what a strange and scattershot editorial. first off it equates criticism of israeli policy with a desire to eradicate the place, which is both tedious and wrong. i think most everyone at this point accepts the factual being of a regional military superpower and member of the nuclear weapons club. and even if they don't, it hardly matters. israel isn't going anywhere. given that, it's hard to imagine what the point of continuing to work this line is beyond mobilizing the ultra-right--and even that for self-serving purposes.
second bizarre-o move: here's the website for the palestinian committe for the academic and cultural boycott of israel:
PACBI-ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN
have a look.
omar barghouti is a member of the founding committee of 8..whatever, you get the idea. it's a cheap and stupid move the edito makes. gee, he's a student at tel aviv university but is politically opposed to the occupation of the west bank, to the settlements, to israeli colonialism, to the routine brutalization of palestinians there, to the apartheid system within israel, to the seige of gaza...so he must be a hypocrite. please. idiocy, pure and simple.
more bizarre still is the argument that the boycotts of south africa did nothing to contribute to the fall of the apartheid regime. they even talk to benjamin pogrund, which is an interesting move. he's an interesting character:
Benjamin Pogrund - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
but i find his comments here to be curious. but maybe he's right that the boycotts of south africa contributed to a sense of solidarity amongst supporters of the racist regime there by giving it something to oppose itself to...but that seems a bizarre-o tack to take...particularly for a former opposition actor--if not activist---an editor for the only south african paper that actually covered what was happening amongst the african population. surely he did not mean to imply that therefore people should have done nothing. surely he did not mean to imply that things worked better for him under apartheid because he had something to oppose internally.
i don't know what he meant to imply because the edito only includes what's useful for it's purposes. you know, selective quotation. or maybe that was the quote. who can say?
what exactly is "the israeli psyche"? it seems like one of those silly nationalist fictions, like "the american mind" a phrase that appears to say something while really saying nothing at all.
besides, it continues, israel is an economic Playa, and not at all like south africa was in the 1970s so....so.....well what exactly?
anyway, it's not israel's fault, it concludes. neither the occuption nor the settlements nor colonialism nor the seige of gaza nor anything else. and to hold israel accountable is to want it to disappear.
so shut up. and stop boycotting.
o yeah, we don't like netanyahu so much.
it's not real persuasive to me, but at least its not about world war 3 and at least there's something to talk about in it. so thanks powerclown.