On Palestine by Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé, Frank Barat

oppression, and violation of human and civil rights, wherever it occurs and point to its source.
    It is of course important to maintain the general discussion the BDS campaign has generated about Israel’s nature and policies and to use it when it can be helpful. I can give two different recent examples to show the different roles BDS can play. The operation attempted by Israel to cleanse the Bedouins in the Naqab, the Prawer Plan, was thwarted not by BDS pressure but by the very clear message the Bedouin community sent to the Israeli government of the possible dire consequences of the attempt to forcefully remove a community which had serving members in the army, the police, and on its margins connections to the arsenal of the criminal world—in short there were loads of weapons around.
    In a new developing case regarding the attempt of the Israeli government to cleanse the Palestinians from the old city of Akka (Acre), the only effective means will be a strong international campaign spearheaded by a cultural boycott. Here the connection between the racist ideology of Zionism and the actual policies on the ground is part of the tasks of a concrete BDS campaign.
    The ability to take this case by case, and the Israeli government is providing us with many of them recently, is crucial. We need to make sure we do not stay at the level of slogans. You know what you are talking about and are very concrete about the kind of atrocities that you are facing. In most cases, you can leave it to an academic debate later on to explain the general context. But as an activist there has to be a direct address to the community of suffering, even if you do not have national leadership and even if the reality is fragmented.
    NC: I think that’s correct and in this respect I think the South African anti-apartheid movement was a pretty good model. They tended to be pretty concrete. Let’s oppose allowing sports teams to participate in international events because of their racist conditions. Let’s oppose racist hiring in universities. All of that makes sense. It’s directed against particular policies and it’s clear what the general background is. It’s also intelligible to the audience at home. But there was another aspect of the South African solidarity movement which is very critical. By the 1990s the apartheid regime had virtually no international support. Only two countries—the USA and Britain. They supported apartheid strongly right to the end, particularly Reagan. That was sufficient for the regime, as long as they had US support they did not care, like Israel right now.
    That meant that a crucial part of activism had to be directed against the USA, and secondly Great Britain. That’s very critical. It’s critical now too. Part of the intellectual weakness of the BDS movement is that it is directed against Israel but not against the USA. US policies are absolutely critical. Israel understands, like South Africa at the time, that they can be a pariah state, the whole world can be against them, but that it does not make a difference as long as the USA backs them. That was true in South Africa and it’s true in Israel. The US solidarity movement has to focus on that. What are we going to do to change US policies? That is quite critical.
    IP: Although of course there are elements of US policy and Israeli policy that are not easily distinguishable.
    NC: That’s part of the problem. The USA supports Israel not out of benevolence, but because it’s useful for US policies. So yes, they do overlap a lot. Also cultural relations, Christian Zionism for example, is part of the demographic base of the Republican Party—extremely anti-Semitic, but pro-Israel. All these things have to be addressed.
    IP: I also meant the industrial complex. The academic complex. It’s not very autonomous in Israel. It’s part of the American milieu in many ways.
    NC: Not autonomous, you’re right.