With South Africa it was, if you’ll pardon the pun, a black and white issue. There was a popular campaign that was clearly targetted at ending one of the most visible injustices in the world. The plight of the Palestinians remains one of the greatest injustices in the world today, but it is far less visible and many people arguing against a boycott of Israeli goods would point to all the other morally bankrupt regimes in the world and ask why aren’t we campaigning to boycott them too? As Reuben reminded me, the best comparison between South Africa and Palestine, is that the oppressed group in both cases explicitly called for a boycott. In that sense, it isn’t an ill-thought out venture of liberal Westerners. All those who are in solidarity with the Palestinians should honour their call, not for reasons of personal morality, but for international solidarity. Everything else you mentioned is vital too, but I don’t think we can afford not to engage with calls for a boycott.

I agree completely with Salman. I forgot to add this when I wrote my own article around the boycott, back when the motion passed through the TUC endorsing it, but the Palestinians asked for a boycott of produce from the occupied territories. And that is the boycott which the TUC endorsed.

This is no different from South Africa, or from Colombia where trades unions have asked Westerners to boycott certain brands in solidarity with persecuted trades unionists who worked for those companies. The problem at issue, of course, is that on the other side of the debate also stands a national federation of trades unions – which denounces the boycott.

“In the case of Israel we still have a battle of minds to win before we can even begin to think of anti-Zionism as popular”

Do you think you would be interested in the Palestinians if you weren’t anti-Zionist, Jacob? Your piece strongly communicates not. In my experience, this is merely in keeping with a boycott campaign that uses the Palestinians as a pretext to perpetrate a strange war, for some, on Jews, for others, on an undigested idea of ‘imperialism’. I think you must be the latter, or something else.

I do find this anti-Zionism ominous. Not in itself, but in the numbers of people on the ideological left who are energised by this singular anti-nationalism, while they broadly forgive other nationalisms. Anti-Zionism on this scale is plain weird to find outside Israel or the occupied Palestinian territories (where it is a view mostly taken by maximalists, not peacemakers). As a phenomenon I think this singular antipathy to ordinary nationalism of Jews is reason on its own to support the idea of a Jewish state – something I never used to do.

Our main concern should be an end to conflict and an equitable co-existence. Ending the harassment of Israel, and the blight of military occupation. Then, Jacob, who knows, but I think you’ll find your cherished aim of ending Israel becomes somewhat less remote. In the good times, borders start to seem like a shame.

Incidentally, dissident is a value-neutral word – it can mean nasty things too. I’m sure you can think of some.

Trabi, I’m anti-Zionist (and indeed anti-nationalist in general) because I care about the plight of the Palestinians, not the other way around. To me, human rights are paramount, and as important as ideology and the nation state are to our every day political realities, nothing can be more important than the contents of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They’re not a goal in and of themselves, but they have to be a starting point. I’m reminded of the quote by Marek Edelman, which David Rosenberg cited in his obituary: “To be a Jew means always being with the oppressed and never the oppressors”. Almost right. To be human means always being with the oppressed and never the oppressors.

You do get some dubious types piggy-backing on the Palestine issue – and they need to be confronted head on – but most people I’ve met in three decades of campaigning on the issue are completely motivated by wanting to resolve a grave injustice and continuing abuse of and denial of rights, which has complexities because of the manner in which that injustice took place (shorthand I guess for the way in which the decisions by Western powers who failed to prevent genocidal antisemitism or take in Jewish refugees after the Holocaust contributed to the injustices committed by the colonisers).

Given that, people have to decide what is the best way of supporting the victims of that injustice and making a difference to the situation – and I largely agree with Jacob. A boycott is a tactic through which millions of people can be involved in a non-violent effective action – and it is a tactic best pursued from a position of strength.

Every action we take is better if it has the effect of uniting progressives and dividing the enemies. The clumsy way the Palestine boycott has been done has sometimes had the opposite effect. And the way is tends to be used as an acid test of commitment to the Palestinian cause is counter-productive.

I suggest using the boycott tactic as one among many in a very smart way against very clear targets – espeically companies directly involved in the machinery of oppression (within Israel and the Occupied territories)and against any goods that can clearly be identified as being from the occupied territories. But let’s also elevate other tactics and strategies aimed at educating people about the Palestinian situation, challenging evictions and house demolitions and acts of discrimination, and supporting Israelis who are challenging their government/military leaders over policies and actions against the Palestinians.

” To me, human rights are paramount, and as important as ideology and the nation state are to our every day political realities, nothing can be more important than the contents of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “

Salman, let’s agree, but here’s an anomaly, and I’m not having a go at you as an anti-Zionist, but I hope you will ponder the point

Tibetans have, for years, called for a boycott of China, yet you won’t hear that on the Left.

And I’m sure I don’t need to tell Cambridge graduates about the invasion of Tibet and subsequent occupation, settlement and mass migration **into** the country.

That is leaving aside the rape of the Tibetan countryside’s raw materials by China.

That’s forgetting the virtual news blackout on Chinese brutality against Tibetans.

That’s forgetting that the most powerful man in Tibet is not a Tibetan, but the Party Secretary who rule’s with Beijing’s say so.

And it has gone on for over 50 years, yet you would be hard put to find a wealth of information or masses of details on the Chinese ruling classes brutality against the Tibetans in the majority of the Left press, and so it gets taken up by others.

You could make the case in a similar way for many of the brutal conflicts going on in Africa, if they can’t be blamed on “imperialism” or the Americans then the coverage outside of the mainstream media is fairly poor.

Until recently, I didn’t realise that there were some 340 conflicts in the world yet you might be fooled into believing there was about one or two.

So as I say I’m not having a go at you but I think the whole issue of human rights is ***global*** and solely concentrating on one country, a small country, in the Middle East is a bit perturbing.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Palestinians have suffered a lot, from stupid decisions made in the 1930s and 1940s, to poor leadership, neglect by the Arab states, used as a political football and more recently falsely led to believe that violence will achieve anything, that’s leaving aside crass and brutal Israeli governments, and how petty internal politics and horse trading in Israel have often stopped a comprehensive settlement being reached.

So there is a case to answer, but when you balance that up with 340 conflicts across the globe, hundreds of thousands dying in Darfur, etc it seemed strange, almost obsessive, to concentrate on one country, mostly.

I hope you see my point?

This is a point I’ve thought about a lot. For my part, I apply my commitment to human rights universally, and would level the same criticisms at all regimes that break them. I’m certainly in favour of Tibetan independence. But you’re right, there are hundreds of ongoing conflicts, thousands of injustices, why focus your energy on any one? I think the answer is quite simple: activists don’t have time to fight the world. They join causes they care about, ones that energise them, ones that feel to them like righting a naked wrong. But activists, no matter how switched on they might be, are also human. It’s a sad fact that many injustices and conflicts receive very little exposure. And for all the attempts of citizen media to change this, we all still rely heavily on the mainstream mass media for our information. I think people are also more inclined to fight the power. That power being the one they experience. So while China is committing atrocities in Tibet, the predominant focus for occidental activists is the billions America is pouring into Israel which is being used to actively oppress the Palestinian people. At the end of the day none of us are perfect, and for all we try to apply our ideals universally – unless we’re a peace camp dwelling hippy living on organic air and fair trade water – we’ll struggle to cover every last wrong in the world. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to do what we can.

“I think the answer is quite simple: activists don’t have time to fight the world. They join causes they care about, ones that energise them, ones that feel to them like righting a naked wrong. But activists, no matter how switched on they might be, are also human. It’s a sad fact that many injustices and conflicts receive very little exposure.”

Why? We live in the global world? Many of these activists are supposed to be internationalists?

Internationalism means considering the world as a totality not as some parochial backwater we concentrate on the bits that we like and forget other things

Now I’m expressly not saying that about you, I don’t know your views, you seem the reasonable person to me and I wouldn’t dream of thinking ill of you, without evidence

But the problem is not you, Salman, but a wider thing, Tibetans have been asking for a boycott and I’ll bet that if you searched the Left press for the past 60 years you barely see that mentioned.

I’m not suggesting that people have to focus on everything, but it would be a bit more consistent of bits of the Left if the Tibetans or the other 300+ conflicts got 10% of the coverage.

I think the Middle East conflict is flavour of the month/year/decade, it is a simple conflict from western perspectives, plenty of slogans can be generated, a lot of street theatre and such like, but actually doing something hasn’t been on the agenda until recently.

Think on this, in all the years since 1968, no one ever, ever thought of sending supplies to Gaza, until Galloway thought it up, did they?

You know I’m not a fan of Galloway, but it was a smart idea, which makes you wonder why no one else could think of it in the two decades before ?

If they were **so*** concerned.

And that’s the problem, at the other end of the scale it seems (and I accept it might be wrong) that more of it is politically motivated than anything else, which is why people are leery of it.

I hope you’ll see that latter point.