WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, FAI - Umanita Nova: With Palestine in the heart (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 About boycotting the state of Israel and solidarity practices ---- Since

October 7th, the Palestinian question has established itself as the main
focus of interest for social and political opposition movements, leading
to levels of mobilization that had not been seen for decades, in Italy
and around the world. It is certainly not a new issue: it is a horrible
trail of blood, which has continued from the Second World War to the
present day, and which has its roots even further back, in the decades
between the two world wars, when British imperialism favored the
transformation of the harmless Jewish migration to Palestine into the
much more aggressive Zionist migration, as our Camillo Berneri had
already understood well in 1929. But if Palestinian blood flowing in
rivers is certainly not new, the events of the last eleven months have
literally pulverized the memory of all the Zionist cruelties of almost
an entire century. I am not going to list the numbers of deaths,
destruction, and horrors caused by the limitless violence of a powerful
army, supported by US imperialism. There are plenty of figures, images,
testimonies, and documentation for those who have eyes and hearts to
see. It is not trivial to observe, however, that in the face of the
enormous leap in quality in the genocidal action of the Israeli
government, the varied universe of movements has demonstrated a great
capacity for international mobilization, managing to interpret
widespread mass indignation, and to occupy considerable space in the
mass media and social media. Let us think of the attention that the US
Jews managed to gain by besieging the US parliament in defense of the
Palestinians. Let us think of the ocean-sized marches simultaneously in
the most diverse and distant latitudes. And let us also think of the
more than dignified level of mobilization that has been promoted here in
Italy too. The game, however, that the movements are now called to play
looks reasonably long and not easy. The current destruction of the Gaza
Strip is immeasurably more devastating than the previous massacres -
"Cast Lead" (2008) and "Protective Edge" (2014) - and has very different
times and perspectives. At the same time, the military operation
launched on August 28 in the West Bank represents a qualitative leap in
the colonial strategy of the Zionist state. From this point of view, the
killing of an activist of the International Solidarity Movement with a
US passport is just a further sign of how Biden's "reprimands" to Israel
are a mere game of parts. Every day there is talk of negotiations, the
imminent fall of Netanyahu is evoked, but the months pass and the
situation only gets worse, while the scene is increasingly occupied by
the regional game between genocidal Israel and fundamentalist and
feminicidal Iran. In this scenario, active solidarity with Palestine
will need to give continuity to its action, and it is in this
perspective that the different practices to be carried out must be
evaluated, with the full awareness that only with a combination of
several tools can a minimum of effectiveness be achieved. Here, I focus
on the tool of the boycott of Israeli goods. A tool already widely
activated on an international scale and which presents a certain
potential, especially if considered from the point of view of continuity
of action. We can consider the boycott a form of direct action
immediately accessible to some mass sectors, which, in conditioning
their purchases in order to counter a particularly cruel form of
domination, give themselves a mode of activation that should not be
underestimated. In this sense, being regularly present in front of
supermarkets to promote the boycott of goods means widening the scope of
counter-information and commitment, it means cultivating a real
relationship between the militant fabric of the movements and segments
of the subaltern classes. Moving on to the concrete effectiveness of the
boycott, it must be said that, if measuring the real results of this
type of practice is not at all simple, we also know that the exporting
sectors of Capital are somehow sensitive to campaigns that hit their
image if not their wallets. Specifically, it is not entirely irrelevant
that the high-tech sector, the heart of Israeli war capitalism, produces
a good 54% of exports. We know that the international Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (B*S) Campaign, born in 2005 by a self-defined
"Palestinian civil society", and largely inspired by the ideas and
indications of Omar Barghouti, a very popular Palestinian leader,
independent of both Hamas and the Palestinian National Authority, is
already widely active on the ground of the boycott of Israel.
The political culture of B*S can be roughly defined as
democratic-pacifist, and the central reference is to the boycott of
South Africa during the apartheid era. B*S emphasizes its total
incompatibility with any form of anti-Semitism, and is inspired by the
values of anti-racism, freedom, equality and human rights. Creating a
certain distance from the anarchist and libertarian political
sensibility is the continuous claim of International Law, headed by the
UN and the International Court of Justice. In truth, in concrete local
situations B*S appears much more varied from an ideological, political
and even operational point of view. This corresponds to the variety of
acronyms that have over time adhered to the founding appeal of 2005.
This last characteristic gives the B*S Campaign a certain inclusiveness,
but on the other hand makes it locally porous to political areas that
present conspicuous ambiguities towards a reactionary organization like
Hamas, and that often like to define the military action of October 7 as
a modern "Spartacus revolt". Moving from political questions to
practical indications, the B*S proposes "the historically successful
method of targeted boycott", that is, to "strategically focus on a
relatively small number of companies and products carefully selected to
obtain maximum impact". In short: to act against "companies that play a
clear and direct role in Israel's crimes and where there is a real
potential for victory". Typical is the focus on the supermarket chains
of Carrefour, a multinational that not only has partnerships with
Israeli companies "involved in serious violations against the
Palestinian people", but has also given gift packages to Israeli
soldiers operating in Gaza. The other two poles of B*S, namely
Divestment and Sanctions, appear more complicated. By divestment, B*S
means "pressure on governments, institutions, investment funds, city
councils, etc. to exclude from contracts" and withdraw investments from
"complicit companies", in particular "arms manufacturers and banks".
This is certainly a more interpretable form of action than the direct
boycott of goods by consumers. In fact, applying "pressure" can mean
very different things. However, it is a practice that seems to be able
to have some effectiveness. B*S claims to have achieved some important
results and in particular the one achieved with the French multinational
AXA, which seems to have divested from Israeli banks. Finally, a few
words on Sanctions. It is a practice that raises some doubts because it
naturally ties into the role of institutions such as the UN or the
International Court of Justice and to that "International Law" that has
repeatedly proven to be a farce. The official B*S documents very often
define Israel's occupation as "illegal military occupation". This cannot
but bring to mind the distinction between "legal" wars (i.e. legitimized
by the UN) and "illegal" wars (not legitimized by the UN). A distinction
that anarchists have fought against since the first war in Iraq (1991).
On the other hand, if asking a State to sanction another means accepting
the monopoly of violence that dominates the current state of affairs,
the demand not to send weapons to Israel and to dismantle military
collaboration has its validity, as long as these demands are accessory
to direct forms of blocking the transport of weapons, as has already
been practiced by some sectors of the working class.

In conclusion, I believe that the boycott of Israeli goods deserves to
be practiced and supported, within or outside the framework of B*S,
depending on local situations.

Claudio Strambi

https://umanitanova.org/con-la-palestina-nel-cuore/
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