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| From http://www.ashleyebates.com |
Although she does not really share our progressive Zionist perspective, Ashley Bates, the assistant editor of Tikkun, writes interestingly on the boycott issue and its settlements-only "Zionist BDS" version (mentioning Partners' position and a statement by Zehava Galon, the new head of the Meretz party): "The Makings of a Center-Left Alliance For Israeli Settlement Boycotts?" This links to our original statement of Feb. 15, 2011 to "Buy Israel - Don't Buy Settlements (They're not the Same)."
She staffed a Tikkun literature table near our own at the J St. conference and noted in her article that, "Partners for Progressive Israel (formerly Meretz USA) gave away hundreds of flyers calling for a targeted boycott of the settlements." Toward the end of her article, she wrote:
Zehava Galon, a member of the Knesset and the chairwoman of the progressive Meretz party, said in a plenary session at the J Street conference that she boycotts the settlements in her own purchases. She also expressed her hope that settlement boycott campaigns could play a role in getting Israelis themselves to consider the economic cost of the Occupation. “There is a welfare state—it’s in the settlements,” she said. “Putting the question of boycotting settlements on the table is important in order to talk about the price we are paying for having the settlements for more than forty years.”
's
I appreciate Ashley’s focus upon this important issue, and her mention of the Partners for Progressive Israel and of the new Meretz party leader, Zehava Galon, whom we support. ... [T]his settlements-only boycott idea is confusing to the BDS movement[:] Your paragraph on Mario Franssen indicates that he both supports a total boycott against Israel and a settlements-only boycott. ...I share MK Avishai Braverman’s concern that a settlements-only boycott may lead us down a slippery slope to total BDS, which I oppose; but perhaps Franssen’s shift in strategy indicates that it’ll go in the other direction? ... My opposition to total BDS is mostly because this movement only blames Israel for the ongoing conflict, when the Second Intifada and the years of attacks on Israeli civilians from the Gaza Strip, which Israel totally evacuated in 2005 (as well as other historic instances of Arab violence against Israel and Jews) should also be blamed..... But I support as a decision of individual conscience, as well as a teaching tool, the decision of my colleagues in Partners for Progressive Israel to endorse a boycott of “undemocratic Israel” (as Beinart calls the settlements beyond Israel’s pre-1967 border) as distinct from “democratic Israel” within that former boundary.
1 comment:
Good morning self-proclaimed "progressives!"
Those of you who think that there is a "democratic Israel" within the so-called 1967 border lines please reconsider: 93% of the land in this democracy are "Minhal" lands, inaccessible to non-jews; zero new Palestinian villages / towns were built since 1948; and the Palestinian narrative has been systematically erased from any history book taught in this democracy's schools.
On the bottom line, Meretz is a white-washed party of privileged rich jewish people, who like to call themselves progressive and couldn't care less about true equality. Every person who supports human rights should resist Zionism in both 1948 and 1967 borders, and boycott the entire state of Israel, Zehava Gal'on included.
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