that only 14% of Americans want the U.S. to be more supportive of Palestine while 55%, in spite of opposition to settlements, want the U.S. to lean towards the Israeli side.

None of this data supports the self-advertisement that BDS has had a significant effect on American attitudes let alone policy with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Quite the reverse. Given the ambiguous and equivocal position of BDS on whether BDS favours a one state or a two-state solution, and certainly around the issue of whether Palestinians should have the defining power in such a state, BDS can be accused of retarding rather than enhancing this development in consciousness.

However there is one cogent argument in support of BDS in spite of any significant lack of progress to date. 31% of Americans rank human rights concerns as their highest priority compared to real politic and the defence of American interests (24%) or 14% because of Israeli interests. However, of those 31%, a majority believe that Israel is a stronger defender of human rights than the Palestinians. This indicates that making an appeal on the basis of human rights might seem the most efficacious route to some success since rights are so central to many Americans’ concerns, but in doing so, perhaps the spotlight reveals more about the Palestinians than the Zionists. On the other hand, rallying around the theme of human rights does allow those most sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, and those most supportive of international action to recognize a Palestinian state, to coalesce. But is that success consequential, or does it merely make Palestinians feel good without any accomplishments on the ground?

This is the telling poll about attitudes. The most recent Pew poll continued to show that Americans, in spite of Israeli ruthless behaviour, continue to support Israel over Palestinians by a wide margin. BDS has not had any significant effect on this even when the poll was conducted immediately after the last cessation of fighting in Gaza in 2014. Even after the havoc Israel inflicted on Gaza, 34% of Americans strongly sympathize and 32% somewhat sympathize with Israel, while the equivalent figures for the Palestinian cause is 11% and 35%. More telling, the sympathy for the Palestinians is not with their cause but their condition as victims, while the sympathy for Israel is for their cause. Pursuing BDS goals is a self-defeating exercise because, in order to earn more sympathy for the Palestinians, they have to continue to be victims, not victors. Further, in spite of all their suffering, almost half of Americans still have little or no sympathy for the Palestinians, while those with little or no sympathy for the Israelis is half that figure.

This points to the real flaw in the BDS philosophical approach and efforts. They are totally marginal in effecting change. To the extent they do succeed, they may boomerang back against the Palestinians even more. Finally, and most importantly, such efforts undermine the real struggle, the struggle between two national groups for dominance. Once that is surrendered, the Zionists are bound to win because, disastrous as it is, they have a better track record in the human rights field than the Palestinians. Further, they are bound to win because they are stronger. The only way Palestinians will win is if they understand that they must be stronger, more dedicated and more committed to winning the struggle. BDS is really a route to surrender while engaging in a rhetorical superego trip. The reality is that wars – even the wars in South Africa and the American South – were won because of who had the power, and not because of an appeal to human rights, however important human rights were as a rallying cry for the majority to overthrow the power of a minority.

What has changed? Support for a two-state solution has declined as the vision of a two states living side by side in peace has receded as a possibility. BDS supporters who deep down do not believe in victory for the Palestinian cause, but espouse a week-kneed vision of a secular society of individuals with equal rights, whether they have Jewish or non-Jewish backgrounds, a utopian dream if there ever was one, would appear to have gained ground because of this shift. The problem, however, is that the support for a Palestine dominated by the Zionists has increased even more. As the two-state solution recedes, the issue is not whether a utopian paradise of individual rights will rise out of the ashes of a doomed pursuit, but which community will dominate in the resultant power struggle. Does the BDS movement offer any indication that the Palestinians will emerge on top as they pursue everyone ostensibly living at precisely the same level of rights and benefits? Quite the opposite. Both domestically and certainly in the U.S., understanding for a hegemonic Zionist enterprise has crept to the forefront both in Israel and the U.S.

Demonizing the Zionists is totally insufficient. In fact, the greater the demonization, the more the morale of the Palestinians will suffer as their dream of recovering their lands and their historic place in the world recedes. What is required is not demonization of the Zionists but their total defeat, and the BDS platform offers no route or prospect to achieving such a goal. As the prospect of a two-state solution recedes, the benefits will not go to the mushy liberals who build a program based on human rights. They did not emerge victorious in the recent Arab spring and have failed to learn or apply any lessons to their inconsequential efforts when fighting the Zionist colonizers and occupiers. The benefit will go to the hard Israeli right who change hirsute for sheep clothing at the bat of an eye and much faster and more successfully that Jacob did in robbing Esau of his birthright.

As long as the BDS movement propagates the illusion of a so-called just outcome in which everyone can live in a polity that guarantees everyone human rights, then the Zionists cannot and will not be defeated. They will be irritated. They will scratch away at the bites of no-see-ums at their hairline. But the Zionist entity will not surrender as the minority apartheid regime in Rhodesia and South Africa and the American South were forced to do. Standing up to Israel’s human rights violations and the collaborators with the Zionist enterprise of colonization and occupation is not and can never be just a human rights struggle. It has to be a struggle for the Palestinians as Palestinians, for the Arabs as Arabs, for Muslims as Muslims, against an enemy that has to be destroyed. Otherwise, BDS is just a proponent of a long series of illusions that have led to one setback after another for the Palestinians. If the Zionists are inherently colonizers, if they are inherently occupiers, then joining forces with bleeding heart liberal Jews on a human rights platform can only be self-defeating. Viewing themselves as the civil rights movement of the twenty-first century may appease sensitivities, but will not bring victory over the Zionists any closer. Cloaking oneself in the mantle of universal rights will no more disguise and hide the real battle ground than the Zionists wearing the magician’s cloak of a two-state solution.

But the supporters of the BDS movement know this. They are not total fools. They know they lack the domestic power to bring the Zionist entity to its knees. That is why they, like the PLO, have taken the international route. In their own words, “Though BDS is a magnificent tactic for winning sympathy and drawing activists into solidarity with Palestinians, even landing financial and ideological blows against Israel, it is ultimately a struggle for reforms within capitalism—an exploitative system that is part of an imperial order.” In other words, the real ultimate goal is the defeat of capitalism of which Zionist Israel is just an early and easier target. And all of this in the face of China as a rising communist-capitalist power and the virtual decimation of the communist utopian enterprise everywhere.

What about the claims for specific accomplishments? On the sanctions front, the score is zero. Does this suggest to the BDS proponents that their utopian vision in which they hypocritically espouse Palestinian self-determination while denouncing Jewish self-determination all in the guise of the universality of human rights has little in common with the civil rights struggle in the American south or the struggle within South Africa to overthrow apartheid? And when they shift gears and insist that they are true liberals opposed to prioritizing either form of national self-determination, it is clear that they cannot make up their minds whether they are the avant-garde of socialism, of universal liberalism or of support for the Palestinians as a movement for self-determination in the face of a powerful colonizing occupier. The confusions and contradictions only muddy the waters even as they use this creative ambiguity of traditional diplomacy to gain more support.

On the divestment front, BDS calls for withdrawal of investments in stocks and bonds in corporations deemed to be complicit in support of violations of Palestinian human rights. Again, even on this inconsequential front with an effect that is barely noticeable, the reality is that the BDSers are really not aiming at victory, but consciousness raising, about using the divestment campaign to help blacken the image of Israel. My argument is simple. To the extent the BDS campaign has succeeded, the success has been infinitely miniscule. Secondly, the backlash has been far more powerful than any small benefit. Third, part of that backlash entails revealing the hypocrisy of a movement that campaigns on human rights as a universal position but singularly focuses on Israel which even its most ardent enemies have to admit is far from the most heinous criminal on this front, quite aside from the fact that in a power struggle between one group and another for supremacy, human rights, however important, become relatively a side issue. Finally, BDSers have a record of flouting victories when the actions lauded have often had little if anything to do with supporting the aims of BDS.

Take the Hampshire College issue where BDS claimed its first victory in 2009 in the soft underbelly of its campaign for divestment. BDSers claimed that, as a direct consequence of their campaign, Hampshire College regents voted to terminate investments in companies associated with Israel and the exploitation of Palestinians.  What are the facts? Hampshire College is one of the myriad of small liberal colleges that populate the American landscape with a total enrolment of only 1,400 students boasting small classes, small faculty to student ratios, and an impressive record of graduates going on to complete graduate degrees. It is far from the most prestigious of such colleges, but it is no slouch either. Hampshire is among the better of the myriad of small liberal colleges in the United States.

The campaign for divestment on campus was begun by a group which, consistent with the BDS position, viewed all of Palestine as occupied and colonized. Though the Board denied it was responding to pressure, the Board voted to divest its $40 million endowment of any investments in 200 companies including six pushed by BDS on campus, e.g. General Electric, ITT and Motorola. The President of the college at the time, Ralph Hexter, admitted the college had initiated its actions in response to student pressure, but that the action taken had nothing to do with any opposition to Israel. This aroused the ire of Alan Dershowitz, whose son went to Hampshire College. Within two years, Ralph Hexter was no longer president; he was replaced in 2011 by Jonathan Lash, an environmental expert who for six years in the nineties chaired the President’s Council on Sustainable Development.

Hexter was forced to leave after only three years even though he was an Ivy-league educated classicist, an openly married gay scholar with an excellent record as a fund raiser. What he did not know how to do was manage a student body that was radically left, whether the issue was security cameras in parking lots, ostensibly to protect vulnerable students from sexual assault but interpreted as invasions of privacy, or the issue of his alleged support for institutional racism (Hampshire College in overwhelmingly white Amherst Massachusetts hosted a student body in which 25% were members of visible minorities.), and over the attempt to move administrative offices to a more central convenient location. The cause for “firing” was not just over the blow-up over the divestment issue. What the whole sorry episode indicated was a record of a significantly-sized but a minority of a supposedly radical group of students incapable of discriminating between issues of security cameras, world political crises or the location of administrative offices. All these issues demanded the same fiery inflammatory speeches and the belief that outrageous speech is equivalent to radical action.

The policy that the College Board approved on 7 February 2009 was a decision to divest investments in its small endowment from 200 companies perceived as in breach of the college’s standard of social responsibility. No reference at all was made to Israel. The list included Caterpillar, Terex, and United Technologies as well as the three companies previously mentioned on the list targeted by the Students for Justice in Palestine.

All the protests and press releases could not overcome the reality that the Board’s actions were perceived as bending before pressure to a radical group of students with an anti-Israel agenda. The reality was that these were ersatz radicals, satisfied with the most ephemeral of victories with trivial or no consequences except the backlash that made almost all other colleges fearful of following the Hampshire College precedent. Further, the college insisted that the divestment was based on the fact that these companies were ostensibly guilty of “unfair labor practices, environmental abuse, military weapons manufacturing, and unsafe workplace settings.” The press release was unequivocal: “Israel was not the cause for divestment from the State Street Fund.” Hampshire College insisted, in fact, that the college “had refused to divest from Israel.” Perception, however, won over substance. In the long run, both the College and the BDS movement suffered enormously from the negative fallout and the misrepresentation of what had taken place.

BDS had its fifteen seconds in the divestment limelight. Drugged with the illusion of success, by 2014 BDS claimed additional breakthroughs at Swarthmore and Vassar, two other even more esteemed liberal college campuses of privilege and detachment from the harsh realities of life. Those students, however, were not satisfied with a picayune pinprick; they went after the pension giant TIAA-CREF in spite of a past record where BDS claimed a victory over an action by the fund that had nothing to do with the BDS campaign. Victories in student votes of a small minority of students who pack a meeting proved inconsequential. This was true of even causes that have much broader and deeper support among the student body, the effort of Mountain Justice to get the Swarthmore College to divest in firms involved with fossil fuels. This was the response of Gil Kemp, Chair of the College Board of Management, in an open letter on divestment dated 13 September 2013 that is even more applicable to the Palestinian issue than the environmental one.

After firmly proclaiming support for the climate change doctrine and the fears of the negative consequences, and the support for alternative energy sources, after lauding its own action plans to deal with the issue by the college, in response to the effort of Mountain Justice to eliminate fossil fuel shares from their portfolios, the College Board rejected the request on consequentialist grounds that costs would far outweigh any benefits posing “an unacceptable risk to the College’s finances” and an estimated loss of $10-15 million in income annually for the fund. Nor would divestment have any significant impact on the “behavior of fossil fuel companies, or galvanize public officials to do something about climate change, or reduce America’s reliance on fossil fuels.” Even as a “a symbolic act designed to mobilize public opinion against fossil fuels,” the efficacy of such a move was denied. “Divestment’s potential success as a moral response is limited – if not completely negated – so long as its advocates continue to turn on the lights, drive cars, and purchase manufactured goods.” Is this not far truer of efforts to enter into the hazardous fray of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where the support is far less and the complexities far greater?

The divestment strategy may have had a few minor and meaningless empty victories, but the negative repercussions have been far greater than any accomplishments. What about the sanctions campaign?

I will discuss that effort in my blog on Sunday morning when I focus more intently on the boycott efforts, the campus campaign and wrestle in greater detail with the ethical issues.

[1] For these and subsequent polling results, I have relied primarily on the surveys of the Brookings Institute in cooperation with the Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland and its polls of American public attitudes to various aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (December 2014).