Nation Writer Argues that Israel Boycott and Divestment is Futile … Is He Right?

Here’s Bernard Avishai, writing in The Nation:

Insanity, they say, is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Actually, that is just scientific irrationality. In human affairs, alas, insanity is doing the same thing and expecting the same result. A case in point is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, which—considering what happened at the University of California, Berkeley, in late April, and off the Gaza coast in late May—will be coming soon to a campus near you.

[...]

is Israel really like apartheid South Africa? No. The Israeli economy does not depend on Arab labor—and never did. (From 1967 to the 1990s, it is true, Israelis did employ tens of thousands of Palestinians in construction and agriculture; but these proved marginal industries, and foreign workers eventually replaced them with little dislocation.)

Those are just a few snippets from an analysis that remains rooted on the Israeli economy as a whole. But businesses in the Occupied Territories do depend on Arab labor. This is from the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv, English translation courtesy of Didi Remez:

He [Yaakov Malach, CEO and owner of a company located at the Barkan Industrial Zone] says, “there is not a single factory in Barkan today that is not searching for alternative locations inside Israel, particularly if the construction freeze continues.”  However, other factory owners are not willing to discuss the matter at the moment, for fear of prematurely harming their workers.  “Clearly, we’re concerned, and we are also examining things, but we don’t want to reveal the name of the factory,” a CEO of one of the largest factories in the area told Ma’ariv.

Along with this, Avraham Barkan, director of the Jezreel-Afula industrial zone administration, reports that he has received a number of requests from owners and managers of factories located over the Green Line, regarding the relocation of their activity to the Alon Tavor industrial park.  Barkan attributes this to the factories’ fear of a shortage of workers as of the start of 2011, because of the Palestinian boycott, and to the fear that the construction freeze will continue [emphasis added].

The article goes on to detail how firms that aren’t looking to relocate are scrambling to bring in foreign workers to relieve the pressure.

Bernard Avishai tells Nation readers that the whole endeavor is a waste of time because it’s hard to figure out who, exactly, is profiting in the Occupied Territories:

Besides, divestment on the Berkeley model assumes the capacity to identify companies specifically supporting occupation activities. But Israel’s networked economy makes this virtually impossible. Is United Technologies bad because one division, Sikorsky, makes Israeli attack helicopters—or is it good because another division, Carrier, makes Palestinian air conditioners? And what about GE CAT scans? For that matter, what about the Samsung cellphone the attack helicopter pilot may be carrying, or the Android software on the cellphone?

But Didi Remez also translated a report about Israeli activists who are doing just what Avishai dismisses as “virtually impossible. The lede:

Dr. Dalit Baum and Merav Amir are waging a resolute economic battle against businesses operating beyond the Green Line. Their comprehensive study maps out all of those companies and served as the basis for the boycott throughout the world, which is expanding. In an interview with the Calcalist Supplement they explain they are not extremists — it is simply Dankner, Levayev, Arison and about a thousand other companies who are violating international law.

You can read the whole thing here.

The take-away, I think, is that there’s very little one can say about “boycott and divestment” in broad strokes. There’s a big difference between targeted boycotts of Israeli goods produced in the Palestinian territories for export, the British academic boycott movement or the effective general strike of Palestinian workers, just to name a few.

About the latter, I’d add that we hear quite a bit about violent Palestinian resistance — especially terrorism — but very little about the enormous amount of non-violent civil resistance that goes on every day. The labor boycott is but an example, and one rich in historical precedent. It wasn’t Gandhi’s non-violence that forced the British out of India — that was a tactic. The strategy was non-cooperation.