Check out this great article written by Rifat Kassis, the International President of Defence for Children International (DCI) and the Coordinator and Spokesperson of Kairos Palestine – A Moment of Truth. It has some really great thinking of why we need a BDS Movement, and answers some of the criticisms the BDS Movement has faced.
Some key arguments:
The injustices perpetrated by the State of Israel affect our economy, our education, our health and our mobility; they inhibit our most quotidian and our most far-reaching freedoms; they stigmatize our language and confine our travel; they stifle what we do and buy and make. The occupation is not a random onslaught of power, and it isn’t conducted on some remote soil: it is a complete matrix of control, a strategic, consistent, deliberate, historically constructed, externally condoned and internally sustained attempt to separate Palestinian and Israel rights and lives in the very place where we make and have always made our home. Boycotting Israel signifies boycotting this entire range of injustice.
The boycott is also the manifestation of our right as Palestinians to decide the terms of our own struggle and our own freedom. This certainly doesn’t mean that we don’t value the input of our supporters, both from within Israel and from elsewhere. But we as Palestinians ultimately have the right to choose our own methods of resistance. Resistance itself is a right guaranteed by international law, as expressed by Article 1(4) of Protocol 1 (additional to the Geneva Conventions), for “conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination.” Boycott — which is a powerful yet totally nonviolent tactic — is part of our choice. Indeed, as is stated in “A Moment of Truth,” boycott and disinvestment are “not revenge but rather a serious action to reach a just and definitive peace that will put an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian and other Arab territories and will guarantee security and peace for all.”
Another commentary on an additional source of criticism: some churches worldwide have likewise expressed their skepticism about our call for boycott, and have pushed us to adopt a more “positive” attitude. To them, we wish to say that there is nothing “positive” about the way the occupation is constricting us. Nor is there anything “positive” about the way the Israeli state responds to our dissent (by repressing it), to United Nations resolutions about refugee rights or illegal settlements or humanitarian crises (by ignoring them), or to the massive and vocal international support for the UN-commissioned Goldstone report (by rejecting it). The lofty goal of “balanced dialogue” is impossible in a place where there is no balance, a place that continues to silence our voices. To consult another model, advocating for “positive engagement” with the South African apartheid regime in order to “convince” it to be more humane in dealing with the oppressed proved to be condescending and ineffective.
The blockade of Gaza is enacted by the State of Israel; the State is the occupation. They are not separate, and they cannot be separated. We must boycott both.