Debating BDS at J Street

Mitchell Plitnick adds spice to our blog, but I think it fair to say that he generally approaches issues from our "left" (as conventional parlance would describe it).  I too found the J Street panel on BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) of great interest, but my take differs from Mitchell's.

First of all, Ameinu president Ken Bob was in no way "reactionary" in his anti-BDS stance (upon reflection, I suspect that Mitchell regrets using this term).  Ken noted with irony that he was "comfortably on the right" (in relative terms) on this panel, as opposed to most venues where he's usually the furthest left.  Yet his opposition to settlements and the occupation is beyond dispute.  And Mitchell doesn't recognize the truth of Ken's statement that the "global BDS movement" uses BDS as a strategy to undermine Israel's existence.

Secondly, the individual he mentioned at the end was not "unruly."  He waited patiently on line, while the chair person used her "prerogative" to have a woman jump ahead of him to pose a question, and then he had to assert himself to get his question answered. 

He was pointing out the inconsistency in panelist Rebecca Vilkomerson's Jewish Voice for Peace organization following the lead of Palestinian "civil society" groups for BDS against Israel but then not explicitly endorsing the Palestinian Authority's call for a two-state solution.  Vilkomerson responded by saying that the JVP is a "rights-based movement" and therefore doesn't take a position on what the ultimate solution to the conflict should be, beyond the fact that it's for Israelis and Palestinians to decide. 

I was fine with the inclusion of Vilkomerson's pro-BDS view in a spirited discussion of its pros and cons.  Vilkomerson is correct to complain of being shut out of the discourse in most Jewish communal venues.  But in not fully accepting Israel's legitimacy as a "Jewish state"--even in the secular and fully democratic vision of Meretz USA and the Meretz party, for example, that Israel should both reflect its Jewish-identifying majority and be the state of all its citizens regardless of their religion or creed (as articulated in Israel's declaration of independence)-- the JVP radically marks itself off from most of the Jewish community. 

I fully understand how the interminable conflict, the expanding settlement enterprise, and the obvious injustices and indignities visited daily upon Palestinians living under occupation drive people like Ms. Vilkomerson and Mitchell Plitnick to support BDS tactics.  Even we at Meretz USA have recently expressed support for boycotts targeting the settlements. 

But Mitchell overstates the notion that Israel has made no effort to end the occupation.  Israel has been repeatedly rent apart in the last two decades, with the downfall of more than one governing coalition and even the murder of a prime minister.  Although conditions in Gaza remain grim, Israel's grip over the West Bank has loosened sufficiently in the last two years to allow for an impressive level of economic growth and stability.  And Hamas, Islamic Jihad and even Fatah-aligned terrorists have helped keep the occupation going with their periodic violence. 

The other panelists were also noteworthy.  Bernard Avishai is a political economist and widely-read writer on Israel and Zionism.  Originally from Montreal, he now teaches at the business school at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. 

Avishai is fine with boycotting settlements (he follows a list of 200 products compiled by the Palestinian Authority), but he favors international business in a way that's unusual for a liberal intellectual who started out as a "Marx scholar."  He argues that global corporations, such as General Electric and United Technologies, may make aircraft engines for the Israeli military, but are also engaged in delivering CAT scans to Palestinian hospitals and adapting other high-tech products for Palestinian use.  (I believe it was the chair person, Kathleen Peratis, who mentioned in this connection that Caterpillar bulldozers have not only destroyed Arab homes but are also building a new Palestinian city near Ramallah.)  And his experience with Israeli business students is that they have very enlightened views regarding the Palestinians.

Last but not least, Simone Zimmerman is an amazing second-year college student at Berkeley.  She reported with remarkable poise on the acrimonious struggle in the student senate over a resolution for the university to divest from companies working in Israel.  She found that the debate drove both sides to "their extremes," with the polarization causing neither side to acknowledge the humanity of the other and that the air was heavy with anti-Semitic and Islamophobic slurs.  Ms. Zimmerman characterized the BDS issue as generating "exhaustion, not engagement." 

She was equally scornful of pro-BDS'ers chanting "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," and of how the vocally pro-Israel side acted.  She sagely commented that current human rights violations cannot be addressed by arguments based on historic Jewish victimhood.

In this connection, I return to Ken Bob's plea to "invest, don't divest."  He (or was it Avishai?) mentioned that there are Israeli and Palestinian efforts to sustain joint business ventures.   Ken also indicated that he cannot oppose armaments for Israel in the face of ongoing security threats, such as from Hezbollah missiles, which are now believed to have the capacity to reach Tel Aviv.  The entire BDS issue is nothing if not complex and J Street should be commended for allowing this discussion.