It’s of no small significance that South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), declared their support for the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) campaign targeting Israel last month. To them, the hallmarks of Israeli occupation: the checkpoints, the arbitrary imprisonments, the separation Wall, the Israeli-exclusive roads and the destruction of property mirrored what they had themselves suffered during minority white rule for so many decades.
Launched by Palestinian activists in 2005, BDS is an international movement with a three-pronged approach: to ‘Boycott’ both Israeli and international products that profit from the occupation; to practice ‘Divestment’ from corporations complicit in the violation of Palestinian rights; and to levy ‘sanctions’ to demonstrate disapproval for Israel’s actions until Palestinian rights are recognised in accordance with international law.
It comes as no surprise that the BDS movement has found fertile ground and strong support in the United Kingdom, given that Britain is home to some of the most active international Palestinian support groups.
Earlier this year, the UK’s fifth biggest food retailer, the Co-operative Group, became the first major European supermarket group to end trade with companies that export produce from illegal Israeli settlements. While it stops short of calling it an outright boycott (It continues to use other suppliers from Israel that do not source from settlements), its decision nevertheless impacts contracts worth some £350,000.
Praising the initiative, Sarah Colborne, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign says: “The Co-op Group, in extending the implementation of its Human Rights and Trade Policy of not sourcing produce from Israeli companies who trade illegal settlement goods, sends a clear message to the Israeli government that it will not profit from its persistent defiance of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions. We hope that this move will impress the rest of the retail food sector to do likewise — in trading ethically and listening to your consumers/members, and acting in solidarity with the Palestinians.”
In addition to this, the National Union of Students (NUS), Britain’s largest confederation of students, have unanimously agreed to work with local student unions to lobby universities to cancel contracts with Eden Springs, an Israeli mineral water company which extracts water from Golan Heights, a Syrian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
Ahmad el Enany, secretary general of Youth of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party who was attending a National Youth Conference in Ramallah says, “We compare Israel’s illegal occupation with the apartheid era. The refusal to buy South African produce in supermarkets were acts of conscience which sent a powerful message of solidarity as well as impressing on the South African regime that the world would not finance their power. For the same reason British people of conscience will not buy Israeli produce until Palestinians are free to resume life as a sovereign people with their own state.”
Although there has been a 16% drop in Israel’s exports to the EU, it is still Israel’s biggest trading partner, making up 33% of its total global exports.
A recent report, in which twenty two charities including Christian Aid have called on the EU to ban products made by Jewish communities in the West Bank, also urged clearer labeling rules to help consumers identify the origin of produce as is already done in Denmark and Britain. But the NGOs said a more effective solution would be to impose a ban on all settler products, a move that only one EU member state, Ireland, has so far asked for.
Israeli settler produce has already resulted in divided opinions between the US and the United Nations. On Oct 25, the UN’s special rapporteur Richard Falk called for a boycott of companies linked to Israeli settlements, but a US representative at the United Nations called the statement “irresponsible.”
But brave and objective voices are not to be silenced, like the voice of Sonja D Zimmerman, a member of the Nederlands Palestina Committee. “If the governments would take a stronger stance or the United Nations would say ‘enough is enough,’ then we as citizens wouldn’t have to go through all this effort. But right now it’s the other way round as we have to push our government to start doing something sensible. It’s a bit funny and feels a bit like a merry-go-round but we are trying to galvanise our government, supermarkets and the EU into action,” says Zimmerman.
Getting support for the BDS movement in Holland may prove difficult, for reasons of history. “The Dutch people are not ready to accept the fact that Israeli settlements are illegal, and that therefore the products coming from that place are illegal too,” says Casper van der Heijden, professor of Political Science at University of Amsterdam.
But the battle is not going to be easy. “Amsterdam was the second place after Germany to have mass killings of Jews and there is still collective guilt both on the part of the government and the people,” says Van der Heijen. You have to remember that the Jewish community as a whole has been marginalised throughout centuries and now they have learnt to fight back. I personally just don’t see the point of blanket boycott as it doesn’t really gain anything. The boycott should be targeted.”
“It’s my personal view that once people start to say that we’re not going to buy any products in any way related to Israel, then we have a problem on our hands because it’s like knitting — you end up getting more than you bargained for. Now, the world’s largest semi-conductor and microprocessor producer Intel is based there. How do you avoid any contact with that? I also think that having a list saying ‘these are Israeli products’ just does not work. Because one can’t go shopping thinking, I won’t buy this or I won’t buy that,” says Zimmerman.
A spokesperson for the Fatah Youth International Group says that “Palestinians and civil society in Britain have campaigned for this kind of boycott for years in the face of governments’ refusal to act in compliance with international human rights norms.”
Of course, the Israelis aren’t taking this lying down, and the Israeli Knesset passed the ‘Law to Prevent Harm to the State of Israel by Means of Boycott’ last year. This law allows the targeted companies and producers to sue anyone advocating a boycott. Widely criticised, even within Israel, this law could conceivably even target opinion writers published by the Israeli media itself. Of course, what impact this will have on the people behind the BDS movement is unclear, to say the least.
Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, December 2nd, 2012.
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