After traveling to the occupied Palestinian territories, a host of
individuals have asserted that Israeli occupation is in fact worse than
South African apartheid. Among these people are highly esteemed
anti-apartheid advocate Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Jewish South
African Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils. In an effort to
pressure Israel to abort its destructive policies, both argue that the
international community should impose a boycott on Israel, analogous to
the one imposed on South Africa.
Many organizations and individuals have voiced opposition to an
academic and cultural boycott. Their contention is that the arts and
academic community in Israel will be denied the basic tenets of free
speech. Ironically, the proposed model asserts that people of
conscience, including conscious Israelis, are ostensibly encouraged to
embrace “free speech” and “dialogue” over the most basic rights of an
oppressed people. What remains missing from their argument is the fact
that the Palestinian people have been methodically occupied,
controlled, and embargoed by the Israeli government and many Israeli
institutions for decades—with no effective recourse taken by the United
Nations, European Union, or United States.
Just this week, the Associated Press reported that seven Palestinians
from occupied Gaza were denied exit visas to “pursue their Fulbright
scholarship studies” by the Israeli government. While their Fulbrights
were reinstated after the AP article circulated, and the US State
Department is now purportedly “trying” to get Israel to change its
position, the vast majority of these incidents go unnoticed. There are
countless other stories of hip hop artists, theater groups, and debke
troupes not being able to travel to the West Bank from Gaza, and vice
versa, never mind exiting the prison walls of the Occupied Territories.
Moreover, one cannot downplay the multitude of instances where
Palestinians—using means of non-violent protest—have been arrested,
beaten, or shot by Israeli soldiers. Sadly, many of these detracting
groups and individuals in Israel calling for “dialogue” based on “dual
narratives” cannot be seen at any of the non-violent protests against
the apartheid wall or part of the growing list of Israeli soldiers
refusing to serve in the army. Onlookers in the so-called “left” in the
US incessantly opine about the need for Palestinians to assert
themselves non-violently—yet when Palestinians and their supporters
embrace a fundamental tool of non-violent resistance, they are
castigated.
Furthermore, those in a position to boycott must recognize the effects
of Israel’s policies on the 1.3 million Palestinian citizens of Israel
who have become relegated to third class status and have seen their own
art and film community attacked by Israel’s discriminatory legal
system. If the Israeli people and those in the international community
truly want to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, they
will embrace what more than sixty Palestinian academic, cultural and
civil society organizations have endorsed: a full academic and cultural
boycott of the state of Israel.
Throughout the Oslo years, the purported time of peace, endless
cultural dialogue took place. But as Omar Barghouti—dance
choreographer, activist, and ardent sponsor of a cultural
boycott—contends, “A decade of joint Palestinian-Israeli projects
mostly resulted in providing a figleaf, covering up Israel’s relentless
colonization of Palestinian land and its crimes against the Palestinian
people.”
It is clear that even cultural dialogue with the Israeli establishment
has only proven to normalize the occupation. Tutu once declared, “If
you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of
the oppressor.” Now is not the time to be neutral, nor the time to be
reticent; it is the time to act.
A shorter version of this essay was first published as part of a
collection of positions compiled by Randy Gener, titled: "12 Positions
on Cultural Sanctions -- Theatre practitioners offer their views on a
call to boycott Israel," in the May-June 2008 issue of American Theatre
Magazine.
Remi Kanazi is the editor of the forthcoming anthology of poetry, Poets
For Palestine, which can be pre-ordered at www.PoetsForPalestine.com.
Remi can be contacted at remroum@gmail.com.
Writings 
At what point does rhetoric stop and effective action begin? For Palestinians, decades of dialogue and supposed peace overtures have proved fruitless, only serving to protect the status quo: sixty years of continual dispossession, forty years of occupation, and a systematic repudiation of international and humanitarian law. The situation for Palestinians will not improve without constructive movement forward—which rejects collusion with the Israeli government by exercising boycott, divestment and sanctions (known as BDS).
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