Ben White, writing about BDS in Ali Abumineh’s pro-BDS Electronic Intifada:
“popular struggle” in Palestine is “a method of prosecuting conflict by mobilizing civic pressure where the ‘foot soldiers’ are ordinary civilians and the ‘weapons systems’ include boycotts, strikes, demonstrations, sit-ins, and other forms of non-cooperation and organized defiance.” […] The problem has never been a Palestinian failure to meet the demands set by the US or international community, a display of colonial arrogance that repeats itself in every successive “negotiation.” Popular struggle, like violent resistance, is not an end in and of itself; it is a method, a strategy. It is the end goal, decolonization and liberation from occupation and Zionist apartheid, that is ferociously opposed by the self-declared international guardians of the “peace process” and their friends in the Palestinian elite. The rest is just smoke and mirrors.
Ben White writing about BDS this past week in the London Student:
To emphasise: BDS is a tactic, not an end in and of itself. It is a response to a call from Palestinians, and makes a direct link between Israeli crimes and a response to them. It is a sign of hope, not despair. And it is a grassroots strategy steeped in a rich, historical tradition of opposition to all sorts of injustice.
Here, Ben White omits the tiny detail, that BDS is supposed to go hand-in-hand with “violent resistance” from Palestinians. He’s clipped it out of his newest article on BDS, which is designed to cater to a broad student readership.
Norman Finkelstein on BDS:
I support the BDS. But I said it will never reach a broad public, until and unless they’re explicit on their goal, and their goal has to include recognition of Israel, or it’s a non-starter. It won’t reach the public. Because the moment you go out there, Israel will start to say: What about us? and They won’t recognise our right. And in fact that’s correct! You can’t answer the Israelis on that, because that’s factually correct. It’s not an accident, an unwitting omission, that BDS does not mention Israel. You know that and I know that. It’s not like they’re, Oh! We forgot to mention it. They won’t mention it because they know it will split the movement. Because there’s a large segment of the movement, component of the movement, which wants to eliminate Israel.
Yep.
