JOEL FISHMAN: A REVIEW OF OMAR BARGHOUTI’S BOOK
http://www.spme.net/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=7559
REVIEW BY JOEL FISHMAN: THE MESSAGE OF BDS
By • Joel Fishman
Published in: SPME Reviews and Recommendations
January 4, 2011
Omar Barghouti, Boycott, Désinvestissement, Sanctions; BDS contre
l’apartheid et l’occupation de la Palestine [Boycott, Divestment,
Sanctions; BDS against Apartheid and the Occupation of Palestine],
trs. Etienne Dobenesque and Catherine Neuve-Eglise (Paris: La
fabrique, 2010), 187 pp.
The author of this recently-published book, Omar Barghouti, is a
founding member of the Palestinian BDS campaign. In addition, the
information on the book cover indicates that he is a choreographer and
philosopher. He lives in Ramallah. The blurb of another interview,
“Boycotts Work,” posted on the Electronic Intifada of 1 June 2009,
presents some additional biographical information, “Omar Barghouti is
an independent Palestinian researcher, commentator and human rights
activist and leader of the Palestinian campaign of boycott divestment
and sanctions to force Israel to uphold international law and
universal human rights.” If the reader would like to form a visual
impression, all that is needed is to go to You Tube. This book
contains a selection of Barghouti’s recent articles and interviews
which have appeared in different publications including the web. His
book has a solid introduction and interesting conclusion. This
selection deserves careful study because it provides an authentic and
timely source for the basic thought and assumptions which drive the
world-wide BDS movement.
Barghouti is a member of the Palestinian intellectual elite, a new
group, which should be distinguished from the older generation of PLO
politicians. Members of this group are relatively young, well-
educated, Western, idealistic, well-motivated, and uncorrupted (so
far). They possess outstanding communications skills and know how to
convey their message with the aid of classical and electronic media.
They operate outside the Palestinian power structure and have a low
opinion of the Palestinian Authority. In his introduction, Barghouti
states that his group does not receive support from the PA and that he
hopes for the PA to be reconstituted on a democratic basis. Evoking
the Palestinian national poet, Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008), he argues
that, “Only the whole Palestinian people can recover its unity and
will to lay siege to the siege to which it was condemned by the ‘peace
process.’” Developing this idea further in The Guardian of August 12,
2010, Barghouti explains that, “Since convincing a colonial power to
heed moral pleas for justice is, at best, delusional, many now
understand the need to ‘besiege’ Israel through boycotts, raising the
cost of its oppression.” It is obvious that in his quest for his type
of justice Barghouti rejects a negotiated settlement with Israel, the
Jewish state. He and his mates differ markedly from the colorful
characters whom Thomas Friedman found so charming in Beirut of the
eighties. They are lean, hungry, and dangerous. Using the tools of
peaceful protest and persuasion, this relatively small group has taken
the international boycott of the Republic of South Africa as its model
and strives to achieve the fulfillment of the Palestinian Charter of
1974 by incremental gains.
Immediate Historical Background
While we may not be able grasp the meaning of historical developments
in real time, in retrospect it is possible to reconstruct a tentative
chronology and identify the relationships between seemingly detached
events. While the basic idea for BDS is not new, during the past
decade a sequence of events made the idea current. At Camp David in
July 2000, Yasir Arafat concluded that he could not achieve his real
strategic objectives through peaceful negotiations. This became
evident after Prime Minister Ehud Barak put up his best offer, and the
Rais simply refused to relate to it. Members of the Palestinian
leadership later disclosed that Arafat, upon his return in July 2000,
decided to plan the “armed struggle” and launch what became known as
the Second Intifada. It should be noted that Israeli intelligence
detected the Palestinian preparations for war, and that the Israel
Defense Forces were prepared. In this context, it follows that Ariel
Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount on September 28, 2000 was not the
real cause the Intifada, but it gave the other side a convenient
pretext. This was the background for a new round of deadly violence
and Palestinian terror attacks against large numbers of innocent
Israeli civilians. The second armed uprising did not go as well for
the Palestinians as they had hoped. Resorting to armed force and
terror, they failed to demoralize and bring about the collapse of
Israeli society.
Following this setback, the Palestinians and their supporters
initiated a major campaign of political warfare whose purpose was to
attain the goals which they could not achieve through terror and the
armed struggle. The World Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination,
Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, took place between August 31 and
September 7, 2001 in Durban, South Africa. For the Israelis and the
United States, Durban was an ambush. One of the new developments was
the accusation of Israeli racism and the practice of apartheid. In
addition, Israel’s adversaries made great efforts to produce a final
text which would deny the uniqueness of the Holocaust and anti-
Semitism as a human rights issue. During the session of the NGOs it
also became clear that one of their central goals was to restore the
original United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 of November
10, 1975 that “Zionism is Racism.” Since the days of the Soviet Union,
this propaganda formula represented a harmful libel whose purpose was
to destroy Israel’s legitimacy.[1] By resorting to the slogans from
the Soviet era, both of racism and apartheid, it became clear that
Israel’s enemies had decided to discredit the Jewish state and to seek
its destruction through incremental political steps. At Durban, the
Palestinians and their sympathizers, both in the Arab world and in the
West, with the active support of many NGOs, revived the twin
accusations of racism and apartheid. Several years later, the BDS
movement would adopt these slogans and make them part of its message.
In due course, Ariel Sharon became the Prime Minister of Israel (from
2001 to 2006), and during his administration several new developments
took place which transformed the situation. On March 27, 2002, a
Palestinian terrorist murdered thirty Israelis and injured one hundred
and forty who gathered at the Park Hotel in Netanya to observe the
Passover Seder. Following this massacre, Prime Minister Sharon
launched Operation Defensive Shield (April 1-11, 2002). This operation
brought the war to centers of Palestinian terror, particularly Jenin.
In the war against Palestinian terror, the Sharon government began
construction of the famous Security Barrier in July 2003. Its purpose
was to reduce Israel’s vulnerability to the high number of deadly
Palestinian suicide bombings launched from the West Bank and to
prevent the Palestinian Authority from turning these areas into a
strategic enclave from which they could launch a continuous guerilla
war.
Lisa Taraki, a faculty member at Bir Zeit University and founder of
the BDS movement, wrote that Palestinians did not initiate the boycott
movement. According to her, “The initial call was made in the UK in
April 2002, at the height of the Israeli assault upon Palestinian
cities and towns…. The British initiative was not a call for a blanket
boycott of the Israeli academic community, but was a restricted call
for a moratorium on European research and academic collaboration with
Israeli institutions.”[2] Two years later, in July 2004, the
International Court at The Hague ruled the construction of the
Security Barrier was illegal according to international law. During
the same year, the Palestinian cause gained a big boost when the
American Presbyterian church endorsed its cause and joined the
divestment movement. One year after the decision of the International
Court in The Hague, on July 9, 2005, a group of Palestinian activists,
joined by one hundred and seventy signatories, met in Ramallah and
launched the BDS movement.[3] Among the drafters and signatories were
Omar Barghouti and Lisa Taraki. By choosing the anniversary of the
court decision, this group laid claim to the higher principles and
morality and international law and declared that their goal was to
force Israel to submit to justice, as they understood it.
The BDS movement emerged both from long-term and short-term
developments. The long-term developments were related to the
consequences of the Second Intifada and the Durban Conference. The
main short-term events which gave the movement impetus were Operation
Defensive Shield and the construction of the Security Barrier. Only if
one intentionally negated Palestinian responsibility for the failed
Intifada and its terror and rejected Israel’s right to assure the
security of its citizens, would it be possible to regard Israel’s acts
of self-defense as a form of willful aggression. Of course, if one
took the position that Israel has no right to exist, and that its
civilians were fair targets, everything would then make sense.
The Operational Importance of the BDS Message
Before relating directly to the message of BDS, let us devote some
attention to its basic political program. The professed objective of
BDS is to lay Israel under siege. Beyond the specific agenda of
isolating Israel and interrupting its cultural and commercial ties,
there is another goal: to shift the consensus of world public opinion
against Israel. At present, Israel generally enjoys a high level of
good will and respect in the West. Accordingly, the objective of BDS
activists is to undermine this consensus among Israel’s Gentile
supporters abroad and where possible to undermine the alliance between
Jews and Christians. In this context, one can understand that the
purpose of related organizations, such as J Street in the United States
and J Call in Europe as well as their counterparts in Israel, is to
undermine Jewish and Israeli consensus in support of Israel. Looking
back several decades, we should remember that the Israeli “peace
activist,” Ury Avneri considered his greatest accomplishment to be the
cultivating of a consensus among Israeli intellectuals in favor of a
Palestinian state. Similarly, Feisal Husseini, whom the press
described as a “Palestinian moderate,” expressed the same view.
However, in his last interview, in 2001, he revealed that the
Palestinians were “ambushing” the Israelis. Shifting the consensus to
support the Palestinian cause is a major strategic goal for the long
term. This explains why someone like Omar Barghouti lectured at the
anti-apartheid week which took place in Canada in 2009. Such preaching
through the various media – not the least the spoken word —
represents a form of political dawa and is part of the BDS war of
information.[4]
Indeed, the message is a matter of great importance for the BDS
movement because it provides the organizing principle which holds the
members of this group together and gives them direction. Writing in Al-
Jazeerah on January 19, 2006, Eyad Kishawi, an American member of the
BDS movement living in San Francisco, explained that since the
movement was decentralized, the principle of coherence of outlook is a
matter of critical importance:
The most important fabric of any mass movement is its coherence of
outlook. In this context, coherence translates to consistency of
strategic goals, coordination of action and an agreement in analysis
that is used for expanding the movement and recruitment of qualitative
talent. Coherence allows proponents of Divestment to propagate the
same messages in different institutions at different geographical
locations, across all sectors until a critical mass is achieved
resulting in a marked shift in consensus and eventually the balance of
powers. Coherence is essential in a decentralized movement because a
battle victory at one institution is immediately transferable to
another carrying the same objectives. In this case all the efforts
invested in the movement should point largely towards the strategic
goals. In addition, the movement requires an analysis of Israel that
is consistent with the indigenous narrative of the Palestinian people,
if it were to further the struggle of a people with whom it stands in
solidarity.[5]
The decentralized form of organization offers flexibility and, as
Kishawi noted, provides better shelter from law enforcement
authorities. He disclosed that “proponents of Divestment have agreed
that movement’s decentralization will achieve maximum outcome,
especially in light of the US governmental targeting of activists and
Israeli extra judicial and illegal activities. Not only that there is
safety in numbers, there is also power in individual conviction and
collective action.”[6]
In the United States, the activists of the Tea Party Movement chose
the model of the decentralized organization. As their guide, they used
The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless
Organizations.[7] Its authors, Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom liken
the decentralized, leaderless organization to the starfish which can
continuously regenerate itself, as opposed to the hierarchical model
symbolized by the spider. Applying this organizational principle, the
Tea Party activists succeeded so well that they shook up the American
political landscape. According to this book, the characteristics of
the starfish model are: that people are its main asset; it operates
like a neural network, ideology is the glue which holds it together,
and its values are the organization. The BDS movement fits this
description,
The BDS Message as Articulated by Omar Barghouti
Certain ideological themes recur in Barghouti’s various writings and
some of his most important theses appear below:
• Anchored to a long tradition of non-violent popular resistance in
Palestine and largely inspired by the anti-apartheid struggle in South
Africa, it [the BDS movement] is based on the principle of the
universal rights of man like the civil rights movement in the United
States. It firmly rejects any form of racism, notably antisemitism and
Islamophobia (p.23).
• ….If the State of Israel is a populated colony, it should be
replaced by a secular democratic state offering its citizens equal
rights, [both] to the Palestinians (including the refugees) and to the
Israeli Jews. This type of state is the only one which can reconcile
ethically that which appears [to be] irreconcilable: the inalienable
rights, recognized by the U.N., to self-determination, to repatriation
and equality, of the indigenous people of Palestine according to
international law, and the acquired and internationally recognized
rights of the Israeli Jews to coexist – as equals and not as colonists
– on the land of Palestine (p. 25).
• ….After fifteen years of the so-called peace process, Palestinian
civil society has regained the initiative by articulating the
Palestinian demands and the international struggle for justice long
obscured by misleading “negotiations.” Unprecedented, the BDS appeal
was launched by the representatives of the three parts of the
Palestinian people: the refugees, the Palestinian citizens living in
Israel [“the 1948 Arabs”] and those living under the occupation of
1967. For the same matter, it “invited” the Israelis of conscience to
support its claims. [Note that Barghouti placed the word, “invited,”
in quotation marks. Here, he is literally describing “dawa,” whose
original meaning is a “call” or invitation. “In the religious sense
dawa is the invitation that God and the prophets address to the people
to believe in Islam, the true religion.” [8] ] The Palestinian boycott
movement has managed to impose some new parameters and to establish
some new goals for the international support network, and it triggered
or supported some boycott and disinvestment campaigns in several
countries (pp. 29-30).
• Western committees of solidarity were legitimately concerned by the
conspicuous absence of an official Palestinian body behind the calls
for boycott. “Where is your ANC [African National Congress]?” was the
difficult and generally sincere question to which the partisans of the
boycott were continuously obliged to answer. The PLO, which was in
complete disorder for years, remained silent. The Palestinian
Authority, with its extremely limited mandate and the constraints
which have been imposed upon it by the Oslo accords, is by nature
incapable of sustaining an effective strategy of resistance,
particularly if it is also a matter of raising the injustices which
took place before the occupation of 1967. Beyond the rare exceptions,
the action of the Palestinian Authority has always harmed the efforts
of civil society to isolate Israel (p.30).
• However, the applicability of the crime of apartheid to Israel, as
defined in UN conventions, for the most part, has been either
inadvertently glossed over or intentionally ignored as an explosive
subject that has every potential to invite the vengeful wrath of
powerful pro-Israel lobbies. Regardless, one cannot but examine the
facts and analyze Israel’s system of governance accordingly (pp.
167-168).
• The strongest argument given by — sometimes well-meaning —
experts who dismiss the apartheid label for Israel is that the analogy
between Israel and South Africa is not exact and, in many respects,
Israel’s oppression [of the Palestinians] is even more severe,
demanding a different designation altogether. The problem with this
argument is that it assumes, quite incorrectly, that apartheid is a
South African trademark and, therefore, every regime accused of
practicing apartheid must be shown to be identical to South Africa’s
apartheid regime of yesteryear. Although Apartheid had achieved world
attention and was given its name by the racist regime in South Africa,
it has been recognized by the UN for decades as a generalized crime
with a universal definition (pp. 167-168).
• It is necessary to repeat, the Palestinians – and the Arabs in
general – do not have the least responsibility for the Nazi genocide,
committed in Europe against essentially European populations, Jews,
Gypsies, Slavs and others. It is not for the Palestinians to pay with
their life, their land and their means of existence the necessary
price to relieve the Europeans of their collective feelings of guilt
for this genocide. Just as progressive Jewish intellectuals recently
said, the “never more [never again]” should always be understood as
“never more against anybody.” (p. 180)
One may piece together Barghouti’s theses and reconstruct his
Weltanschauung, or world view, and that of the movement for which he
is an ideologue.[9] At the very least, this corpus of thought
represents a program of “resistance,” a call to overturn the status
quo and a rejection of a negotiated peace with Israel according to the
premises of Oslo. Significantly, it reveals the great desire to
restore an Arab majority in Palestine.
Two points deserve special attention. The first is the assertion that
the Palestinians and Jews do not have equal rights to the land.
Barghouti argues that the Palestinians have inalienable rights, while
those of the Jews were acquired, even if they received international
recognition. This proposition introduces the principle of inequality.
It makes the Palestinians more equal than the Jews, and historically
is wrong. The second, Barghouti’s assertion that “the Palestinians –
and the Arabs in general – do not have the least responsibility for
the Nazi genocide, committed in Europe against essentially European
populations, Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and others,” is not supported by
verifiable historical facts.
Barghouti omits Nazi support of the Arab revolt in Palestine in 1936
and the Arab role in securing the White Paper in 1939 which blocked an
important escape route for European Jewry during the Holocaust. He
makes no mention of Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who
lived well in Berlin during the Second World War and collaborated with
Nazi Germany. For example, the protocol of the conversation between
Hitler and the Mufti which took place on November 28, 1941 documented
the Mufti’s appeal to Hitler for an open declaration of German support
for the elimination of the national Jewish homeland (and everything
this implied).[10] Moreover, Husseini aggressively endeavored to block
the escape routes for Jews from countries under Nazi domination, such
as Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Italy, which still retained a
measure of independence. Bernard Lewis wrote that “in May and June
1943, the mufti sent letters to all four governments demanding that
they withdraw their authorization for Jewish emigration and urging
them instead to send their Jews to Poland ‘where they are under active
control.’”[11]
Barghouti omits the central role of the Mufti in the Nazi propaganda
broadcasts of Radio Zeesen to the Arab world, calling for a Holy War,
a jihad, against the Allies and the Jews.[12] One of the Mufti’s
remarkable contributions was his address on Balfour Day, November 2,
1943, which described the close affinity of Nazis and Moslems. On this
festive occasion, he declared, “….that which brings the Germans closer
to us and brings us to their side is the fact that Germany has never
invaded any Arab or Islamic land, and its long-standing policy of
friendship for the Moslems is known. Germany is also fighting against
the common enemy which oppressed the Arabs and Moslems in their
different lands. It [Germany] recognized the Jews exactly and decided
to find a final solution to the danger that came from them [the Jews],
which will end their mischief in this world.”[13]
Recent publications have brought new information to light. Wolfgang
Schwanitz who consulted German, Arabic, and English sources, came to
the conclusion that there is no longer any doubt that the Mufti knew
what was transpiring in the death camps in Eastern Europe. Schwanitz
made use of a new source, the Memoirs of the Grand Mufti, in Arabic,
which were published in Damascus in 1999. Here, the mufti openly
discusses his close relationship to SS chief Heinrich Himmler whom he
often met for tea. “In the memoirs, the Grand Mufti also describes
what Himmler said to him in that summer of 1943 …. Following some
tirades on ‘Jewish war guilt,’ Himmler told him that ‘up to now we
have exterminated [abadna] around three million of them.’”[14] In
addition, Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cueppers published an
extensive article describing the plans of Nazi Germany to carry out
genocide in Palestine making use of Palestinian Arab collaborators in
the actual murder of the Jews of the Yishuv.[15]
Once the extent of Arab, including Palestinian Arab collaboration with
Nazi Germany is documented, it is not possible for the likes of Omar
Barghouti to claim the moral high ground. Barghouti writes: “It is not
for the Palestinians to pay with their life, their land and their
means of existence the necessary price to relieve the Europeans of
their collective feelings of guilt for this genocide.” The historical
evidence demonstrates that the leadership of the Arabs in Mandatory
Palestine and of the Arab world firmly sided with the Axis Powers. It
was indeed implicated in the “Final Solution” and rejoiced in its
accomplishment. Let us reverse Barghouti’s proposition and ask if it
is still right to expect that there should be no consequences.
History matters. If one is ignorant of this history, he or she becomes
the fair game of counterfeiters with their false narratives, accounts
and claims. As mentioned above, Barghouti’s account of recent events
suffers from a distorted selection of evidence combined with
fabrications. There is no doubt that he has inverted the historical
record. That is why, as a matter of self-defense, an active mastery of
history is necessary to challenge and discredit the message of BDS.
Dr. Joel Fishman is a Fellow of the JerusalemCenter for Public Affairs.
Dr. Fishman also serves as Book Review Editor for the SPME Faculty Forum
[1] See: Joel S. Fishman, “The Cold-War Origins of Contemporary Anti-
Semitic Terminology,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Jerusalem
Viewpoints No. 517, 2-16 May 2004. http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp517.htm.
[2] http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=8194.
[3] See: “Palestinian Call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions
(BDS),” 9 July 2005,http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=66.
[4] In fact, Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi recently described this as a
religious duty. With regard to the obligations of Muslims residing in
the West, Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, states the following: “There are
many religious duties for a Muslim who lives in the West. Some of
those religious duties may be classified as follows:
…. Duty to Adopt and Champion the Rights of the Muslim Ummah:
Such kind of duty involves championing the Cause of Palestine, Iraq,
Kosova, Chechnya(and other places where Muslims are facing great
ordeals), with the sincere intention to return back the usurped rights
to their legitimate owners.
Nowadays, we see the Jews, from the four corners of the world,
championing and backing Israel, and we call on all Muslims in all
parts of the world saying that it is high time to champion the rights
of their Muslim Ummah.”
IslamOnline.net, February 22, 2010, Click here
[5] Eyad Kishawi, “Divestment From Israel In Its Fifth Year: A History
and Method for US and European Activists,” Al-Jazeerah, January 19,
2006, Click here
[7] Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom, The Starfish and the Spider: The
Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations (New York: Portfolio,
2006).
[8] The term in Arabic is, “dawa.” Shammai Fishman, “Fiqh al-
Aqalliyyat: A Legal Theory for Muslim Minorities,” Hudson Institute,
Research Monographs on the Muslim World, Series No. 1, Paper No. 2
(October 2006), p. 4.
[9] The historian who pioneered this approach was Eberhard Jaeckel,
who wrote Hitler’s World View; A Blueprint for Power, tr. Herbert
Arnold (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981).
[10] See: “Hitler’s Visitor on 28 November 1941,” in Gerald Fleming,
Hitler and the Final Solution (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1984), p. 103. Also, Gerhard Hoepp, Mufti-Papiere;
Briefe, Memoranden, Reden und Aufrufe Amin al-Husainis aus dem Exil,
1940-1945 (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 2004). See particularly item
73, 19 March 1943, Speech of the Mufti on the Prophet’s birthday, p.
152. Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cueppers, Halbmond und
Hakenkreuz; Das Dritte Reich, die Araber und Palaestina (Darmstadt:
WBG, 2006), and Klaus Gensicke, Der Mufti von Jerusalem und die
Nationsozialisten; Eine politische Biographie Amin el-
Husseinis(Darmstadt: WBG, 2007).
[11] Bernard Lewis, Semites & Anti-Semites (New York: Norton, 1986),
p. 156.
[12] See: Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2009) and Matthias Kuentzel, Jihad and Jew-
Hatred; Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11, tr. Colin Meade (New
York: Telos Press, 2007).
[13] “Rede zum Jahrestag der Balfour-Erklaerung, 2.11. 1933,“ Hoepp,
item 91, p. 197.
[14] Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, “Amin al-Husaini and the Holocaust; What
did the Grand Mufti Know?” World Politics Review, May 8, 2008, http://www.trafoberlin.de/pdf-Neu/Amin%20al-Husaini%20and%20the%20Holocaust.pdf
.
[15] “Elimination of the Jewish National Home in Palestine: The
Einsatzkommando of the Panzer Army Africa, 1942,” Yad Vashem Studies
35: 1 (Jerusalem 2007), pp. 111-141.=
Comments are closed.
