[Peace-discussion] New Tilley Boycott Article

[michelle]

<http://vfpdissident.blogspot.com/2006/08/new-tilley-boycott-article.html>
Monday, August 07, 2006
New Tilley Boycott Article

Virginia Tilley was mentioned in this blog in June; she has a new 
article on CounterPunch: "The Case for Boycotting Israel: Boycott Now!" 
Here are some excerpts:

    ... A coordinated movement of divestment, sanctions, and boycotts 
against Israel must convene to contain not only Israel's aggressive acts 
and crimes against humanitarian law but also, as in South Africa, its 
founding racist logics that inspired and still drive the entire 
Palestinian problem.

    That second goal of the boycott campaign is indeed the primary one. 
Calls for a boycott have long cited specific crimes ... But the boycott 
cannot target these practices alone. It must target their ideological 
source.

    The true offence to the international community is the racist 
motivation for these practices, which violates fundamental values and 
norms of the post-World War II order. That racial ideology isn't subtle 
or obscure. Mr. Olmert himself has repeatedly thumped the public podium 
about the "demographic threat" facing Israel: the "threat" that too many 
non-Jews will - the horror - someday become citizens of Israel. It is 
the "demographic threat" that, in Israeli doctrine, justifies sealing 
off the West Bank and Gaza Strip as open-air prisons for millions of 
people whose only real crime is that they are not Jewish.
    ...
    The raw logic of Israel's distorted self-image and racist doctrines 
is expressed beyond confusion by the now-stark reality: the moonscape 
rubble of once-lovely Lebanese villages; a million desperate people 
trying to survive Israeli aerial attacks as they carry children and 
wheel disabled grandparents down cratered roads; the limp bodies of 
children pulled from the dusty basements of crushed buildings. This is 
the reality of Israel's national doctrine, the direct outcome of its 
racist worldview. It is endangering everyone, and it must stop.
    ...
    ... don't be confused by liberal Zionist alternatives that argue 
against a boycott in favor of "dialogue". If we can draw any conclusion 
from the last half-century, it is that, without the boycott, dialogue 
will go nowhere. And don't be confused by liberal-Zionist arguments that 
Israel will allow Palestinians a state if they only do this or that. 
Israel is already the only sovereign power in Palestine: what fragments 
are left to Palestinians cannot make a state. The question now is not 
whether there is one state, but what kind of state it comprises. The 
present version is apartheid, and it must change. However difficult to 
achieve, and however frightening to Jewish Israelis, the only just and 
stable solution is full democracy.
    ...
    Boycott the Hegemon

    This is the moment to turn international pressure on the complicit 
US, too. It's impossible, today, to exert an effective boycott on the 
United States, as its products are far too ubiquitous in our lives. But 
it's quick and easy to launch a boycott of emblematic US products, 
upsetting its major corporations. It's especially easy to boycott the 
great global consumables, like Coca-Cola, MacDonald's, Burger King, and 
KFC, whose leverage has brought anti-democratic pressures on governments 
the world over. (Through ugly monopoly practices, Coke is a nasty player 
in developing countries anyway: see, for example, 
http://www.killercoke.org.)