There are at least five good reasons why every
reasonable person should reject BDS - that
is the tactic of boycotting divesting and
sanctioning only the nation state of the Jewish
people.
The first reason is that BDS places all the
blame for the current stalemate in the Middle
East on Israel.
The reality is that Palestinians share much
of the blame.
Indeed most of the blame.
The Palestinians were offered a state in 1937-
1938 by the Peel Commission.
They rejected it saying “the Palestinians
aren’t a people – we don’t want a state,
we just don't want there to be a Jewish state.”
They rejected an opportunity for statehood
in 1947 when the United Nations partitioned
Palestine into two states for two people.
They went to war trying to destroy the nation
state of the Jewish people, Israel, that declared
its independence in 1948.
Then again in 1967 they turned down an opportunity
of land for peace going to Khartoum and issuing
their three famous “no’s” - no negotiation,
no peace, and no recognition.
In 2000-2001 President Clinton, Prime Minister
Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians an extraordinarily
generous peace plan that would have given
them a state.
Yasser Arafat said no and started an intifada
which killed more than 4000 people.
And in 2008 the Palestinians did not respond
positively to an offer by Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert which would have given them a state
on the vast majority, 90, over 95 percent
of the West Bank and a divided Jerusalem with
a capital for the Palestinian state.
So, much of the blame lies with the Palestinians
and yet BDS would focus all the blame on Israel.
So that's the first reason.
The second reason is BDS emboldens the Palestinian
leadership to reject negotiations and reject
the compromise peace - that leads them falsely
to believe that BDS will lead somehow to a
Palestinian state, that Israel will be forced
to give the Palestinian state because they're
being boycotted.
That's just not going to happen.
Israel's economy is strong.
The vast majority of the world doesn't accept
a boycott of Israel.
And so it will not work and it will diminish
the incentive of the Palestinians to come
to the negotiating table and the bargaining
table.
So it's very bad for any peaceful resolution.
The third reason is that by boycotting and
divesting only from the nation state of the
Jewish people it sends a terrible message
and violates the core principle of human rights
which is the 'worst first'.
Israel by any reckoning is among the best
when it comes to human rights.
No country in the world faced with threats
comparable to those faced by Israel has ever
had a better record of human rights.
As Colonel Richard Kemp who was the head of
the NATO forces in Afghanistan said no country
has ever devoted more time and attention to
protecting the civilian people who live among
their enemies and who are used as human shields.
And so if there were in fact the BDS movement
which put the “worst first”, which lined
up all the countries in the world in terms
of how bad the human rights records are and
how impossible it is to get relief from within
the country, Israel would be at the very,
very bottom of that list.
And so many of the countries would be near
the top.
So it violates the rule of the worst first.
The fourth reason is it hurts other causes.
By focusing only on the nation state of the
Jewish people it deflects attention away from
the genocides that are occurring in parts
of the world - the crisis in Syria, the refusal
of the world to recognize Kurdish statehood,
or Tibetan independence.
It simply focuses too much on one area of
the world where it's complex The Kurds for
example were never offered statehood.
The Palestinians were offered it four times
and rejected it.
The Tibetans were never offered independence.
And yet it's only Israel that is the subject
of a boycott and divestment tactic.
And finally the BDS tactic promotes anti-Semitism
because it portrays Israel as the worst offender.
It essentially promotes a 21st century version
of the blood libel.
It creates caricatures of Israelis.
I myself have been the subject of such caricatures
- the newspaper of the University of California
at Berkeley, they portrayed me in a Nazi like
cartoon with me stomping on Palestinian children
and holding up an IDF soldier who was murdering
a Palestinian youth in cold blood.
It promotes anti-Zionism which then often
morphs into anti-Semitism.
So there are many, many other good reasons
against BDS.
And there are no good reasons for it.
So every moral person should stand strongly
opposed to singling out Israel for boycott
divestment and sanctions.
It's a immoral policy.
It's an ineffective policy.
And it's a policy that hurts the processes
of peace.
I'm Alan Dershowitz and you're watching J-TV.
