The call for BDS – Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions – has finally reached Israeli public opinion. The decision of Norway to divest capitals from Israeli corporations involved in settlement buildings made the difference, and provided the first big success to that important campaign.
Moreover, the group of Israelis supporting BDS, under the label “Boycott from Within” is gaining some momentum, thanks, among other, to a public appeal by Naomi Klein to Israeli activists when she came to Tel Aviv to present the Hebrew version of her “Shock Doctrine”.The fact that there is an (even small) Israeli voice to support the international BDS campaign makes a lot of difference, and, among other, helps to disarm the infamous accusation of Anti-Semitism raised by the Israeli propaganda machine against everyone who dare to criticize the colonial policies of the Jewish State. Moreover, as I will argue towards the end of this article, the Israeli supporters of BDS are in fact expressing the true and long-term interests of the Israeli people. Reading recently two texts of Uri Avnery criticizing BDS convinced me that it was important to clarify how positive is that campaign and why should it be supported by as many Israelis as possible.
Michael Warschawski also reported in this August 2009 blog post on the AIC website about the movement:
In an op-ed piece published in the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Neve Gordon, professor of political science at Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheva, called for international support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. I have already explained in my blog that the point of this international campaign is to sanction Israel for its occupation policies, colonization and systematic violation of international law and United Nations’ resolutions regarding the conflict in Palestine. Dr. Gordon is part of an activist Israeli group that has decided to support the BDS campaign from within Israeli society. This group, “Boycott from Within,” aims to support the claim that Israel must pay for its crimes, based on the understanding that only an unyielding position from the International community can put pressure on the leaders of the Jewish state to finally abide by international laws.
See also the website for the group BOYCOTT!, “Palestinians, Jews, citizens of Israel, join the Palestinian call for a BDS campaign against Israel”