The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israeli apartheid is an
example that raises the question of European responsibilities and complicityvis-à-vis the occupation and colonization of Palestine. This movement is impactedby French issues, it is urgent to strengthen it. ---- The Boycott, Divestment andSanctions (BDS) campaign is inspired by the campaign to boycott apartheid SouthAfrica, a segregationist state then supported by the West. This movementsucceeded in making it a pariah state and thus contributed to bringing down theregime. ---- Oppose our own imperialism ---- In Palestine this regime has a name:Zionism. Naming and defining it is a political issue, against anti-Semiticconspiracy fantasies on the one hand and against its supporters on the other,including on the left who see it as a movement of national affirmation like theothers.An idea first stemming from English Protestantism called " restorationism "[1]its genealogy developed within 19th century Europe steeped in nationalist andcolonial ideas .Long before Theodor Herzl and the Dreyfus affair, personalities theorized it,like Moses Hess in Rome and Jerusalem in 1862 who already said that a Jewishstate in Palestine would be a vanguard of civilization among the barbarians.Zionism is not a response to anti-Semitism, it is a movement of colonial andracist essence in its initial presuppositions, which still continues today in adie-hard supremacism.Zionism has always been a settler colonialism, today fueled by Western countries,where some settlers and soldiers come from: many French people do their aliyahand their military service in the Tsahal without being worried. Organizationssuch as the KKL (Jewish National Fund, responsible for stealing land andredistributing it exclusively to Jews) are targeted by the BDS campaign, inparticular because of the impunity they enjoy in France, exempt from taxes byshameful greenwashing (growing trees on... destroyed Palestinian villages).The KKL is a member of the Crif just like the Jewish Agency, a historicalstructure for immigration to Palestine, making the Crif only a colonial pharmacyin no way representative of the Jews of France. The United States is not Israel'sonly decisive support, the European Union is Israel's first trading partner withwhich it has signed free trade agreements since 2004.Association agreements, suspended in 2013, were reactivated on July 17, votedunanimously by the 27 in the context of the war in Ukraine. State over-armed inan essential geostrategic and energy region, Israel regularly threatens thepopulations of the region as in Lebanon which was jointly victim of the ZionistState and French imperialism on several occasions.Israel's impunity is therefore geostrategic, and the Palestinian people arepaying a heavy price for it... The reminder of these direct responsibilitiesmakes apartheid in Palestine not a question of solidarity among others but alsoof the fight against our own imperialism.Cut the umbilical cords of colonizationWell aware of this state of affairs and of the little to be expected fromneighboring Arab governments, Palestinian civil society decided to launch the BDScampaign in 2004. For almost twenty years it has demanded an end to thecolonization of the West Bank and Jerusalem, occupation and blockade of Gaza,demands equal rights for the 1948 Palestinians (Israeli Arabs) and the right ofreturn for refugees.It counts on international solidarity to tackle the economic and culturalumbilical cords of colonization with the West. In France, the BDS campaign hascarried out several actions in recent months, particularly in the context of thesports boycott: campaign against the Puma brand, the main equipment manufacturerand sponsor of the Israeli national football team ; disruption this year againof the Tour de France throughout the course as well as of the Champions Leaguematch between Paris Saint-Germain and Maccabi Haifa during which a banner ofsupport for Gaza was unfurled at the Parc des Princes.The BDS campaign offers a means of concrete internationalist engagement, pointingto capitalist collaborations, uncovering the colonial ramifications of certainpartnerships with Zionist apartheid. It responds politically to the racistargument of " importing the conflict " into France: if France imports anything,it is products from the colonies as well as techniques and materials of repression.Launched in 2004 by Palestinian civil society, the BDS campaign must be broad andbring together both revolutionary organizations and more moderate organizations.Others must be able to politically radicalize solidarity and articulateconvergences, but in parallel.ALISDARE HICKSONThis last point is not insignificant: pointing out these collaborations hitsFranco-French issues, in particular the question of racism, discrimination andpolice violence, and all the more so since solidarity with Palestine has bornethe brunt of ideological campaigns. hatred and repression of its activists duringthe 2010s.This may have led the BDS campaign to split between supporters of a line loyal tothe National Campaign Coordination Office (BNC) representing signatory members ofPalestinian civil society and groups and activists wishing to affirm a greaterradicality and a convergence with other struggles.The problem being that the BDS campaign, an international pacifist campaign, mustbe broad and bring together both revolutionary organizations and more moderateorganizations. It is not an organization but a campaign, a tool to striketogether targets determined by the Palestinians and has no other vocation.But the fact that groups and activists want to extend the domain of the strugglebeyond this demonstrates that the question of Palestine and its solidarity ispart of a French context that is not neutral. In the past, organizations likeGénération Palestine could be the framework for a more political discourse.Today the collective Palestine will win (which was the subject of an attempt todissolve by Darmanin), or the Samidoun network [2]decide to affirm their supportfor the Palestinian resistance, which has caused tensions with the BNC.The BDS campaign must remain a struggle at the service of the Palestinians, wherewe meet to act together on specific and targeted objectives in order to beeffective, by bringing people together widely. Others must be able to politicallyradicalize solidarity and articulate convergences, but in parallel. Differencesand frictions should not taint the dynamism of the campaign.The Palestinian question at the heart of the struggles in FranceSince this summer, the Gaza Strip has been the target of repeated attacks whileNetanyahu is back after the legislative elections of November 1 , but solidarityis winning victories: in the United States the American Jewish population isbeginning to turn away of Israel, we must be able to achieve the same objectivein France. Solidarity must not decline, it is a question of strengthening themobilization and the commitment of the signatory organizations within the campaign.Nicolas Pasadena (UCL Montreuil)IN ISRAEL, THE EXTREME RIGHT IN A POSITION OF FORCEThe snap November 1 legislative elections , the fifth in just under three years,were marked by the success of the Jewish supremacist cartel led by ItamarBen-Gvir of the Religious Zionism party and Bezalel Smotrich of the Jewish Powerparty, both residents in settlements, who, with 14 deputies out of 120 in theKnesset (a record for the far right) will allow Benyamin Netanyahu (Likud, 32deputies) to regain the post of Prime Minister he had lost in 2021.Negotiations within the right-extreme right coalition for the formation of thenew government are underway and the supremacist cartel is demanding theministries of Defense and Transport, at the heart of the policy of occupation andcolonization of Palestine, that the Likud is not willing to stop.Such a coalition is indeed high-risk for Netanyahu, vis-à-vis the American allyin the first place, but also the signatory states of the Abraham Accords (UnitedArab Emirates and Bahrain) which intend to open the way to a normalization of therelations of the Arab countries with Israel and the liquidation of the supportfor the Palestinian cause under the aegis of Washington.The Likud could in the medium term prefer a government of national unity with thecenter right of the outgoing Minister of Defense: Benny Gantz. The success ofopenly racist formations, historically favorable to the expulsion of Arabs fromIsrael, successors to the movement which called for the murder of Prime MinisterYitzhak Rabin, craftsman of the Oslo " peace " agreements in 1993, assassinatedin 1995 by a religious extremist, illustrates the fractures and contradictionswithin the Jewish population in Israel. After the results of the legislativeelections in the face of this radicalization on the right, the columnist ZviBarel wrote in the Israeli left-wing daily Ha'aretz: " it is no longer a questionof two States for two peoples but of a single State for two Jewish nations ".The fate of Palestine depends above all on the action of its own people , butsuch divisions within Israel itself also confirm the failure of Zionism as aproject of national cohesion.To validate[1] Christian religious current wanting to restore the ancient Jewish kingdom forthe day of the Last Judgment, a strategy still carried by the Americanevangelical right.[2] Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network.https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Palestine-Aujourd-hui-plus-que-jamais-renforcer-et-elargir-BDS_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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