Micha Kurz
As an Israeli born and raised in Jerusalem, when I visit with Jewish communities of the Diaspora, from New York to Melbourne to Rio de Janeiro, I hear a global discussion regarding current realities in Israel and the “question of Palestine” that sounds entirely outdated. There is a disconnect between the ideological notions of the Diasporic Zionist narrative, and current day circumstances and factors of the realpolitik in Jerusalem.
I assume you, the reader, are familiar with the classic historic narrative: The biblical roots tying the Jewish people to the land of Eretz Yisrael, the need for a Jewish safe haven in the aftermath of the Holocaust and World War II, and finally, the return home after 2,000 years of exile and persecution. You are familiar with our story of hope and promise for the Jewish people facing constant hardship since it sprouted just seventy years ago: The miraculous triumph against seven enemy Arab armies gaining independence in 1948, followed by the victorious 1967 war, tripling the country’s size in six days. Foreigners often reminisce about volunteering on a 1970s Kibbutz, hitching rides across the romantic Middle Eastern landscape to eat good hummus in Nablus, drink good coffee in Jerusalem.
I remember the Peace Camp’s hopes for a Two State Solution, the compromise of land for peace during the Oslo Accords in the early 1990’s. Growing up in Jerusalem at the time, there is no way I can ever forget the bombs in the buses and cafes, the friends and family we lost. I remember Israel’s generous offer at Camp David, and the disappointment later when it turned out there was “no partner for peace.” And I certainly remember the Second Palestinian Uprising, and the concrete slabs that were put in place around the city separating economies and communities seemingly for ever. There seemed to always be a constant threat of violence, whether it was attacks in South Lebanon, chemical warfare from Iraq, rockets from Gaza or the threat of Nuclear warfare from Iran. The news on the radio was always blaring, announcing something awful happening. And now, in 2016, according to Prime Minister Netanyahu, the second largest existential threat to Israel is BDS (the first is still a nuclear Iran).
Growing up an Israeli patriot, a Youth Counselor in the Israeli Scouts and later a veteran combat soldier, I’ve recited these narratives most of my life. Around the world they have been shared for decades as historic fact in classrooms, synagogues and Jewish Community Centers, in churches, parliaments and businesses. The stories are woven into an impenetrable truth, one that many of us around the world sadly still refuse to question.
I began to question this narrative during the second Intifada in 2001. As a soldier, I was ordered to not only protect a community of Jewish settlers in Hebron, but to enable and support their settlement expansion, at the expense of the ancient Palestinian market and residents of the city. After eighteen years growing up in Jerusalem, these were the first settlers and the first Palestinians that I met. The facade began to crack, the narrative didn’t add up. Where was the border that I was supposed to guard? These settlers were the people who danced when Rabin was assassinated, why were they calling the shots? But even veteran Israeli combat soldiers raising questions about the militarized control of Palestinian civilians are attacked and labeled as traitors by Israeli politicians and media.
In any case, questioning the Israeli narrative is swiftly labeled terrorism if you’re Palestinian, self-hating and treasonous if you’re Israeli like me, or anti-Semitic coming from anyone else. Any kind of criticism is shut down. Even Rubi Rivlin, the Israeli President from the hawkish Likud party is accused at high levels of being a leftist deserter. Shouldn’t that raise some questions, why the hysteria? How have national politics reached such absolute narratives, and what are we so scared of? Sure, Jerusalem streets may feel unsafe, but we’re nowhere near the levels of Second Intifada violence. Why is Netanyahu’s government rewriting school books and Supreme Court protocol? And why is the Israeli Foreign Ministry spending millions on international messaging against a grassroots movement calling for nonviolent economic action? And what is this latest threat, BDS, really about?
On 9 July 2005, 171 Palestinian non-governmental organizations initiated a campaign calling for a boycott, divestment and international sanctions to pressure Israel to uphold international law and human rights. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign urges various forms of “non-violent punitive measures” against Israel until it “complies with the precepts of international law” by: “Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall; Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.”
The campaign is organized and coordinated by the Palestinian BDS National Committee. The committee cites a body of UN resolutions and specifically echoes the anti-apartheid campaigns against white minority rule in apartheid-era South Africa. I doubt most of the people objecting to the BDS movement have actually taken the time to read the strategy or the call itself. (If you have not yet, please take the time to read it).
So why is this nonviolent group of activists such a threat? Perhaps it calls into question the cornerstone of the Zionist narrative, the idea that, in addition to the Jewish people’s victimhood, Palestine and Palestinians don’t exist, or alternatively, that Palestinians are violent terrorists. The story must be kept within the narrative of heroic Israeli struggle for survival, therefore, there must be a violent enemy, a terrorist, otherwise the story unravels.
Thus, the only thing scarier than violent Palestinians is, in fact, nonviolent Palestinians. BDS cracks the facade of the Israeli narrative. By doing so, the global movement exposes a historic Palestinian experience that has been otherwise denied or delegitimized by Israel for decades: Over six hundred destroyed or depopulated villages during the Palestinian Nakba, or catastrophe, a number of massacres perpetrated by Israeli militias in 1948. Israeli military rule of Arab villages and cities lasting until 1966. The Israeli banking systems forced upon the occupied cities and villages during the 1970’s and 1980’s. The first Palestinian Intifada, a well organized unarmed protest movement, which finally got Palestine on the global map in the late 1980’s, promptly labeled “terrorism” when Defense Minister Rabin ordered the Israeli military to “break their bones”, sending tens of thousand to hospitals and Israeli prisons. Later, under Prime Minister Rabin’s Labor party, Israel doubled the number of settlers from 200,000 to 400,000 during the peace talks. The implications of the Oslo Accords were the enslavement of the Palestinian workforce. The “Two State Solution” was really based on a ‘one state Israeli economy’.
Prime Minister Barak’s media team finally exposed how the 1999 Camp David “generous offer” didn’t include water rights, international borders, territorial continuity, an independent economy or even a capital in the negotiated Palestinian state. But all Israelis heard from Israeli politicians and Israeli media was the mantra: “There is no partner for peace” repeated time and again. Most Israelis will never know that Palestinian residents of Jerusalem have a different legal status and do not have the Universal Right to vote in any national elections. It isn’t BDS causing unemployment; the Separation Wall was constructed around the largest business districts, causing thousands of business to fold leading to massive unemployment, permanently crippling Palestinian economies.
The ongoing status quo has allowed Israeli business to grow and for us Israelis to continue our lives oblivious to the ongoing oppression of Palestinians. Palestinian political leadership had made a strategic political decision to call off violent resistance and suicide bombings in 2004. If the nonviolent global BDS call had not been launched one year later, would anyone be paying attention today to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, would the cause for Palestinian liberty have made any progress since then?
With a clear set of demands designed to guarantee equality in Israel/Palestine, the global BDS movement is anchored in progressive standards of justice, and the world is listening. The Israeli settlement economy is considered a pariah and has been singled out by European institutions, who now demand that settlement goods touting that they are “made in Israel” be labeled as such. Major Christian churches such as the Presbyterians have voted to divest from corporations turning a profit off occupation. Companies such as the French cellphone coverage provider Orange pulled out. The largest private security company in the world, G4S, recently announced its intention to abandon its contracts in Israel. Even SodaStream and Ahava cosmetics have recently declared they will relocate across the Green Line. This is no longer a symbolic protest.
Critics of BDS sometimes ask why there is a disproportionate focus on Israel as opposed to other countries with records of human rights violations. A. We’re not, there are many other campaigns for justice we are focusing on, you must not be paying attention. And B. We focus on Israel because it receives more financial aid than Africa. Finally C. Israel claims to be a progressive, democratic society, so shouldn’t we, as supporters of Israel, expect and demand that it lives up to the standard it has set for itself?
The BDS call in no way makes Israelis or Jews in the Diaspora less safe. But the grassroots movement for justice demands we face the racist nature of our Israeli democracy. As aforementioned, BDS invites us to discuss the unequal nature of the one-state economic reality. For many around the world this is a devastating truth to come to terms with. Israel isn’t really the Jewish democracy we thought it was, let’s be honest, friends, Israel is a democracy for Jews, not for anyone else. Palestinians just “happen to be there.”
Anyone following Israeli politics is aware that Israeli society is not taking the news well, and has gone down a very scary and dark road. Jewish supremacist lynch mobs dominate the streets of downtown Jerusalem without fear of prosecution. More than ever before, government/military policy is designed to violently pressure Palestinian communities to leave. Many Palestinians, in turn, crack under the pressure and violently react, lashing out with random acts of violence, stabbing Israeli civilians. I cannot remember a time when tension levels were so high as they are at the time of penning this article.
But the heightened levels of rhetoric, violence, and racism in Jerusalem are not caused by those Palestinians or the BDS movement. This grim political reality is lead by Israeli politicians, but mostly enabled by the silence and compliance of Jews and Christians around the world. Blindly supporting the Israeli narrative has caused a national psychosis no current Israeli leader can lead us out of. This is why I place my hope in the principled Palestinian call for BDS.
Brazilian social movements and politicians have an opportunity to get involved in this growing call for justice. Brazilian organizations are investigating important connections between the Brazilian and Israeli militaries. And there’s an active campaign asking the Brazilian-hosted Olympics to refuse a contract with a leading Israeli security firm. Earlier this year, I accepted with interest an invitation to meet with accomplished Parliamentarian Jean Wyllys, but I left our meeting disappointed that he would not listen to Palestinian leaders imploring him to support BDS, as he insisted that dialogue and coexistence projects were the way forward. While these projects can build bridges, without including an anti-oppression narrative or acknowledging the structural violence at work, they can serve to “normalize” relations, and thus harm efforts toward a lasting peace built on justice. Following Parliamentarian Wyllys’ participation in a conference at Hebrew University of Jerusalem (which has deep ties to human rights abuses against Palestinians), over two hundred Brazilian academics signed onto a letter in support of BDS, including academic and cultural boycott.
As an Israeli, I now work in solidarity with my Palestinian neighbors because I was raised in Jerusalem, a city we share, and was taught “never again” by my family. I also work with a growing network of Jews around the world, in the Diaspora, who, awake to the injustices of my country, are joining the BDS call and organizing their communities. Using the core of Jewish ethics, these groups are asking mainstream Jewish institutions to stand behind Jewish ethics and speak out against the ongoing violence and occupation.
But most of all, I support BDS because it is only the beginning. BDS provides the principled, justice-based foundation for the truly democratic society I would like to live in and share decades from now. BDS provides a list of tactics. The broader strategy is to support a vibrant Palestinian society, side by side with the Israeli, so that neither has to leave. BDS calls for making separation, inequality, racism and blind nationalism things of the past.
Otherwise, you tell me, what’s your alternative?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Micha Kurz was born and raised in Jerusalem by two Peacenik, Social Workers, he founded 3 Israeli Scouts Centers before joining the Israeli military as a combat soldier. With his discharge he co-founded the organization Breaking the Silence with comrades from his unit, and has since been outspoken against the occupation. He has worked as the Political Tours Director at ICAHD, as well as a Board-Member. He founded Grassroots AlQuds, a Palestinian platform for community mobilization and advocacy. Micha provides timely analysis about current affairs in Jerusalem to visiting diplomats, politicians and grassroots movement leaders. He is currently on Sabbatical in the mountains of Colorado.