11 dec 2017
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Rock musician and Palestinian rights advocate Roger Waters discusses his recent concert tour in Canada.
TRNN transcript & video: D. Lascaris: This is Dmitri Lascaris for The Real News network. Legendary musician Roger Waters, the co-founder of Pink Floyd, just completed a 14 concert tour of Canada which concluded on October 29th in Vancouver, British Columbia. For the last ten years, Roger has been a leading voice globally for the defense of Palestinian human rights. His advocacy has included the role of narrator in a documentary called “The Occupation of the American Mind.” In 2016 Paul Jay of The Real News explored this documentary in a |
three-part interview with Roger and with filmmaker Sut Jhally. If you haven’t seen the interview, I encourage you all to watch it on the website of The Real News.The more Roger has spoken in defense of Palestinian human rights, the more he has come under attack and attracted the ire of the pro-Israel lobby groups in the countries where he has performed. At the outset of Roger’s Canadian tour, the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs and B’nai Brith Canada began attacking him.
B’nai Brith went so far as to follow Roger around the country. In Canadian cities where he performed, B’nai Brith staged showings of a so-called documentary by a US filmmaker by the name of Ian Halperin. Normally, Halperin is a celebrity biographer who’s work focuses on the less palatable aspects of celebrity lives. In the past, he’s described himself as a Kardashian expert.But this particular Halperin film was about the movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions, for which Roger has become a major spokesperson. To discuss his Canadian tour, Roger joins us today. And we thank you so much for coming back on The Real News,
Roger.Roger Waters: I’m really happy to be back.
D. Lascaris: So Roger, I want to begin by relating The Occupation of the American Mind to your recent experiences in Canada. When you and filmmaker Sut Jhally came on The Real News last year, you talked about some of the techniques that Israel advocates typically employ in order to achieve their propaganda objectives. During your Canadian tour, did you sometimes feel that you were being targeted with the very tactics you examined in The Occupation of the American Mind?
Roger Waters: Yeah. That is the impression that one gets. In fact, that’s not the impression that one gets. That is the reality of what happens. It’s interesting to be part of it, because for a number of reasons.One is that they’re deadly serious.Two is that they’re very single minded.Three is that they’re almost completely incompetent.And four is that they are tiny in number. So there mass protests outside my gigs would be, five people? Maybe? Or six. This ridiculous film that this so-called filmmaker Ian Halperin has made, I’ve seen the first 32 minutes of it. That’s all they would give to people. Journalists, like. It’s so badly made, so incoherent, and one would be laughing if it wasn’t so serious that protest groups are attacking basic freedoms of speech that most of us like to think that we enjoy in countries that call themselves democratic, like both the United States and Canada.Though I know I’m going to face this problem in Europe, as well. Where there has been an enormous amount of lobbying against BDS and attacks on people who support it.
D. Lascaris: I want to just talk to you about the nature, the substance of the attacks. And I think certainly one of the principal messages or claims in Halperin’s film and by the lobby groups that have supported his film in Canada, is that you have some sort of a fixation with Israel’s human rights record and that you ignore the human rights abuses of other states. How do you respond to that allegation?
Roger Waters: Well, it is true that I have taken a lot of notice of and studied in quite some considerable detail Israel’s abuses of human rights. And I have been doing that for the last ten or eleven years. I’m not quite sure which other countries they would prefer me to be focusing my attentions on. I think it’s a diversionary tactic.To say, “Do not look at Israel’s abuses of human rights and all the illegalities that we, the Israeli government, are committing in the pursuit of the colonization and occupation of land that used to be called Palestine. Don’t look at us. Please don’t ask us any awkward questions. Don’t join a peaceful protest movement that is trying to bring pressure to bear on us in order to bring us in line with international law, and so on and so forth. Go and look at something else.”Well, maybe I will when this battle is over, which maybe one day it will be. Maybe there will be some other beleaguered people who’s rights are being trampled on, and maybe I will engage myself in that struggle as well, because I care about all people who’s human rights are being trampled, all over the world, whoever they might be, whatever their race or religion or political persuasion.
So really, it is no defense to say, “Yeah, okay, but why us?” Because you were there. Because I came to your country to do a gig, because I engaged in conversation with Palestinian civil society. Because they started a campaign called boycott, divestment, and sanctions, in order to draw global civil society into their struggle against their oppression by a colonizing power that maintains an army of occupation on their land. And controls their lives entirely. Where they have no civil rights at all.So it’s not rocket science, this. And the diversionary tactic will not work. If you’re oppressing somebody, it is no defense if you, standing with your boot on the guy’s throat, to say, “Oh, look over there, there’s somebody else with a boot on somebody’s throat.”No. We’re talking about your boot, and their throat, at the moment. We’ll go and have a look over there later.
D. Lascaris: Let’s talk about the colonization of the discourse, which was so ably examined in The Occupation of the American Mind. In Montreal, Ian Halperin blasted the media for its coverage of your criticism of Israel’s human rights violations and, according to The Montreal Gazette, during a Q&A following a showing of Halperin’s film in Montreal, “An emotional Halperin engaged in an expletive-filled rant against the Montreal media.” And apparently Halperin’s rant was so aggressive, that B’nai Brith Canada, which has been promoting as you know, his showings across the country was embarrassed and was forced to issue an apology to those who were insulted by Halperin’s remarks, which they acknowledged were disrespectful. Roger, I want to talk to you about the Canadian media coverage of your tour, and of the political aspects of your activities. During the Canadian tour, there was a great deal written in the corporate media about the political and social justice initiatives to which you give some attention in your concerts and outside of your concerts. The National Post, The Toronto Sun, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, among others, all chimed in with pieces on your tour and touching upon the political aspects of your work.Generally, do you feel that their reporting was balanced? And how do you respond to Halperin’s claim that the Canadian media were too kind to you?
Roger Waters: He must have been looking at different newspapers that I was looking at, because all the articles that I saw were either … The National Post, for instance, carried a piece by a woman called Barbara Kay that was extremist, right wing, raging, rant, attack, personal, ad-homonym, attack, against me, personally. So I’ve no idea what he’s talking about.They gave coverage to quotes from Michael Marsten, who’s the CEO of B’nai Brith, which as you know is a Jewish organization in Canada. So I don’t know what papers he was reading that I wasn’t reading. Some of the Canadian newspapers reviewed my show and gave it glowing reviews. Which is nice, thank you very much, those reviewers, for actually coming to the show, listening to the songs, checking out the show’s theme, what it’s actually about. The show is very, very, in its essence, it is only about promoting the idea that human beings are all equal, and that we all have rights, and that we should treat each other with empathy and love. That is what my show is about.So the Halperin, Barbara Kay … what are the other organizations.
There’s these people who’ve been following me all over North America with a truck saying that I spread hatred and lies. I don’t spread hatred, and I do not spread lies. I’m very, very careful not to tell lies about anything or anyone. Because I am a sincere supporter of a non-violent global protest movement against the occupation of Palestinian land in the West Bank, and also the containment of the large civilian population in Gaza where there are 1.8 million people kept in what is an open-air prison. It’s not a virtual prison, it is a prison. Where they are denied the basic stuff of life.
They are denied water, electricity, they’re denied all the things that you need to stay alive.Miraculously, they’ve managed to survive so far. But life is becoming untenable in Gaza. They are being starved out of existence. It is one of the most heinous examples of collective punishment that we can see anywhere on the collective globe. These people, who attack me, do so because they have an allegiance, I suppose, to Zionism and to the state of Israel, and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t have these allegiances.
But unfortunately, in expressing their allegiance, they resort to propaganda and to lies.If you read what they have written on their little truck, saying that I’m speaking hatred and lies, it’s actually they’re looking in a mirror. Because that is what they’re doing. I’ve never used the words, I didn’t use words like hatred. And I certainly don’t tell lies.They tell lies. They say, for instance, that I’m an anti-Semite. Which is a bare-faced, out-and-out, lie. And anybody who knows what anti-Semite means, and is a reasonable person, of any faith, whatever their faith or color or nationality, will absolutely agree that you can accuse me of being many things. Outspoken, you could accuse me of being. Political, you can accuse me of being. You cannot accuse me of being anti-Semitic.
They conflate the idea of criticism of the policies of the current Israeli government, and previous Israeli governments, with anti-Semitism. Which it isn’t. They’re just wrong. It’s a misunderstanding. It’s semantics. It’s a misunderstanding of the meanings of the words, anti and Semite.So it’s something that, hopefully, we could have cleared up years and years ago. But we can’t. And the reason that we can’t clear it up is because they have no reason or defense of the policies of the Israeli government, and its occupation of its beleaguered, neighboring, people. In consequence, they try to deflect the conversation, always, away from the realities by calling people, like me, names like anti-Semite. It’s simply to deflect the spotlight away from the reality of what the Israeli government is doing to the Palestinian people.
We in BDS, and other movements, and also I have to say many Jewish organizations. Some specifically I would mention, in the United States, Jewish Voice for Peace, and in Canada I was hosted by an organization called Independent Jewish Voices, who invited me when I was in Vancouver, on one of my nights off, to do a moderated talk and a Q&A session in a church. I think it was called St. Andrew’s Church. And we had 1200 people came, and we had a grown-up, measured, conversation about this whole subject. Which I’m happy to say ended with quite a long applause at the end, because I think they were glad to hear my views, the people who were there. And it’s the way that grown up people who care about actual issues speak to each other. And it’s not chanting slogans and calling people names.
D. Lascaris: It’s very interesting, Roger, the way, I think you’ve laid it out, the real dichotomy here. The dichotomy that we’re being told about but the advocates for the state of Israel is, you’re either for or against the Jewish people.But you point out that Barbara Kay’s attack on you was really a right wing attack and that progressive groups including Jewish groups like Independent Jewish Voices are very supportive of your work, and in fact they issued a statement to that effect before your event at the end of October. We also have in this country, I’m not sure whether you’re aware of it, but Libby Davies who was the former deputy leader of the Social Democratic NDP, praised your work in a piece in Rabble.
So ultimately, the real divide is one of progressivism versus right wing nationalism. Remarkably, Barbara Kay herself, in a moment of uncharacteristic candor about this issue, pretty much admitted as much in a recent op-ed in The National Post, in which she characterized the people who are defending advocates like yourself and the work that you’re doing as progressives. And that’s ultimately what this is about. It’s about progressive values.I want to talk about how we’re going to achieve those values. Conclude by talking about how we’re going to achieve those values, or realize them in the context of the Palestinian struggle, going forward. How would you evaluate the performance of the BDS movement thus far? It’s in it’s 13th year. And how do you feel the future looks for the movement, and where the real promise for it lies? What are the strategies that it needs to employ in order to achieve it’s ultimate objectives, going forward?
Roger Waters: That’s very interesting. I think the rise of the BDS movement has been absolutely spectacular. It was started in 2005, as you know, by a huge coalition of disparate groups within Palestinian civil society and from those roots in … And they wrote a letter inviting people, concerned human beings in the rest of the world, to join a non-violent struggle involving boycott, divestment, and sanctions, to bring pressure on both the Israeli government and upon the Israeli government’s main benefactor, the person who pays, mainly, for their army.
And so on and so forth. Which is the United States of America. To bring pressure on these two governments to adhere to the rule of international law and to the basic tenets of human rights jurisprudence as laid out in the 1948-49, whichever year it was, Declaration of Universal Human Rights in Paris by the then fledgling United Nations.The way this is going to go, I suspect now, now that the two state solution has been destroyed by the duplicity of successive Israeli governments, it’s quite clear from what has happened that they never had any intention of making peace with the Palestinian indigenous population.
The land that they took over when the created the state of Israel, or the land that they invaded all around Jerusalem, but all over the West Bank as well, when they invaded neighboring land in 1967 during the Six Day War.Which is another popular misconception, but which goes a long way to point at the success of the Israeli propaganda machine that has put out or explained, as they call it, that they’ve managed to persuade many people that Israel was attacked in 1967.
It was extraordinary how many people think that, and that they defended themselves. As we know, that’s not true at all. It was a sneak, by the European this morning, surprise unilateral attack on Egypt and Suez.Anyway, I’m meandering a bit. What’s gonna happen? What’s gonna happen is we are going to continue to ask this question: do we, the people of the world, believe in the idea that human beings have rights, and that those rights necessarily need to be protected by a rule of law that is accepted, all over the world, by global civil society.My feeling about that is, yes.A. I, me, the individual Roger Waters, I do believe that individual human beings should have rights.
They should have the right to life, liberty, even in extreme cases, they’re very extreme now, but it should become less and less extreme, the pursuit of happiness. And also property rights, and a few other basic rights. They have a right not to be hungry. And they have a right to food and shelter. Basic, basic rights. But the main right is the right to liberty.So, people should have recourse to the law, of some kind. Nobody should be able to arrest you, in your bed, at night, and incarcerate you, without you being able to make an appeal to due process and have a hearing, in a courtroom, in front of qualified people and if necessary in front of a jury of your peers. This was one of the rights that was fought for in 1215 on the banks of the River Thames at Runnymede, when they finally got their dictator-tyrant, King John, to sign an agreement with the bards.
That’s where Habeas Corpus came from. It’s article 29. It wasn’t ratified for nearly a hundred years. It was ratified in 1297 or something. But that is the law that says, bring me the body. You cannot lock somebody up and say, we’re sorry. Well, the Israelis do that routinely. Thousands and thousands of Palestinians are locked away with no recourse to any law.
They call it administrative detention.So that’s one of the rights. All I’m saying is that the way this is going to go is that more and more of us are going to say, “You have to come out of the woodwork.” And in a way, I’m happy that the Israelis, or many members of the Israeli Knesset, are now coming out of the woodwork. People like Ayelet what’s-her-face, who’s the minister of justice. And others in the secular party. They’re now coming out of the woodwork and saying, “We don’t give a shit about law. We’re not interested in it.”
They’re beginning to go biblical now, and say, “This is our country. God gave it to us. Go and read the bible. That’s the end of it.”Well, that is not good enough. Any religious extremist or fanatic can say that. And it is no way for we, the human race, to organize relations between us and others on this planet. If that is the way to do it, well then all right, take your pick. You can be a muslim extremist, or a Jewish extremist, or a Christian extremist, or a Buddhist extremist. You can find the extreme end of almost any religion.
Or almost any nationality. And say, “We are the exception to the general rule. We are more special that you are.”Now I’m going to start waxing literary, because I’ll start talking Orwell here. I’m going back to Animal Farm, and quoting, you know, the pigs in Animal Farm accepted the notion that all animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others. Well, if you want to have that conversation, I would prefer that you found somebody, or people, more eloquent than I am to sit down in a room and have it.
And I could name a few of them.There are wise men out there, who can sit round a table and who can talk about these general philosophical concepts and say, “Should these general philosophical concepts about human rights and about whether and what we got with the divine right of kings, if we did in the French revolution or the American revolution, or whatever. And you know, the latter was obviously in the 18th century. Was this a move in the right direction, and if it was, why? And blah, blah, blah, blah.” And as the power devolves, and suddenly it’s not just God who has power, or kings, or tyrants, or whatever. It is like, well actually, no, lesser mortals actually have rights. Well, then that’s something that we can discuss, and that’s the direction that I would like to think this small, fragile, delicate, planet might move in, in the future.
Rather than our current situation, which is to encourage things like the Israeli occupation of Palestinian homes, bedrooms, kitchens, gardens, villages. Hayarkon Stadium in Tel Aviv, where Radiohead went and played so ingloriously in July last year, is built on a village that was a Palestinian village that was razed to the ground after 1948. And they built a rock and roll stadium or a football stadium or whatever it is, on top of it. I will always come back, having meandered around Hayarkon football stadium or wherever, I will always come back to that innocent child shot in the head walking to school. And my rage will rise up in my gorge, and I will suppress it and go, “I must keep on with the work that I do.
Small as it is, insignificant as I may be in a cog, the people that I have admired all my life have been the people that I have seen, sometimes against all odds, standing up for the weak.”Standing up for the powerless. Standing up for the idea that though we may not be rich and powerful and armed to the teeth, we nevertheless are human beings and we deserve the empathy and love of our brothers and sisters all over the world. We’re brothers and sisters. We differ from one another, as brothers and sisters do. We all have families. We all have small, nuclear, families. We can look at our actual brothers and sisters and cousins and uncles and aunts and things, and see the differences, and understand that we’re not all the same. And we’re not all perfect. In fact, none of us is perfect.
That’s the whole point. That’s the whole point. We need one another’s help. We need to cooperate. And at the moment, we’re not. At the moment, we have allowed greed really, to take over all our lives and we are allowing a culture of greed to destroy the planet that we should be protecting to hand on to our children and their children and their children. The successive generations. We should be applying ourselves to that, not to, how can I get this? How can I steal my neighbor’s land?
D. Lascaris: Yes and unfortunately, to a large degree, what’s happening to the Palestinian people is a microcosm of the destruction of the planet writ large. And on that somber note, with the hope that that message will be heard. And I really want to thank you Roger, for joining us today. And it was a pleasure speaking to you, as always.
Roger Waters: All right, Dmitri. Thanks, my friend.D.
Lascaris: Thank you. And this has been Dmitri Lascaris for The Real News.
B’nai Brith went so far as to follow Roger around the country. In Canadian cities where he performed, B’nai Brith staged showings of a so-called documentary by a US filmmaker by the name of Ian Halperin. Normally, Halperin is a celebrity biographer who’s work focuses on the less palatable aspects of celebrity lives. In the past, he’s described himself as a Kardashian expert.But this particular Halperin film was about the movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions, for which Roger has become a major spokesperson. To discuss his Canadian tour, Roger joins us today. And we thank you so much for coming back on The Real News,
Roger.Roger Waters: I’m really happy to be back.
D. Lascaris: So Roger, I want to begin by relating The Occupation of the American Mind to your recent experiences in Canada. When you and filmmaker Sut Jhally came on The Real News last year, you talked about some of the techniques that Israel advocates typically employ in order to achieve their propaganda objectives. During your Canadian tour, did you sometimes feel that you were being targeted with the very tactics you examined in The Occupation of the American Mind?
Roger Waters: Yeah. That is the impression that one gets. In fact, that’s not the impression that one gets. That is the reality of what happens. It’s interesting to be part of it, because for a number of reasons.One is that they’re deadly serious.Two is that they’re very single minded.Three is that they’re almost completely incompetent.And four is that they are tiny in number. So there mass protests outside my gigs would be, five people? Maybe? Or six. This ridiculous film that this so-called filmmaker Ian Halperin has made, I’ve seen the first 32 minutes of it. That’s all they would give to people. Journalists, like. It’s so badly made, so incoherent, and one would be laughing if it wasn’t so serious that protest groups are attacking basic freedoms of speech that most of us like to think that we enjoy in countries that call themselves democratic, like both the United States and Canada.Though I know I’m going to face this problem in Europe, as well. Where there has been an enormous amount of lobbying against BDS and attacks on people who support it.
D. Lascaris: I want to just talk to you about the nature, the substance of the attacks. And I think certainly one of the principal messages or claims in Halperin’s film and by the lobby groups that have supported his film in Canada, is that you have some sort of a fixation with Israel’s human rights record and that you ignore the human rights abuses of other states. How do you respond to that allegation?
Roger Waters: Well, it is true that I have taken a lot of notice of and studied in quite some considerable detail Israel’s abuses of human rights. And I have been doing that for the last ten or eleven years. I’m not quite sure which other countries they would prefer me to be focusing my attentions on. I think it’s a diversionary tactic.To say, “Do not look at Israel’s abuses of human rights and all the illegalities that we, the Israeli government, are committing in the pursuit of the colonization and occupation of land that used to be called Palestine. Don’t look at us. Please don’t ask us any awkward questions. Don’t join a peaceful protest movement that is trying to bring pressure to bear on us in order to bring us in line with international law, and so on and so forth. Go and look at something else.”Well, maybe I will when this battle is over, which maybe one day it will be. Maybe there will be some other beleaguered people who’s rights are being trampled on, and maybe I will engage myself in that struggle as well, because I care about all people who’s human rights are being trampled, all over the world, whoever they might be, whatever their race or religion or political persuasion.
So really, it is no defense to say, “Yeah, okay, but why us?” Because you were there. Because I came to your country to do a gig, because I engaged in conversation with Palestinian civil society. Because they started a campaign called boycott, divestment, and sanctions, in order to draw global civil society into their struggle against their oppression by a colonizing power that maintains an army of occupation on their land. And controls their lives entirely. Where they have no civil rights at all.So it’s not rocket science, this. And the diversionary tactic will not work. If you’re oppressing somebody, it is no defense if you, standing with your boot on the guy’s throat, to say, “Oh, look over there, there’s somebody else with a boot on somebody’s throat.”No. We’re talking about your boot, and their throat, at the moment. We’ll go and have a look over there later.
D. Lascaris: Let’s talk about the colonization of the discourse, which was so ably examined in The Occupation of the American Mind. In Montreal, Ian Halperin blasted the media for its coverage of your criticism of Israel’s human rights violations and, according to The Montreal Gazette, during a Q&A following a showing of Halperin’s film in Montreal, “An emotional Halperin engaged in an expletive-filled rant against the Montreal media.” And apparently Halperin’s rant was so aggressive, that B’nai Brith Canada, which has been promoting as you know, his showings across the country was embarrassed and was forced to issue an apology to those who were insulted by Halperin’s remarks, which they acknowledged were disrespectful. Roger, I want to talk to you about the Canadian media coverage of your tour, and of the political aspects of your activities. During the Canadian tour, there was a great deal written in the corporate media about the political and social justice initiatives to which you give some attention in your concerts and outside of your concerts. The National Post, The Toronto Sun, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, among others, all chimed in with pieces on your tour and touching upon the political aspects of your work.Generally, do you feel that their reporting was balanced? And how do you respond to Halperin’s claim that the Canadian media were too kind to you?
Roger Waters: He must have been looking at different newspapers that I was looking at, because all the articles that I saw were either … The National Post, for instance, carried a piece by a woman called Barbara Kay that was extremist, right wing, raging, rant, attack, personal, ad-homonym, attack, against me, personally. So I’ve no idea what he’s talking about.They gave coverage to quotes from Michael Marsten, who’s the CEO of B’nai Brith, which as you know is a Jewish organization in Canada. So I don’t know what papers he was reading that I wasn’t reading. Some of the Canadian newspapers reviewed my show and gave it glowing reviews. Which is nice, thank you very much, those reviewers, for actually coming to the show, listening to the songs, checking out the show’s theme, what it’s actually about. The show is very, very, in its essence, it is only about promoting the idea that human beings are all equal, and that we all have rights, and that we should treat each other with empathy and love. That is what my show is about.So the Halperin, Barbara Kay … what are the other organizations.
There’s these people who’ve been following me all over North America with a truck saying that I spread hatred and lies. I don’t spread hatred, and I do not spread lies. I’m very, very careful not to tell lies about anything or anyone. Because I am a sincere supporter of a non-violent global protest movement against the occupation of Palestinian land in the West Bank, and also the containment of the large civilian population in Gaza where there are 1.8 million people kept in what is an open-air prison. It’s not a virtual prison, it is a prison. Where they are denied the basic stuff of life.
They are denied water, electricity, they’re denied all the things that you need to stay alive.Miraculously, they’ve managed to survive so far. But life is becoming untenable in Gaza. They are being starved out of existence. It is one of the most heinous examples of collective punishment that we can see anywhere on the collective globe. These people, who attack me, do so because they have an allegiance, I suppose, to Zionism and to the state of Israel, and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t have these allegiances.
But unfortunately, in expressing their allegiance, they resort to propaganda and to lies.If you read what they have written on their little truck, saying that I’m speaking hatred and lies, it’s actually they’re looking in a mirror. Because that is what they’re doing. I’ve never used the words, I didn’t use words like hatred. And I certainly don’t tell lies.They tell lies. They say, for instance, that I’m an anti-Semite. Which is a bare-faced, out-and-out, lie. And anybody who knows what anti-Semite means, and is a reasonable person, of any faith, whatever their faith or color or nationality, will absolutely agree that you can accuse me of being many things. Outspoken, you could accuse me of being. Political, you can accuse me of being. You cannot accuse me of being anti-Semitic.
They conflate the idea of criticism of the policies of the current Israeli government, and previous Israeli governments, with anti-Semitism. Which it isn’t. They’re just wrong. It’s a misunderstanding. It’s semantics. It’s a misunderstanding of the meanings of the words, anti and Semite.So it’s something that, hopefully, we could have cleared up years and years ago. But we can’t. And the reason that we can’t clear it up is because they have no reason or defense of the policies of the Israeli government, and its occupation of its beleaguered, neighboring, people. In consequence, they try to deflect the conversation, always, away from the realities by calling people, like me, names like anti-Semite. It’s simply to deflect the spotlight away from the reality of what the Israeli government is doing to the Palestinian people.
We in BDS, and other movements, and also I have to say many Jewish organizations. Some specifically I would mention, in the United States, Jewish Voice for Peace, and in Canada I was hosted by an organization called Independent Jewish Voices, who invited me when I was in Vancouver, on one of my nights off, to do a moderated talk and a Q&A session in a church. I think it was called St. Andrew’s Church. And we had 1200 people came, and we had a grown-up, measured, conversation about this whole subject. Which I’m happy to say ended with quite a long applause at the end, because I think they were glad to hear my views, the people who were there. And it’s the way that grown up people who care about actual issues speak to each other. And it’s not chanting slogans and calling people names.
D. Lascaris: It’s very interesting, Roger, the way, I think you’ve laid it out, the real dichotomy here. The dichotomy that we’re being told about but the advocates for the state of Israel is, you’re either for or against the Jewish people.But you point out that Barbara Kay’s attack on you was really a right wing attack and that progressive groups including Jewish groups like Independent Jewish Voices are very supportive of your work, and in fact they issued a statement to that effect before your event at the end of October. We also have in this country, I’m not sure whether you’re aware of it, but Libby Davies who was the former deputy leader of the Social Democratic NDP, praised your work in a piece in Rabble.
So ultimately, the real divide is one of progressivism versus right wing nationalism. Remarkably, Barbara Kay herself, in a moment of uncharacteristic candor about this issue, pretty much admitted as much in a recent op-ed in The National Post, in which she characterized the people who are defending advocates like yourself and the work that you’re doing as progressives. And that’s ultimately what this is about. It’s about progressive values.I want to talk about how we’re going to achieve those values. Conclude by talking about how we’re going to achieve those values, or realize them in the context of the Palestinian struggle, going forward. How would you evaluate the performance of the BDS movement thus far? It’s in it’s 13th year. And how do you feel the future looks for the movement, and where the real promise for it lies? What are the strategies that it needs to employ in order to achieve it’s ultimate objectives, going forward?
Roger Waters: That’s very interesting. I think the rise of the BDS movement has been absolutely spectacular. It was started in 2005, as you know, by a huge coalition of disparate groups within Palestinian civil society and from those roots in … And they wrote a letter inviting people, concerned human beings in the rest of the world, to join a non-violent struggle involving boycott, divestment, and sanctions, to bring pressure on both the Israeli government and upon the Israeli government’s main benefactor, the person who pays, mainly, for their army.
And so on and so forth. Which is the United States of America. To bring pressure on these two governments to adhere to the rule of international law and to the basic tenets of human rights jurisprudence as laid out in the 1948-49, whichever year it was, Declaration of Universal Human Rights in Paris by the then fledgling United Nations.The way this is going to go, I suspect now, now that the two state solution has been destroyed by the duplicity of successive Israeli governments, it’s quite clear from what has happened that they never had any intention of making peace with the Palestinian indigenous population.
The land that they took over when the created the state of Israel, or the land that they invaded all around Jerusalem, but all over the West Bank as well, when they invaded neighboring land in 1967 during the Six Day War.Which is another popular misconception, but which goes a long way to point at the success of the Israeli propaganda machine that has put out or explained, as they call it, that they’ve managed to persuade many people that Israel was attacked in 1967.
It was extraordinary how many people think that, and that they defended themselves. As we know, that’s not true at all. It was a sneak, by the European this morning, surprise unilateral attack on Egypt and Suez.Anyway, I’m meandering a bit. What’s gonna happen? What’s gonna happen is we are going to continue to ask this question: do we, the people of the world, believe in the idea that human beings have rights, and that those rights necessarily need to be protected by a rule of law that is accepted, all over the world, by global civil society.My feeling about that is, yes.A. I, me, the individual Roger Waters, I do believe that individual human beings should have rights.
They should have the right to life, liberty, even in extreme cases, they’re very extreme now, but it should become less and less extreme, the pursuit of happiness. And also property rights, and a few other basic rights. They have a right not to be hungry. And they have a right to food and shelter. Basic, basic rights. But the main right is the right to liberty.So, people should have recourse to the law, of some kind. Nobody should be able to arrest you, in your bed, at night, and incarcerate you, without you being able to make an appeal to due process and have a hearing, in a courtroom, in front of qualified people and if necessary in front of a jury of your peers. This was one of the rights that was fought for in 1215 on the banks of the River Thames at Runnymede, when they finally got their dictator-tyrant, King John, to sign an agreement with the bards.
That’s where Habeas Corpus came from. It’s article 29. It wasn’t ratified for nearly a hundred years. It was ratified in 1297 or something. But that is the law that says, bring me the body. You cannot lock somebody up and say, we’re sorry. Well, the Israelis do that routinely. Thousands and thousands of Palestinians are locked away with no recourse to any law.
They call it administrative detention.So that’s one of the rights. All I’m saying is that the way this is going to go is that more and more of us are going to say, “You have to come out of the woodwork.” And in a way, I’m happy that the Israelis, or many members of the Israeli Knesset, are now coming out of the woodwork. People like Ayelet what’s-her-face, who’s the minister of justice. And others in the secular party. They’re now coming out of the woodwork and saying, “We don’t give a shit about law. We’re not interested in it.”
They’re beginning to go biblical now, and say, “This is our country. God gave it to us. Go and read the bible. That’s the end of it.”Well, that is not good enough. Any religious extremist or fanatic can say that. And it is no way for we, the human race, to organize relations between us and others on this planet. If that is the way to do it, well then all right, take your pick. You can be a muslim extremist, or a Jewish extremist, or a Christian extremist, or a Buddhist extremist. You can find the extreme end of almost any religion.
Or almost any nationality. And say, “We are the exception to the general rule. We are more special that you are.”Now I’m going to start waxing literary, because I’ll start talking Orwell here. I’m going back to Animal Farm, and quoting, you know, the pigs in Animal Farm accepted the notion that all animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others. Well, if you want to have that conversation, I would prefer that you found somebody, or people, more eloquent than I am to sit down in a room and have it.
And I could name a few of them.There are wise men out there, who can sit round a table and who can talk about these general philosophical concepts and say, “Should these general philosophical concepts about human rights and about whether and what we got with the divine right of kings, if we did in the French revolution or the American revolution, or whatever. And you know, the latter was obviously in the 18th century. Was this a move in the right direction, and if it was, why? And blah, blah, blah, blah.” And as the power devolves, and suddenly it’s not just God who has power, or kings, or tyrants, or whatever. It is like, well actually, no, lesser mortals actually have rights. Well, then that’s something that we can discuss, and that’s the direction that I would like to think this small, fragile, delicate, planet might move in, in the future.
Rather than our current situation, which is to encourage things like the Israeli occupation of Palestinian homes, bedrooms, kitchens, gardens, villages. Hayarkon Stadium in Tel Aviv, where Radiohead went and played so ingloriously in July last year, is built on a village that was a Palestinian village that was razed to the ground after 1948. And they built a rock and roll stadium or a football stadium or whatever it is, on top of it. I will always come back, having meandered around Hayarkon football stadium or wherever, I will always come back to that innocent child shot in the head walking to school. And my rage will rise up in my gorge, and I will suppress it and go, “I must keep on with the work that I do.
Small as it is, insignificant as I may be in a cog, the people that I have admired all my life have been the people that I have seen, sometimes against all odds, standing up for the weak.”Standing up for the powerless. Standing up for the idea that though we may not be rich and powerful and armed to the teeth, we nevertheless are human beings and we deserve the empathy and love of our brothers and sisters all over the world. We’re brothers and sisters. We differ from one another, as brothers and sisters do. We all have families. We all have small, nuclear, families. We can look at our actual brothers and sisters and cousins and uncles and aunts and things, and see the differences, and understand that we’re not all the same. And we’re not all perfect. In fact, none of us is perfect.
That’s the whole point. That’s the whole point. We need one another’s help. We need to cooperate. And at the moment, we’re not. At the moment, we have allowed greed really, to take over all our lives and we are allowing a culture of greed to destroy the planet that we should be protecting to hand on to our children and their children and their children. The successive generations. We should be applying ourselves to that, not to, how can I get this? How can I steal my neighbor’s land?
D. Lascaris: Yes and unfortunately, to a large degree, what’s happening to the Palestinian people is a microcosm of the destruction of the planet writ large. And on that somber note, with the hope that that message will be heard. And I really want to thank you Roger, for joining us today. And it was a pleasure speaking to you, as always.
Roger Waters: All right, Dmitri. Thanks, my friend.D.
Lascaris: Thank you. And this has been Dmitri Lascaris for The Real News.
4 dec 2017
Hundreds of elected officials in the Spanish State endorse BDS for Palestinian rights, setting a new BDS precedent in Europe. They include mayors, city councillors, members of congress, presidents of regional parliaments and members of the European Parliament.
(Madrid City Council)This week, on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, more than 350 elected officials across the Spanish state published an open-letter in support of Palestinian human rights. They denounced Israel’s institutionalized racism and discrimination as “apartheid” and expressed support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as the only viable instrument for achieving a just and lasting peace for the Palestinian people.
These public officials include mayors, city councillors, members of congress, presidents of regional parliaments and members of the European Parliament.
The full list of signatories is available here.
To date, the Spanish parliament has affirmed that the right to advocate for Palestinian rights through BDS is protected under freedom of speech and association. The Barcelona City Council voted to end complicity in Israel’s violations of international law, and more than 80 public institutions across the Spanish state declared themselves “Apartheid Free Zones,” committed to upholding human rights and refusing complicity in Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people.
BDS activists in the Spanish state consider this large show of support from public officials as a boost to their solidarity campaign for Palestinian human rights.
Ana Sanchez from the Palestinian BNC said, “The Palestinian BDS National Committee warmly welcomes the principled solidarity and meaningful respect for human rights expressed by over 350 public officials in the Spanish state. We salute them for acting to end the complicity of their government and institutions in decades of Israeli crimes, including the ongoing theft of Palestinian land and the dispossession of the Palestinian people. As they’ve made clear, ending complicity in grave violations of human rights is both a moral and legal obligation that others should heed.”
English translation of the original public letter by 350+ public officials in the Spanish state:
For A Free Palestine
By Xavier Domènech, Violeta Barba, Jose María González “Kichi,” Rita Maestre, Xulio Ferreiro, and more than 350 public officials in the Spanish state*
On the seventieth anniversary of United Nations Resolution 181, also known as the Plan of Partition of Palestine, we, the undersigned elected officials, wrote this letter for dignity, justice and equality.
Since that November 29 until today, the Security Council of the United Nations, its General Assembly and the Human Rights Council have issued hundreds of resolutions urging respect for human rights and a search for a solution to bring a just and lasting peace for Palestine. These resolutions span from the 1948 reaffirmation of the Right of Return [of Palestinian refugees] in Resolution 194 to the Security Council’s last December 2016 condemnation of [illegal Israeli] settlements in Resolution 2234.[PDF]
All of them remain unfulfilled. All breaches continue with impunity.
More than seven decades have passed since the beginning of what is known as the Palestinian Nakba. A colonial process of ethnic cleansing and apartheid for which, to date, not a single person has been held accountable under international law. The more than seven million Palestinian refugees who cannot return to their homes bear witness to this. So do the one and a half million Palestinians who reside as second or third class citizens in Israel, under a regime of institutionalized violence buttressed by more than 70 laws that discriminate directly against them.
The Palestinian people in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are still waiting for justice, subjected to a 50-year brutal military occupation during which the only visible advance is of illegal settlements devouring more and more parts of their lands and fields.
Especially shameful is the situation faced by more than 2 million people living in the Gaza Strip, many of them refugees. The United Nations affirms that in 2020 Gaza will be an uninhabitable territory due to the inhuman conditions in which its population survives. The cause?
International human rights organizations and the UN itself are clear on this: the illegal blockade that Israel has subjected Palestinians in Gaza to for more than 10 years. The people of Gaza survive each day with less drinkable water, with less hours of electricity, with less medicines and less resources, but with a dignity and a resilience that is inexhaustible. Life in Gaza is a daily struggle for survival.
Condemning the occupation is not enough. Condemning attacks against the civilian population is not enough. As with the institutionalized regime of racial discrimination in apartheid South Africa, it is necessary to end the complicity of the European governments, the United States and the Western powers in maintaining a system of injustice that has already lasted for too many decades. Renowned jurists and scholars such as John Dugard, Virginia Tilley and José Antonio Martín Pallín, magistrate emeritus of the Supreme Court, have pointed out on numerous occasions that the situation in Palestine constitutes an apartheid regime. Let us act accordingly.
We must stop arming Israel, stop recognizing and normalizing relations with a state that conducts itself in a profoundly abnormal way. We have to assume our responsibilities as public institutions and refuse to feed injustice. Refusing to give material support for war crimes or crimes against humanity is not only a moral obligation, it is not an act of charity or solidarity, it is a legal obligation. Richard Falk, a former UN special rapporteur, recently stated that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign led by Palestinian civil society “is not only an essential instrument in changing these power relations, it’s the only viable instrument for doing so at this time.”
Let’s make the balance not tip to the side of power, but of justice. Let us assume our obligation as public officials to promote and guarantee respect for human rights, here, in our towns and cities, and in Palestine.
*Xavier Domènech is a congressman from Catalonia, Violeta Barba is the president of parliament in Aragón, Jose María González “Kichi” is the mayor of Cádiz, Rita Maestre is a council member in the Madrid City Council, Xulio Ferreiro is the mayor of Coruña.
The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) is the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society. It leads and supports the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.
(Madrid City Council)This week, on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, more than 350 elected officials across the Spanish state published an open-letter in support of Palestinian human rights. They denounced Israel’s institutionalized racism and discrimination as “apartheid” and expressed support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as the only viable instrument for achieving a just and lasting peace for the Palestinian people.
These public officials include mayors, city councillors, members of congress, presidents of regional parliaments and members of the European Parliament.
The full list of signatories is available here.
To date, the Spanish parliament has affirmed that the right to advocate for Palestinian rights through BDS is protected under freedom of speech and association. The Barcelona City Council voted to end complicity in Israel’s violations of international law, and more than 80 public institutions across the Spanish state declared themselves “Apartheid Free Zones,” committed to upholding human rights and refusing complicity in Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people.
BDS activists in the Spanish state consider this large show of support from public officials as a boost to their solidarity campaign for Palestinian human rights.
Ana Sanchez from the Palestinian BNC said, “The Palestinian BDS National Committee warmly welcomes the principled solidarity and meaningful respect for human rights expressed by over 350 public officials in the Spanish state. We salute them for acting to end the complicity of their government and institutions in decades of Israeli crimes, including the ongoing theft of Palestinian land and the dispossession of the Palestinian people. As they’ve made clear, ending complicity in grave violations of human rights is both a moral and legal obligation that others should heed.”
English translation of the original public letter by 350+ public officials in the Spanish state:
For A Free Palestine
By Xavier Domènech, Violeta Barba, Jose María González “Kichi,” Rita Maestre, Xulio Ferreiro, and more than 350 public officials in the Spanish state*
On the seventieth anniversary of United Nations Resolution 181, also known as the Plan of Partition of Palestine, we, the undersigned elected officials, wrote this letter for dignity, justice and equality.
Since that November 29 until today, the Security Council of the United Nations, its General Assembly and the Human Rights Council have issued hundreds of resolutions urging respect for human rights and a search for a solution to bring a just and lasting peace for Palestine. These resolutions span from the 1948 reaffirmation of the Right of Return [of Palestinian refugees] in Resolution 194 to the Security Council’s last December 2016 condemnation of [illegal Israeli] settlements in Resolution 2234.[PDF]
All of them remain unfulfilled. All breaches continue with impunity.
More than seven decades have passed since the beginning of what is known as the Palestinian Nakba. A colonial process of ethnic cleansing and apartheid for which, to date, not a single person has been held accountable under international law. The more than seven million Palestinian refugees who cannot return to their homes bear witness to this. So do the one and a half million Palestinians who reside as second or third class citizens in Israel, under a regime of institutionalized violence buttressed by more than 70 laws that discriminate directly against them.
The Palestinian people in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are still waiting for justice, subjected to a 50-year brutal military occupation during which the only visible advance is of illegal settlements devouring more and more parts of their lands and fields.
Especially shameful is the situation faced by more than 2 million people living in the Gaza Strip, many of them refugees. The United Nations affirms that in 2020 Gaza will be an uninhabitable territory due to the inhuman conditions in which its population survives. The cause?
International human rights organizations and the UN itself are clear on this: the illegal blockade that Israel has subjected Palestinians in Gaza to for more than 10 years. The people of Gaza survive each day with less drinkable water, with less hours of electricity, with less medicines and less resources, but with a dignity and a resilience that is inexhaustible. Life in Gaza is a daily struggle for survival.
Condemning the occupation is not enough. Condemning attacks against the civilian population is not enough. As with the institutionalized regime of racial discrimination in apartheid South Africa, it is necessary to end the complicity of the European governments, the United States and the Western powers in maintaining a system of injustice that has already lasted for too many decades. Renowned jurists and scholars such as John Dugard, Virginia Tilley and José Antonio Martín Pallín, magistrate emeritus of the Supreme Court, have pointed out on numerous occasions that the situation in Palestine constitutes an apartheid regime. Let us act accordingly.
We must stop arming Israel, stop recognizing and normalizing relations with a state that conducts itself in a profoundly abnormal way. We have to assume our responsibilities as public institutions and refuse to feed injustice. Refusing to give material support for war crimes or crimes against humanity is not only a moral obligation, it is not an act of charity or solidarity, it is a legal obligation. Richard Falk, a former UN special rapporteur, recently stated that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign led by Palestinian civil society “is not only an essential instrument in changing these power relations, it’s the only viable instrument for doing so at this time.”
Let’s make the balance not tip to the side of power, but of justice. Let us assume our obligation as public officials to promote and guarantee respect for human rights, here, in our towns and cities, and in Palestine.
*Xavier Domènech is a congressman from Catalonia, Violeta Barba is the president of parliament in Aragón, Jose María González “Kichi” is the mayor of Cádiz, Rita Maestre is a council member in the Madrid City Council, Xulio Ferreiro is the mayor of Coruña.
The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) is the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society. It leads and supports the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.
2 dec 2017
The Dutch chapter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement recently asked me to write an essay for Art, Solidarity and Palestine, a day of conferences and debate about the pros and cons of an Israeli boycott due to be held on 29 November, the United Nations International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
Although I was flattered to be asked, I must admit I had to think twice before doing so. Some friends actually advised me not to. To support or call for an Israeli boycott is no small matter these days. Before you know it, you are labeled an anti-Semite. Or worse.
A criminal offence
In France and some parts of the US it is considered a criminal offence. In March, a group of 43 US senators introduced the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, which would make it a nationwide felony with a maximum penalty of $1m and 20 years in prison. As a comparison, the maximum penalty for rape in the Netherlands is 12 years.
Seeing the sensitivities at play, I figured it would do no harm to check if writing anything could get me in trouble. When it comes to the Netherlands, former foreign minister Bert Koenders in May 2016 stated that the Dutch government does not support an Israeli boycott, yet calling for one is protected by freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.
And, although the newly appointed government took a turn to the right, that position is unlikely to change.
In implementing its right to self-determination, should Israel not be held to the same basic principles of freedom and equality as any other self-professed democracy?
One should know that freedom of speech is holy in the Netherlands. It is the main platform for the country's right-wing politicians to throw their insults at (Muslim) immigrants. To now make an exception for the call to an Israeli boycott would not only be inconsistent, it would arguably not hold up in court.
Having said that, the Netherlands is also one of 31 states that endorsed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) non-binding working definition of anti-Semitism.
At first sight, there seems nothing wrong with that. "Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews," the IHRA states.
"Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities."
The IHRA goes on to offer a series of examples, including blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus, accusing them of being behind the ills of the world, or conspiring to take over, as well as any kind of Holocaust denial. Impossible to disagree with any of that, I would say.
Problematic definition of anti-Semitism
However, the IHRA's working definition becomes problematic when it states that "contemporary examples of anti-Semitism in public life" include "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg, by claiming that the state of Israel is a racist endeavour".
This I do not understand. It is an undeniable fact that Israel's Arab citizens, who constitute one-fifth of the population, do not enjoy the same rights as their Jewish counterparts. If someone chooses to qualify this "Israeli inequality" as discriminatory, racist or even apartheid, how does that fundamentally deny the "Jewish people" the right to self-determination?
In implementing its right to self-determination, should Israel not be held to the same basic principles of freedom and equality as any other self-professed democracy?
It speaks for itself that the picture does not get any rosier were we to include the Palestinians living under military occupation in the West Bank, which today is home to some 500,000 Israeli settlers.
The US State Department goes much further than the IHRA. Influenced by such pro-Israel organisations as the Anti-Defamation League, its definition of anti-Semitism includes "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and denying Israel the right to exist".
This is a highly problematic formulation, as it somehow equates the notion of the Jewish people's right to self-determination with Israel's right to exist. As if one could not exist without the other.
Yet, one may acknowledge, say, the Kurds' or Catalans' right to self-determination, without supporting their call for a Kurdish or Catalan state.
Secondly, one may acknowledge Israel's right to exist, yet not in its current shape and form. Personally, I oppose the inequality within Israel, the military occupation and settlement of the West Bank, and the de facto occupation of the Gaza Strip.
These factors have reduced the much-discussed two-state solution to a meaningless slogan and are an obstacle to Palestinians implementing their right to self-determination.
BDS goals
What's more, I believe that the current right-wing Israeli government is unwilling to make any concessions. On the contrary, its aim is to fully incorporate what it refers to as "Judea and Samaria". Add to that the support Israel enjoys in Washington and the American power of veto in the UN Security Council, and I do not see any changes for the better coming from that direction.
Hence, a call for a cultural and/or economic boycott is not unreasonable and certainly not anti-Semitic. After all, the stated goals of the BDS are clearly political, namely an end to the Israeli and settler colonisation of Palestinian lands and the Golan Heights, full equality of Palestinian citizens within Israel, and the right of return of Palestinian refugees.
Perhaps a comparison with other boycotts is helpful. When France did not support the 2003 invasion of Iraq, there was an open call in the US not to buy French products. Not because of some deep inner hatred towards the French, but because of their politics.
Replace France with Israel. Would the call not to buy Israeli products then be considered anti-Semitic?
The boycott of South Africa started in England in 1959 with a call upon British consumers “to withdraw support from apartheid by not buying South African goods”. No one ever denied the South Africans as a people the right to self-determination nor South Africa as a country the right to exist.
Coincidentally, “apartheid” is a Dutch word. Not a legacy to be proud of and arguably one reason that the anti-apartheid movement was very active in the Netherlands. May it be a reminder for people on all sides of the Israeli boycott divide that the South African system of racial segregation was eventually abolished in 1991, while the nation continues to exist.
- Peter Speetjens is a Dutch journalist who lived in Lebanon for 20 years. He was a correspondent for Trouw and De Standaard. His article was published in the Middle East Eye website.
Although I was flattered to be asked, I must admit I had to think twice before doing so. Some friends actually advised me not to. To support or call for an Israeli boycott is no small matter these days. Before you know it, you are labeled an anti-Semite. Or worse.
A criminal offence
In France and some parts of the US it is considered a criminal offence. In March, a group of 43 US senators introduced the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, which would make it a nationwide felony with a maximum penalty of $1m and 20 years in prison. As a comparison, the maximum penalty for rape in the Netherlands is 12 years.
Seeing the sensitivities at play, I figured it would do no harm to check if writing anything could get me in trouble. When it comes to the Netherlands, former foreign minister Bert Koenders in May 2016 stated that the Dutch government does not support an Israeli boycott, yet calling for one is protected by freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.
And, although the newly appointed government took a turn to the right, that position is unlikely to change.
In implementing its right to self-determination, should Israel not be held to the same basic principles of freedom and equality as any other self-professed democracy?
One should know that freedom of speech is holy in the Netherlands. It is the main platform for the country's right-wing politicians to throw their insults at (Muslim) immigrants. To now make an exception for the call to an Israeli boycott would not only be inconsistent, it would arguably not hold up in court.
Having said that, the Netherlands is also one of 31 states that endorsed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) non-binding working definition of anti-Semitism.
At first sight, there seems nothing wrong with that. "Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews," the IHRA states.
"Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities."
The IHRA goes on to offer a series of examples, including blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus, accusing them of being behind the ills of the world, or conspiring to take over, as well as any kind of Holocaust denial. Impossible to disagree with any of that, I would say.
Problematic definition of anti-Semitism
However, the IHRA's working definition becomes problematic when it states that "contemporary examples of anti-Semitism in public life" include "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg, by claiming that the state of Israel is a racist endeavour".
This I do not understand. It is an undeniable fact that Israel's Arab citizens, who constitute one-fifth of the population, do not enjoy the same rights as their Jewish counterparts. If someone chooses to qualify this "Israeli inequality" as discriminatory, racist or even apartheid, how does that fundamentally deny the "Jewish people" the right to self-determination?
In implementing its right to self-determination, should Israel not be held to the same basic principles of freedom and equality as any other self-professed democracy?
It speaks for itself that the picture does not get any rosier were we to include the Palestinians living under military occupation in the West Bank, which today is home to some 500,000 Israeli settlers.
The US State Department goes much further than the IHRA. Influenced by such pro-Israel organisations as the Anti-Defamation League, its definition of anti-Semitism includes "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and denying Israel the right to exist".
This is a highly problematic formulation, as it somehow equates the notion of the Jewish people's right to self-determination with Israel's right to exist. As if one could not exist without the other.
Yet, one may acknowledge, say, the Kurds' or Catalans' right to self-determination, without supporting their call for a Kurdish or Catalan state.
Secondly, one may acknowledge Israel's right to exist, yet not in its current shape and form. Personally, I oppose the inequality within Israel, the military occupation and settlement of the West Bank, and the de facto occupation of the Gaza Strip.
These factors have reduced the much-discussed two-state solution to a meaningless slogan and are an obstacle to Palestinians implementing their right to self-determination.
BDS goals
What's more, I believe that the current right-wing Israeli government is unwilling to make any concessions. On the contrary, its aim is to fully incorporate what it refers to as "Judea and Samaria". Add to that the support Israel enjoys in Washington and the American power of veto in the UN Security Council, and I do not see any changes for the better coming from that direction.
Hence, a call for a cultural and/or economic boycott is not unreasonable and certainly not anti-Semitic. After all, the stated goals of the BDS are clearly political, namely an end to the Israeli and settler colonisation of Palestinian lands and the Golan Heights, full equality of Palestinian citizens within Israel, and the right of return of Palestinian refugees.
Perhaps a comparison with other boycotts is helpful. When France did not support the 2003 invasion of Iraq, there was an open call in the US not to buy French products. Not because of some deep inner hatred towards the French, but because of their politics.
Replace France with Israel. Would the call not to buy Israeli products then be considered anti-Semitic?
The boycott of South Africa started in England in 1959 with a call upon British consumers “to withdraw support from apartheid by not buying South African goods”. No one ever denied the South Africans as a people the right to self-determination nor South Africa as a country the right to exist.
Coincidentally, “apartheid” is a Dutch word. Not a legacy to be proud of and arguably one reason that the anti-apartheid movement was very active in the Netherlands. May it be a reminder for people on all sides of the Israeli boycott divide that the South African system of racial segregation was eventually abolished in 1991, while the nation continues to exist.
- Peter Speetjens is a Dutch journalist who lived in Lebanon for 20 years. He was a correspondent for Trouw and De Standaard. His article was published in the Middle East Eye website.
