response to Jon at Divest This

According to your logic, and I'm quoting ".. there would be no BDS movement or even a call for Palestinian statehood without the decades of support these very tyrannical states have given to your cause", with the fall of these despots the BDS movement and a call for a Palestinian state should disappear. I offered the exact opposite in my comments above. With democratic movements sprouting everywhere in the ME, the Arabs will demand justice for the Palestinians, and Israel's only ally will be very hard pressed to ignore these demands.
The US can buy the Mubaraks and the Abdallahs of the world but they cannot buy 80 million Egyptians. The government of Egypt, with time, will be representative of the will of the people of Egypt, and my point was that the vast majority of Egyptians will not buy into the Israel/Palestine status quo of occupation/settlements imposed by Israel and fully supported by the US. I suggested that all of these developments will not bode well for Israel.

When the Palestinians resisted the occupation by arms and violence they were called terrorists. When they take a non violent approach of boycott, divestment, and sanctions, they are accused of wanting to destroy Israel. Maybe they should just shut up and live in the disconnected bantustans that Israel has planned for them?

The BDS movement has grassroots supporters all over the world, including Jewish supporters in and out of Israel. Not a single one of these many supporters that I have met are supporters of the despotic Arab regimes so your repeated attempts to connect the two is disingenuous and somewhat pathetic. The many musicians, artists, academics and others living in western democracies and supporting BDS have nothing to do with Arab tyrants and everything to do with Israel's decades long occupation, settlement enterprise and blatant disregard for the Palestinians and their rights.

The BDS movement is a means and not an end. The end goal is freedom for the Palestinians and a state they can call their own. Now whether they share a state with Israel or have their own is pretty much going to depend on Israel.

Have a nice day.

MARCH 29, 2011 11:21 AM