Confusion about Palestine

Norman Finkelstein disappointed a few people after his outburst in an interview with Frank Barat regarding the BDS movement. Here are my replies to it:

When Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky say that hypocrisy of pro-Palestinian activists rises to heaven when they call for the boycott of Israel but not the same for the US, American universities, their products, etc., they simply ignore that an activist can only do so much at a time. We would love the world to boycott American products as well and force a change in how the country’s economy functions, but we are focusing on the Israeli/Palestinian issue, and we can’t advocate ten million things for ten million different countries at the same time – that job belongs to organizations like the UN, Greenpeace, Amnesty International  and al. Personally, I have boycotted McDonald’s and Coca Cola for the past few years, and I try to be as careful as I can when I buy things; but there are just too many constraints in the type of world and the state of the economy in which we live. I don’t believe that I deserve to be called a hypocrite if I refuse to drink Coca Cola but I still buy clothes from H&M. I would love to buy a shirt which isn’t made in a sweatshop in Bangladesh but sometimes there are just too many constraints. The most I can do is to take comfort in the fact that as an individual I try my best to raise my voice against capitalist exploitation of workers. I don’t like this world in which I live and I try my best to change it; but as one might have noticed by now that this process will take a fair bit of time, one has no choice but to get their hands dirty sometimes. We all live in a sinful society. Take for example Noam Chomsky: During the Vietnam War, he was advocating tax-resistance; but at the same time, he was getting his salary from MIT, a university which took part in the war and was funded by the US government. So was Chomsky a hypocrite to call for tax-resistance but still work at MIT and accept the paychecks he received from them? No, he wasn’t. Similarly, if the BDS movement at an American campus asks for academics to boycott Israeli educational programs in Occupied Palestine, they are not being hypocrites. Everyone has to exist somewhere and be a part of the society and its institutions, no matter how corrupt they might be – there is no choice. We all have to reconcile somehow with this rotten world, while we work to make it better.

BDS, as a movement, is concerned with Palestine and Israel. To say that this movement doesn’t have any moral depth because it doesn’t advocate equality for X people in X country is totally dumbfounding. Would Norman Finkelstein have called the BDS movement for Apartheid South Africa a hypocritical movement as well because it didn’t have any official position on the Dalits of India? I repeat: The BDS movement today focuses on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It’s a movement for a specific cause, for a specific conflict and for a specific country. If you are concerned with the condition of Dalits in India or the Baloch in Pakistan or the Shias in Bahrain, then I would suggest that you go and look for groups that focus on those people and those issues. Somebody gave you the wrong address if you came to BDS for Israel, looking to know what people are doing to help Dalits in India. As individuals in this movement, we have many concerns and I’m sure all of us are concerned with other people’s suffering aside from the Palestinian suffering. I know I am. However, as a movement, we focus on Palestine and Israel. We are one of millions of movements who focus on different issues. We might seem separated, but if you put as together, we are rather similar since we all work for justice and equality for human beings. Like stars in the sky, we are individual but at the same time we form a constellation together.

 Another allegation at the BDS is that it aims to destroy the state of Israel. In reality, what the movement calls for is the equal rights of Arabs inside of Israel, as well as a return of Palestinian refugees who have been living in miserable dwellings in surrounding countries since 1948. We are all aware that this spells the end of Israel as a Jewish state, and this is exactly what we want. We don’t want an ethnocentric state that favors one group of people over the other because of their ethnicity and religion. This is why we didn’t want apartheid in South Africa. This is why Jim Crow was wrong in the US. This is why the German law was wrong when it refused citizenship to children born in Germany to Turkish parents. This is why it was immoral when Syria robbed its Kurdish citizens off their nationality just because they were Kurds. It’s called racism. We advocate universal values, and this is why we want Arabs inside Israel to be treated equally, instead of being treated as third-class citizens as they are now. How does that destroy the state of Israel? It doesn’t. It changes the nature of the Israeli state but it doesn’t mean that the BDS movement wills to see Israel go down in ashes. Using such apocalyptic language completely occults the truth about the BDS movement. As far as the right of return is concerned, it has world consensus that backs it, the same international consensus that is so dear to Norman Finkelstein. There are UN resolutions about it and, if I’m not wrong, the Palestinian right of return is affirmed every year in the UN General Assembly (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on this). None of this would mean that Jews in Israel would be thrown to the sea or any other such nonsense. South Africa wasn’t wiped off the map when apartheid was ended and neither did the West come to an end after the abolition of slavery. The blacks in South Africa weren’t asking the whites to leave the country even though they were colonial in origin; the blacks were only demanding equal rights and for the whites to realize that they aren’t superior to anyone. The Palestinians aren’t asking for the extermination of the Jews; they are just asking for equal rights, a right to return to their land and for the Jews of Israel to realize that no one can call themselves the Chosen People. The right of return doesn’t mean the expulsion of Jews from Israel. Nobody is looking to do anything to the Jews – they stay where they are and as they are. The only thing that happens is that Palestinians will have equal rights and the refugees will return. In such a scenario, the Jewish state of Israel will not exist, but the Jews will exist in that land as they are. What will such a state be called? To be honest, that’s the last thing on my mind.

If Norman Finkelstein says that there’s no international backing for it, then let’s create a backing for it. A consensus for one-state solution can be created if the work is done. To say that we can’t or shouldn’t go beyond what most of the people say is just absurd.  I’m sure that there was hardly a broad agreement when it came to the abolishing of slavery. In Europe, there wasn’t any large consensus among the people when it came to decolonization. To be honest, I think that Europe secretly wants to go back to the 18^th century when it had the entire world as its colony. What it takes to win a battle is a fight. The world can think what it likes. The powerful don’t give up their power because of any agreement or anything; people have to fight tooth and nail to get their rights. Palestinians have the right to fight for what belongs to them. A world consensus can come later, when it feels like it.

I strongly believe that the Israeli law of return can exist side by side the Palestinian right of return. There is nothing wrong with being idealistic. If people thought – and this includes Chomsky – that Jews and Arabs could have collaborated together to create a socialist state in Palestine (before 1948, that is) then why not think that today Arabs and Jews can also come together and live on the lands that they both have a legitimate claim upon and build a better society and an equal, free country for themselves?    

- Jahanzeb Hussain