AIPAC’s thuggery comes home

The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is committed to supporting Israel’s thuggish right-wing government–no matter how much land is confiscated from Palestinians, no matter how many homes are bulldozed, and no matter how many Palestinians are killed.  And, it appears, AIPAC’s support of violence also applies to the U.S.

Rae Abileah, a Jewish-American activist with CODEPINK and Jewish Voice for Peace and who is of Israeli descent, interrupted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress yesterday.  She shouted:   “No more occupation! Stop Israel war crimes! Equal rights for Palestinians! Occupation is indefensible!”  She was tackled by members of AIPAC, and was subsequently hospitalized and then arrested.

From the CODEPINK press release:

Police arrested CODEPINK peace activist Rae Abileah at the George Washington University Hospital in Washington DC. Abileah was taken to the hospital after having been assaulted and tackled to the ground by AIPAC members of the audience in the House Gallery during Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to Congress.

Abileah interrupted Netanyahu with a banner that said  “Occupying Land Is Indefensible” and shouting, “No more occupation, stop Israel war crimes, equal rights for Palestinians, occupation is indefensible.” She rose up to speak out just after the Prime Minister talked about the youth around the world rising up for more democracy.

As this 28-year-old Jewish American woman spoke out for the human rights of Palestinians, other members of the audience—wearing badges from the conference of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee—brutally attacked her. The police then dragged her out of the Gallery and took her to the George Washington University Hospital, where she was being treating for neck and shoulder injuries.

“I am in great pain, but this is nothing compared to the pain and suffering that Palestinians go through on a regular basis,” said Abileah from her hospital bed. “I have been to Gaza and the West Bank, I have seen Palestinians homes bombed and bulldozed, I have talked to mothers whose children have been killed during the invasion of Gaza, I have seen the Jewish-only roads leading to ever-expanding settlements in the West Bank. This kind of colonial occupation cannot continue. As a Jew and a U.S. citizen, I feel obligated to rise up and speak out against stop these crimes being committed in my name and with my tax dollars.”

Abileah explained that she stands in solidarity with the Palestinian and Israeli activists who are routinely jailed and beaten for speaking out for democracy.

Watch Abileah’s interview with Democracy Now! this morning:

(VIDEO) Breaking: Palestine solidarity activists disrupt Netanyahu’s AIPAC speech

Five Palestine solidarity activists, most of them Jewish, interrupted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech tonight at the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee conference.  See the video above.

From the Move Over AIPAC press release:

The speech of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was interrupted repeatedly by protesters opposed to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. The activists are from the Move Over AIPAC coalition led by CODEPINK: Women for Peace.

The protesters, 5 in all, rose one by one, unfurled banners, and chanted slogans. In response to Netanyahu’s claim that returning to the 1967 borders would be “indefensible,” activists called out that various aspects of Israel’s policy are indefensible. They were escorted out by security, but not before they made a highly visible protest against the theft of Palestinian land, the siege of Gaza, denial of the rights of Palestinian refugees, silencing dissent, and destruction of homes and schools.

“Growing up as the son of Holocaust survivor, I learned that it is everyone’s job to stand up for others when they are persecuted, and I learned what happens when we don’t defend humanity. Now, it is my job to stand up in support of Palestinians, saying, ‘bombing schools is indefensible, bulldozing homes is indefensible, ’” said Jewish American protester Rick Colbath-Hess, 53 from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“As a young Jewish person it is important for me to stand up today and tell Netanyahu and AIPAC that their voices do not represent me,” said Ariel Vegosen, 30, from Valley Stream, New York, “I will not allow my faith to be misused as a weapon, covering up the theft of Palestinians’ homes and livelihoods. Judaism teaches me to stand up when I see oppression— discrimination is not a Jewish value and does not make Israel safer. Occupying Palestinian land is indefensible.”

Ali Abunimah at the Electronic Intifada interviewed Sasha Gelzin, a CODEPINK activist who interrupted Netanyahu:

Gelzin told The Electronic Intifada by telephone, “The word indefensible has a more significant meaning than just borders. It also means ‘unjustifiable.’ We had to reclaim this word because all these types of Israeli apartheid are indefensible.”

Among the slogans the five protestors called out were:

• “Occupying land is indefensible”
• “Starving Gaza is indefensible”
• “Bulldozing homes is indefensible”
• “Silencing dissent is indefensible”
• “Displacing refugees is indefensible”

Gelzin said that as protestors stood up, AIPAC delegates immediately began chanting and booing in order to drown the dissenting voices out. The protestors were escorted out of the building but none were arrested, Gelzin said.

Bucking Obama and Netanyahu, Palestinian refugees assert their centrality

When President Barack Obama delivered his much awaited speech on the “Arab Spring” last Thursday, outlining his administration’s policy on the Arab revolts and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he proposed a negotiations process that would delay discussions on Palestinian refugees.

“These principles provide a foundation for negotiations.  Palestinians should know the territorial outlines of their state; Israelis should know that their basic security concerns will be met,” he said at the State Department.  “I’m aware that these steps alone will not resolve the conflict, because two wrenching and emotional issues will remain:  the future of Jerusalem, and the fate of Palestinian refugees.  But moving forward now on the basis of territory and security provides a foundation to resolve those two issues in a way that is just and fair.”

Obama didn’t even mention refugees once during his May 22 speech to the annual conference of the powerful pro-Israel lobby, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee.

But Palestinian refugees themselves are not having any of that, despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vow that Palestinians’ insistence on returning is “not going to happen,” as he told President Obama at the White House May 20.  As the Nakba day protests that erupted on May 15 show, the fate of Palestinian refugees, and their demands to return to their homeland in what is now Israel, remain a core issue in the conflict.

Obama is “now attempting to parse away the negotiations by turning it into a very piecemeal negotiation, where first you focus on borders and security, and then leave all of the other issues to a later date,” Diana Buttu, a former spokesperson of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Negotiations Support Unit, told the Institute for Palestine Studies.  “This is the policy the Israelis have been pushing for a very long period of time.”

But Palestinian refugees are not waiting on a U.S. president to show them the way forward.  Through the kinds of unarmed, popular resistance that have overthrown the regimes of Hosni Mubarak and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali–and that Palestinian themselves first used during their intifadas–they are reinserting themselves into the discourse on Israel/Palestine.

The next big event for refugees and their supporters will be June 5, a date that marks the start of the 1967 Six-Day War, in which Israel captured and occupied the Golan Heights in Syria, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt–all of which remain in Israel’s hands, save for the Sinai.

The Ma’an News Agency reported May 21 that “masses of Palestinian refugees will march to Israel’s borders and ceasefire lines again on June 5, organizers of the May 15 ‘return rally’ said…The committee organizing the ‘return rallies’ said Saturday that the May 15 protests were ‘just the beginning.’  In a statement, the group called on all Palestinian refugees living in exile to march peacefully to the borders of historic Palestine on June 5.”

The “right to return” rallies represent the clearest sign yet that Palestinian refugees are done waiting for a peace process that has done nothing for their rights.  The rallies could be looked at as a wholesale rejection of a negotiations process that has systematically shut refugees and the whole Palestinian diaspora out.  And it represents a rejection of the Obama/Netanyahu line on refugees.

Report: Israeli snipers picked off unarmed protesters at Lebanon-Israel border

A May 20 report from Human Rights Watch alleges that Israeli snipers may have picked off unarmed demonstrators at the Nakba protest last Sunday in the Lebanese village of Maroun al-Rass.  10 protesters were killed in Lebanon as tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees approached the Lebanon-Israel border, demanding the right of return.

Human Rights Watch reports (my emphasis):

An estimated 50,000 people gathered in Maroun al-Rass for a planned commemoration of Nakba Day, according to four participants. A Human Rights Watch researcher was also present to monitor the demonstration. The witnesses told Human Rights Watch that at 10:45 a.m., a group of protesters tried to move toward the nearby border fence, but that Lebanese anti-riot police, crowd-control officials with clubs, and Lebanese military pushed them back. Ibrahim Dirani, a photojournalist who was near the border, said that “when they [Lebanese army] fired in the air to push the protesters back, the protesters got excited and started throwing rocks at the [Lebanese] army.” At around noon, a group of several hundred people, primarily young men, overwhelmed the security forces and ran toward the fence.

A second witness who was close to the fence told Human Rights Watch:

When they reached the fence, they started throwing rocks toward the Israeli side. There were some Israeli soldiers but you could not see them that well. They were hidden behind the trees… Suddenly, we heard two shots from the Israeli side and saw one protester fall dead.

But the protesters would not be deterred. They continued throwing rocks. At around 2:30 to 3 p.m. a Merkava tank came and released white smoke. Behind the tank and the smoke, more Israeli soldiers arrived. And at that point, we heard a lot more gunfire. It was intermittent fire, as if shot by snipers.

Human Rights Watch observed the Israeli tank as well as what appeared to be a sniper outpost consisting of a small earth mound with a window on the side. Demonstrators close to the fence said they saw more than a dozen Israeli soldiers, many of them behind a row of trees, and a military jeep. “I heard Israeli soldiers shoot every few minutes,” the photojournalist said. “It was like the shooting was done by snipers, because after each shot we would see a wounded person fall.” Human Rights Watch saw the crowd carrying the apparently dead body of a boy or youth away from the fence, and saw another man, 22-year-old Munib al-Masri, who was shot in the abdomen and taken to a hospital. A third protester was shot in the head and killed.

Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have called for investigations into the Israeli military’s conduct on May 15, when thousands of Palestinian protesters from Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan demanded their right to return to villages in what is now Israel.

U.S. already affirmed ’67 borders–only to have Obama backtrack

President Barack Obama is set to deliver a hotly anticipated speech tomorrow to “argue that the political upheaval [in the Arab world] raises the prospect for progress on all fronts, and will offer ‘some specific new ideas about U.S. policy toward the region,’” the New York Times reports. And according to a report in the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronoth, Obama will “call upon Israel to withdraw to the 1967 lines, with border alterations that will be agreed upon with the Palestinian Authority”–a move that would “disturb” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But perhaps Netanyahu has little to worry about. The Obama administration has already backtracked on the 1967 borders in private meetings with Palestinian officials, according to documents released by Al Jazeera as part of the “Palestine Papers.” The backtracking on the 1967 lines came despite an an affirmation in the Bush administration-backed “Road Map” on Middle East peace that the ’67 borders would be the border for Israel and a Palestinian state.

Analysis by Ali Abunimah for Al Jazeera indicates how little a commitment to the 1967 borders by Obama in his speech Thursday could mean:

In apparently contentious meetings between Mitchell and Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat and their respective teams in September and October 2009 — whose detailed contents have been revealed for the first time — Mitchell claimed the Bush administration position was nonbinding. He pressed the Palestinians to accept terms of reference that acquiesced to Israel’s refusal to recognize the 1967 line which separates Israel as it was established in 1948 from the West Bank and Gaza Strip where Palestinians hoped to have their state…

At a critical 21 October 2009 meeting, [George] Mitchell read out proposed language for terms of reference:

“The US believes that through good faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome that achieves both the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state encompassing all the territory occupied in 1967 or its equivalent in value, and the Israeli goal of secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meets Israeli security requirements.”

Erekat’s response was blunt: “So no Road Map?” The implication of the words “or equivalent in value” is that the US would only commit to Palestinians receiving a specific amount of territory — 6258 square kilometers, or the equivalent area of the West Bank and Gaza Strip — but not to any specific borders.

Anti-Muslim bigot Walid Shoebat, brought to you by U.S. taxpayers

Late last year, Walid Shoebat, a self-styled “expert” on Islamic extremism, reportedly told public safety personnel attending a Las Vegas anti-terrorism conference that the way to solve the threat posed by terrorists was to “kill them…including the children.” 

And on May 11, despite criticism of the Las Vegas speech, Shoebat, who continues to tout his credentials as an “ex-terrorist” in the Palestine Liberation Organization despite serious questions about his purported biography, was welcomed to a similar place.  He delivered a keynote address to more public employees who attended the second annual South Dakota Homeland Security Conference held in Rapid City–a conference entirely funded by federal tax money.  The topic was “Jihad in America.”

David Montgomery of the Rapid City Journal reported on the speech:

Walid Shoebat, who says he was a former terrorist in the Palestine Liberation Organization before converting to Christianity, said that Americans should focus on what he called the “culture of terrorism” among Muslims rather than “only the ones who carry out the explosive act.”

Shoebat said closet supporters of terrorism exist throughout the Muslim community in mosques, community groups and in the U.S. armed forces.
“You’ve been infiltrated at all levels,” Shoebat said. “Are all Muslims who interpret for the U.S. military terrorists? Of course not. But that doesn’t mean you play Russian roulette.”

Shoebat’s appearance was paid for by a federal grant from the Department of Homeland Security as part of the second annual South Dakota Homeland Security Conference. He also spoke at the first conference last year in Sioux Falls.

Shoebat was invited for a second time to the conference because the speech was highly popular among attendees, Jim Carpenter, the state’s director of homeland security, told Montgomery.  “The critiques and evaluations that came back highly recommended that he come back again…We acted on those, and that’s why he came back.”
 
But even more alarmingly, Shoebat, described by religion writer Richard Bartholomew as “a pseudo-expert on terrorism…[who] teaches that Obama is a secret Muslim and that the Bible has prophesised a Muslim anti-Christ,” is only the tip of an anti-Muslim iceberg being funded by taxpayers.  Author and journalist Chris Hedges recently reported that “much of this [anti-Muslim] indoctrination within the law enforcement community is funded under two grant programs for training—the State Homeland Security Program and Urban Areas Security Initiative—which made $1.67 billion available to states in 2010.”

Since September 11, the federal government has poured money into fighting terrorism.  But some of this money has gone to pay for public employee attendance at seminars and trainings that feature crude propaganda about Islam.  The speakers at these trainings, like Shoebat, also often push a far-right agenda when it comes to the Israel/Palestine conflict.  For example, on his website, Shoebat claims that “the Arab refugees are being used as pawns’ to create a terror breeding ground, as a form of aggression against Israel.”

Shoebat and others like him preach bigoted tropes about Islam across the country at similar conferences paid for with taxpayer money.  The trend has continued despite more public scrutiny in the form of investigations published by the Washington Post and a March 29 letter from top senators in the Senate’s Homeland Security committee.  The letter, authored by Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, expressed concern about “state and local law enforcement agencies…being trained by individuals who not only do not understand the ideology of violent Islamist extremism but also cast aspersions on a wide swath of ordinary Americans merely because of their religious affiliation.”

The Senate letter came after the publication of a comprehensive report by the Political Research Associates that documented how “public servants are regularly presented with misleading, inflammatory, and dangerous information about the nature of the terror threat.”

“What we are documenting here is the institutionalization of these views in a critical part of our government—those who have the power to monitor, extract, arrest and interrogate people,” Thom Cincotta, the author of the report, told me in a recent interview published in AlterNet.  “This isn’t the type of country we want to be.  We want to embrace our diversity and build ties with the Muslim-American community.” 

But despite the increase in public scrutiny, and demands from the Council on American-Islamic Relations  to drop Shoebat from the South Dakota conference, the Shoebat show went on.

The scrutiny of Shoebat was met with a shrug from Carpenter, the state’s director of homeland security.  He told the Rapid City Journal that he doesn’t think that “we should be complacent in any way…Sometimes it takes folks to wake us up a little bit.”  But in reality, Shoebat and others like him let law enforcement go to sleep on the real work of counter-terrorism.

Role reversal: Jeffrey Wiesenfeld comes under scrutiny

Jeffrey Wiesenfeld has made it a career habit to try and marginalize anyone he perceived to be insufficiently pro-Israel and to smear Muslims and Arabs.  But in the wake of the Tony Kushner degree controversy, it is Wiesenfeld’s politics, racism and abuse of power that are coming under scrutiny.

Wiesenfeld, a trustee at the AIPAC-created think-tank called the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, was a board member for the so-called Stop the Madrassa Coalition, which led the vicious anti-Arab and anti-Muslim campaign against the Khalil Gibran International Academy.  He also played a role in the short-lived firing of Kristofer Petersen-Overton, a professor at Brooklyn College whose academic scholarship focused on Palestinian identity.  And now, he has single-handedly blocked an honorary degree for playwright Tony Kushner solely for his views on Israel.

This time, though, Wiesenfeld is on the defensive, and it’s entirely his doing.  His abuse of power in nixing an honorary degree for one of the most celebrated artists in America was the first transgression.  His second one was telling the New York Times’ Jim Dwyer that, in effect, he believes that the Palestinian people are “not human.”

The double-shot to the foot has led to a piling up of calls for Wiesenfeld to resign  The New York Times upped the ante in a May 6 editorial calling for Wiesenfeld’s removal:

The trustees of the City University of New York got it exactly backward this week. They supported the political agenda of an intolerant board member and shunned one of America’s most important playwrights. They should have embraced the artist and tossed out the board member.

Wiesenfeld is also taking heat from the former mayor of New York City Ed Koch, despite the fact that Wiesenfeld served in the Koch administration and that Koch shares many of Wiesenfeld’s right-wing political views.

Activist groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations-NY and Jewish Voice for Peace are also demanding Wiesenfeld’s resignation.  Cyrus McGoldrick, the civil rights director for the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said:

The underlying issue here is a taboo on addressing the conditions of Palestinian people in the public space. Wiesenfeld may feel that his bigotry is the order of the day, but our tax dollars which support CUNY should not be utilized to dehumanize any people, and we call on CUNY to enforce this basic yet critical notion by removing or demanding the resignation of Jeffrey Wiesenfeld

Some prominent academics have renounced their honorary degrees from CUNY.

The uproar over Wiesenfeld marks an important and ongoing shift in the U.S. discourse on Israel/Palestine, as Jerry Haber writes.  Instead of Kushner being the focus of controversy, Wiesenfeld’s actions have backfired, and it is the powerful CUNY trustee who finds himself the subject of scrutiny.

The controversy will peter out in the coming weeks, as CUNY is set to award Kushner the degree Wiesenfeld sought to nix.  But if the pressure escalates on CUNY so much so that Wiesenfeld is forced to go, it would a victory for free speech and Palestine solidarity and a blow to the Israel lobby.

The upshot of the Tony Kushner muzzling

Image from Columbia.edu

The decision by the City University of New York’s (CUNY) Board of Trustees to block famous playwright Tony Kushner’s honorary degree at John Jay College is rightly being met with outrage.  But there’s also an important upshot to the controversy:  the racism that right-wing supporters of Israel deploy against Palestinians is getting an airing, as is the unrelenting attempts by powerful pro-Israel types to shut down debate on Palestine.  It’s a tiny airing, but it’s a start.

Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, the far-right supporter of Israel behind the decision to block Kushner’s degree, is being pilloried in the press.  For instance, while Jeffrey Goldberg minces words and refuses to call him a racist, he did write three blog posts criticizing Wiesenfeld.

The narrative that Wiesenfeld wanted to disseminate–that Kushner is an extremist and an anti-Semite–has backfired, and has turned into a story about Wiesenfeld’s politics and how one powerful supporter of the State of Israel successfully managed to block debate and smear a prominent American artist.

Wiesenfeld’s racism against Palestinians, and the shameful way Kushner was treated, was cataloged in an interview published today by the New York Times’ Jim Dwyer:

Mr. Wiesenfeld is the City University of New York trustee who rose this week at a board meeting to block an honorary degree to the playwright Tony Kushner, declaring him an “extremist” opponent and critic of Israel.

It was a startling development for a board that appeared to be on the verge of rubber-stamping a bundle of honorary degrees proposed by the colleges within the university, including one for Mr. Kushner from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Mr. Kushner was not present, and fragments of his views — which are complicated, passionate, critical — were balled up into a few pellets by Mr. Wiesenfeld, who gave a 900-word speech that was mostly devoted to other figures who he felt were radically hostile to Israel. He quoted about 75 words that he said showed that Mr. Kushner’s thinking was beyond the pale.

The trustees pulled the playwright’s name from the motion and moved on to wholesale rubber-stamping of the remaining honorary degrees.

Was this any way for one of the great public universities of the world to discuss the views of one of the leading dramatists of modern times, author of the epic “Angels in America”?

[...]

I tried to ask a question about the damage done by a short, one-sided discussion of vigorously debated aspects of Middle East politics, like the survival of Israel and the rights of the Palestinians, and which side was more callous toward human life, and who was most protective of it.

But Mr. Wiesenfeld interrupted and said the question was offensive because “the comparison sets up a moral equivalence.”

Equivalence between what and what? “Between the Palestinians and Israelis,” he said. “People who worship death for their children are not human.”

Did he mean the Palestinians were not human? “They have developed a culture which is unprecedented in human history,” he said.

A separate New York Times article notes that this was not the first time Zionists attempted to nix an award for Kushner:

In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Mr. Kushner has received 15 honorary degrees. In 2006, some pro-Zionist groups tried to block him from getting an honorary degree at Brandeis University, but the university decided to go ahead with the honor.

In response to the current episode, former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, a vehement supporter of Israel, has called on CUNY to fire Wiesenfeld:

Ed Koch call for the City University of New York to terminate its relationship with a trustee who engineered the denial of an honorary degree to Tony Kushner because of the playwright’s criticism of Israel…

Neither Kushner nor anyone else was invited to speak in his defense.

“Mr. Wiesenfeld and the trustees who followed his request should immediately reverse their action and urge Mr. Kushner to forgive them,” Koch wrote. “I consider Mr. Wiesenfeld’s action so outrageous as to be an abuse of power on his part requiring his resignation or removal from the Board of Trustees.”

This was probably not what Wiesenfeld was expecting.  CUNY is already backpedaling.  Former Mayor Koch is airing his outrage over Wiesenfeld’s actions.  The New York Times and Jeffrey Goldberg are calling him out for his repugnant views.  Some discussion of the history of these attempts to shut down dissent over Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is being heard.  What needs to happen next is an honest discussion about the facts concerning the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

Antiwar Radio’s Scott Horton interviews me on ‘How Your Tax Dollars Fuel the Hatred of Muslims’

I was on Scott Horton’s show on Antiwar Radio last week.  The MP3 of the interview is here, or you can stream it here.  Here’s the Antiwar.com description of the interview:

Alex Kane, frequent contributor to the blog Mondoweiss, discusses his article “How Your Tax Dollars Fuel the Hatred of Muslims;” the Islamophobes “training” law enforcement agencies that Muslims are their enemies, Islam is a terrorist religion and Sharia law is coming to take over the US; the questionable involvement of local cops in fighting terrorism, which is essentially a foreign policy problem; Israel’s interest in perpetuating a negative view of Muslims and Arabs; and how the US government shows more allegiance to Israel than its own Muslim citizens – the consequence of a foreign policy that is unwaveringly supportive of Israel.

Boycott Israel Movement Creates ‘Sea Change’: An Interview with Palestinian Human Rights Activist Omar Barghouti

My interview with Omar Barghouti, a leading proponent of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, appears in the latest issue of the Indypendent.  Here’s an excerpt:

Modeled on the international campaign of economic and political pressure that helped bring an end to South African apartheid nearly two decades ago, the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories has notched notable victories of late.

Achievements include the announcement in April that the flagship London outlet of Ahava, an Israeli cosmetics company that reportedly manufactures its products in an illegal West Bank settlement, is losing its lease in response to years of protest. In February, legendary folk singer Pete Seeger joined a roster of artists honoring the boycott of Israel, including Elvis Costello, Dustin Hoffman, Gil Scott-Heron, Johnny Depp and the Pixies.

Defenders of Israel dismiss these victories as minor irritants, but the government has reacted with alarm. In February the Knesset gave initial approval to a bill criminalizing advocacy of BDS. Israeli commentators, including the influential Tel Aviv-based Reut Institute, have called the BDS movement a “strategic threat” to the state of Israel. And the United States, Israel’s patron, has joined the chorus of critics. “When academics from Israel are boycotted — this is not objecting to a policy — this is anti-Semitism,” Hannah Rosenthal, the State Department’s envoy on combating anti-Semitism, said in an April 2 speech.

Rosenthal’s statement came right after the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem approved a long-delayed visa for Omar Barghouti, a leading figure in the BDS movement. Author of the new book, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, Barghouti was forced to postpone a tour of U.S. college campuses after his visa was held up for four months. In response an international campaign bombarded the consulate with phone calls
and emails.

The attempt at scuttling Barghouti’s tour comes as no surprise in the context of increased U.S. and Israeli government scrutiny of the BDS movement’s growing popularity. Barghouti is a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, and award-winning journalist Max Blumenthal refers to Barghouti as “one of the BDS movement’s most effective strategists and promoters.”

I met up with Barghouti after his publisher, Haymarket Books, rescheduled his tour for April. Sitting in a crowded coffee shop in Manhattan, Barghouti talked about building on his experience as an anti-apartheid campaigner by focusing his attention on U.S. college campuses. “When I was in the anti-apartheid movement, we knew that we won when Columbia, Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton divested. That was the beginning of the end for the apartheid system in South Africa.”

Read the whole article here.