Dear friends,
I was recently invited, along with four other writers/activists, to contribute an article to a discussion on the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. Our articles were published on Crikey Blogs on Tuesday.
The project was coordinated by NAJ Taylor for his This Blog Harms which is attached to Crikey. All 5 participants were asked to address a statement (see below) about the issue of BDS and "balancing competing harms".
I have included below my article in full, as well as links to the articles by the other 4 discussants and the question/statement which we were all asked to address in our articles (to read the articles just click on "Discussant 1 of 5" etc)
In solidarity, Kim
STATEMENT/INTRODUCTION TO ARTICLES BY NAJ TAYLOR:
Following the reaction to my blog post on
the application of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) of Israel
campaign in October, I approached five members of the Middle East
diaspora and community in Australia to each discuss, in their own words,
the following proposition:
To what extent is the BDS effective at balancing competing “harms” – the use of ”non-violent” harm to injure Israel economically, politically, reputationally and militarily and the relief of the “violent harm” endured by Palestinians under Israeli occupation? How useful is a campaign that “balances competing harms” for the Israeli and Palestinian, as well as Jewish and Muslim, diaspora – and wider Middle Eastern community – in Australia?
Discussants:
Discussant 1 of 5: Amin Abbas is a diaspora Palestinian.
Discussant 3 of 5: Kim Bullimore is a long-time socialist, political activist and anti-racism campaigner. Kim is a volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS-Palestine), the only all women international peace team working in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. She also writes regularly on the Palestine-Israel conflict for the Australian newspaper, Direct Action and blogs at Live from Occupied Palestine. In 2010, Kim co-organised the first national Australian BDS Conference.
Discussant 4 of 5: Les Rosenblatt is a Melbourne writer and political activist with a strong interest in Middle-Eastern politics and history. He has written several book reviews and articles on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict for Arena magazine and elsewhere. Les also promotes the science of climate change and is seeking to understand how best to respond to the GFC Mark 2. Les was active in the Australian Jewish Democratic society over many years and participated in a Middle East Dialogue project organised by La Trobe University’s Centre for Dialogue a couple of years ago.
Discussant 5 of 5: Moammar Mashni is the co-founder and manager of Australians for Palestine. He works to articulate the concerns of Australia’s Palestinian communities among politicians, churches, unions, universities and the media and to raise Australian public awareness of the Israel-Palestine conflict’s dynamics. Moammar was born in Australia to a Palestinian refugee family.
CHOOSING TO DO NO HARM
By Kim Bullimore - 13 December 2011
Melbourne, AUSTRALIA: In December 2008, the Popular Committee Against the Wall from the Palestinian village of Bil’in in the Occupied West Bank and the Israeli Anarchists Against the Wall were jointly awarded the Carl Von Ossietzky Human Rights Medallion in
Berlin. The Award, named for the 1935 German Nobel Peace Prize winner
Carl Von Ossietzky – a journalist and pacifist – who died in a Nazi
concentration camp, is awarded each year for “outstanding service in the
realisation of basic and human rights”. The International League of
Human Rights who awards the prize noted that the two groups were an
exemplary example of non-violent grassroots resistance to Israel’s
occupation polices.
In their speech at the award ceremony,
a representative of Anarchists Against the Wall (AATW) noted that as
activists they were originally reluctant to accept a prize for political
activism, saying “we would prefer not to be singled out for glory, and
receive gratitude for what we feel is our duty”. The AATW
representative, however, stated that despite this they would accept the
award because:
“Here on this podium, just as in the olive groves of the West Bank, our primary moral duty is not to maintain ideological purity, but rather to stand with Palestinians in their resistance to oppression. We recognize the importance of garnering international support for the ongoing struggle … We believe that standing here, in the current state of affairs, is a direct continuation of the blocking of bulldozers, standing side by side with the stone throwers, or running away from teargas along with young and elderly protesters. Here, as in the olive groves, I would like to stress that we are not equal partners, but rather occupiers who join the occupied in THEIR struggle. We are aware of the fact that for many, the participation of Israelis in a Palestinian struggle serves as a stamp of approval, but in our eyes, this partnership is not about granting legitimacy. The Palestinian struggle is legitimate with or without us. Rather, the struggle is an opportunity for us to cross, in action rather than words, the barriers of national allegiance”.
For Palestine solidarity activists, such as myself, who have worked
with Palestinian, Israeli and international activists campaigning in
both Palestine and Australia against Israel’s occupation and apartheid practices,
the Palestinian initiated Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)
campaign is a similar continuation of the work done on the ground in
Palestine: of blocking bulldozers and standing shoulder to shoulder with
Palestinians struggling for freedom. The BDS campaign, like the
struggle on the ground in Palestine, gives not only activists like
myself but ordinary people across the world who believe in human rights
and justice for all, the opportunity to cross in action rather than
words, the barriers of national allegiance to stand with Palestinian
society which since 1948 has suffered decades of human rights abuses and
harm at the hands of the Israeli state.
The Palestinian BDS campaign initiated
in 2005 by Palestinian civil society does not seek to “balance
competing harms”. Instead its focus is on preventing further harm being
done to an occupied and oppressed people. This is because the
Israel-Palestine conflict isn’t a symmetrical struggle, played out on
level playing field by two equal nations. Instead it’s an asymmetrical
struggle, between a settler-colonial nation and a colonised, occupied,
stateless Indigenous people. It is, therefore, a conflict marked by the
dispossession of the Indigenous Palestinian people and their oppression
by a stronger colonial entity, Israel.
As a result the Palestinian BDS campaign, which is conducted within
the framework of international human rights law, is a non-violent
punitive campaign launched by a colonised, oppressed people against the
colonial state which is oppressing them. This is why at its heart; the
BDS is an anti-colonial campaign which seeks to struggle against the “normalisation” of
Palestinian dispossession via Israel’s occupation and apartheid
practices, while also seeking to non-violently contribute to the
Palestinian struggle for self-determination and national liberation.
It is in this framework that the campaign calls for non-violent
punitive measures to be maintained against Israel until it meets its
international obligations to recognise the Palestinian peoples
inalienable right to self-determination and until it complies with
international law by (1) Ending its occupation and colonisation of all
Arab lands and dismantling the Wall; (2) Recognising the fundamental
rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
(3) Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian
refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN
resolution 194.
Opponents of the BDS campaign, however, have sought to paint the
campaign as anti-Semitic and/or harmful to Palestinians and any possible
peace process. As BDS National Coordinator Hind Awwad notes,
this second claim is not only patronising but it also paints
Palestinians as immature children who don’t know what’s best.
Similarly the argument that BDS is supposedly anti-Semitic doesn’t
hold water. As the Palestinian BDS National Committee has
repeatedly pointed out, not only does BDS actively oppose all forms of
racism (including anti-Semitism), the campaign is aimed not at
individuals but at businesses or institutions which directly contribute to
the grave human rights abuses and international law violations of the
Israeli state and military or to the rebranding campaigns that attempt
to whitewash Israel’s crimes
Recently at a debate on
the Palestinian cultural boycott in London, Omar Barghouti explained
that the basic principle behind the campaign is ‘DO NO HARM”. Barghouti
explained “all BDS asks you at the basic level is to refrain from
undermining our struggle – from doing harm by abetting the cover-up of
our oppressor’s crimes”, saying this is simply “a profound and basic
moral obligation [of] refusing to be an accessory to a crime”.
Today, people of conscience around the world have a choice: do we
choose to DO HARM and undermine the struggle of the Palestinian people
for human rights and self-determination OR do we choose to DO NO HARM
and refuse to be an accessory to Israel’s crimes against the
Palestinians? Today, which will you choose?
Kim Bullimore is a long-time socialist, political activist and anti-racism campaigner. Kim is a volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS-Palestine), the
only all women international peace team working in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories. She also writes regularly on the
Palestine-Israel conflict for the Australian newspaper, Direct Action and blogs at Live from Occupied Palestine. In 2010, Kim co-organised the first national Australian BDS Conference.
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