Opinion | Columnists
A non-violent campaign against Israel
Boycott movement makes peace attainable because armed confrontations create rivers of blood that are hard to cross
- By As'ad Abdul Rahman, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 00:00 December 11, 2010
- Image Credit: Illustration: Gulf News
Confronting the brutal force of a colonial occupation with a similar force having no mercy has been a sordid history of humanity. Mistakes are repeated, but the wisdom of lessons remains evasive.
BDS, the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement launched in 2005, chose to adopt non-violent methods in resisting the brutal force of Israeli occupation, pursuing an approach where souls wage their struggle without any loss to human life.
This movement consists of the largest Palestinian civil society organisations, trade unions and networks that stand united in the movement, facing up to the Israeli colonial occupation in order to attain freedom, justice, equality and respect of the human rights of Palestinians in the occupied lands (the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) and those with Israeli citizenship.
All colonial occupation authorities use barbaric force to obtain their ill-gotten material gains from lands they occupy and exploit their conditions, as the case is now in Palestine. But when usurpation of occupied Palestinian lands takes place behind a false disguise of religiosity, it certainly "adds insult to injury", an insult to the holy spiritual message of the Torah and injury, causing Palestinians to live under and suffer from the inhuman practices of the Israeli occupying power.
Israel has been pathologically alert to any threat against its existence. This obsession has led to a military mindset, constantly feeling an urge for war, which was translated into a fixation on possessing the most advanced deterrent force. However, the consequences of Israel's two wars against Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2008-09 were largely disappointing.
Israel suddenly found itself confronted with a threat to its legitimacy while acknowledging that its military power proved ineffective. This threat was felt in the reactions of western governments who previously stood on Israel's side, be it right or wrong. According to Israeli politician Natan Sharansky, "Israel is facing an international campaign that aims to delegitimise it … a real war that threatens our strategic interests, and we must counteract them one by one."
That is why the non-violent resistance put forward by BDS against the colonial Israeli occupation is a conscientious struggle for souls where no barriers of gender, colour, race, ethnicity and self-created dogmas exist in the endeavour to free humanity from such egotistical acts that are always generated by greedy motives behind conflicts that entail extreme violence and catastrophes.
A colonial occupation resorts to brutal force and distortion of ethical spiritual values in order to attain its ill-gotten gains by all means necessary. This is what is actually happening in occupied Palestine at the hands of Israel. Acting without such gains makes the colonial occupation a losing venture and sooner or later will have to terminate its tenure, freeing the occupied territories, hopefully without any loss of human life.
Chain reaction
The support BDS is getting from some Jewish and Israeli organisations is not meant only to protect Palestinian souls, but it is intended to protect Jewish souls from being utterly corrupted by obeying army orders to carry out atrocities against Palestinians.
Israel's policy of swindling the Palestinian people will return to haunt Israelis with the same method and effects, according to the law of reciprocity. Jewish souls are at stake in this conscientious boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against companies and organisations profiting from ventures exploiting resources in occupied Palestine.
The recent law which is seeking Palestinian recognition of Israel as a ‘Jewish state' reserved only for Jews is only a prelude to the transfer of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. This is another theft of Palestinian human rights that exceeds shameful apartheid laws.
The BDS campaign is not based on the mere tactic of boycotting products manufactured by Israeli colonists, but on a consensus of major Palestinian civil society groups whose minimum requirements include the realisation of the Palestinian inalienable right to self-determination, ending the 1967 Israeli occupation, as well as social discrimination against Palestinians who are citizens of Israel and recognising the rights of Palestinian refugees as stated in United Nations resolutions.
The non-violent campaign of the BDS makes peace more attainable because armed confrontations create rivers of blood that are extremely difficult to cross to reach a peace settlement.
Without divisions created by race, gender and ethnicity related disputes, souls become related to a single human race where the welfare of one affects the well being of all. It is then that all will stand to support those who suffer and are subjected to enormous harm and being ignored.
The BDS, in its non-violent campaign is, thus, reviving a Middle East saying: "Beneath the seas, the islands are one. Beneath the races, humanity is one. Beneath the creeds, the love of God is one".
Professor As'ad Abdul Rahman is the Chairman of the Palestinian Encyclopaedia.
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