This commentary is by Marc Estrin, who is a novelist and cellist, living in Burlington.
VTDigger has published a commentary from four Burlington rabbis denouncing BDS, and opposing any Burlington City Council vote to support it.
But what is BDS?
In 2005, inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, 170 Palestinian unions, refugee networks, women’s organizations, professional associations, popular resistance committees, and other Palestinian civil society groups united behind a call for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) as a means of nonviolent pressure on Israel to end its illegal, brutal, and often lethal practices against Palestinians.
The BDS call urges such nonviolent pressure on Israel only until it complies with international law by meeting three demands:
1. Ending [Israel’s] occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall
2. Recognizing 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 U.N. resolution 194.
Burlington’s four rabbis completely misrepresent the purpose and goals of the nonviolent BDS movement. There is no call for — or anything amounting to a call for — “the elimination of the state of Israel.”
As Maimonides says, “Men like the opinions to which they have been accustomed from their youth; they defend them, and shun contrary views: and this is one of the things that prevents men from finding truth, for they cling to the opinions of habit.” — “Guide for the Perplexed 1:31.
The “Israel/Palestine issue” is neither a mere, nor a “complicated” dispute between claimants to the same land. Israel is clearly militarily occupying, and Palestine clearly militarily occupied. It has been that way for 54 years, depending on when one starts counting.
Instead of reckoning from 1967, one might start with the founding of a Jewish state on Arab land in 1948, or with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, announcing British support for a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, then Ottoman territory with a small minority Jewish population, or with Herzl’s late 19th-century Zionist movement for recognition of Israel as a Jewish nation-state in Palestine. One might go back to Joshua and the battle of Jericho.
Any of those are a long time to be occupied — often at gunpoint.
With BDS, Palestinians are “calling for justice and a peaceful end to the Palestine and Israel conflict,”and demanding long-acknowledged, and legally established, human rights. As long as Israel occupies Palestine, Israel will be a great “impediment to peace.” (Click here for a U.N. report detailing Israeli practices.)
That supporting Palestinian human rights should be the cause for “fear” in the Jewish community stands reality on its head. As a Jew, I am proud of Jewish calls for equality for Palestinians, and for Israel to end its many inhumane activities.
As for divisiveness, it is the rabbinical letter itself which amounts to a call to attack.
The 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the “Days of Awe,” are traditionally devoted to seeking forgiveness from those one has harmed over the previous year. Yom Kippur is a day of atonement for such behavior. No more perfect time to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
