[Peace-discuss] Biss, BDS, etc.

[C G Estabrook]

A clear & convincing analysis, David.

And “this discourse” is surely part of the gubernatorial race when the government of Israel can get the Illinois legislature to direct that state agencies (including the UI retirement system, etc.)  withdraw funds from companies that observe the boycott of Israel's illegal occupation (without objection from our local representatives). State rep. Carol Ammons would have observed a boycott of apartheid S.Africa. Why not Israel, which enforces an anti-Palestinian apartheid in the Occupied Territories worse than that of S. Africa, a generation ago? That would be impossible without support form the US, including now the Illinois state government.  

—CGE

> On Jan 21, 2018, at 12:36 PM, David Green via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> 
> Thanks to David Johnson's and Joel Reinstein's interview with Daniel Biss and yesterday's World Labor Hour.
> 
> Biss is an appealing candidate for obvious reasons to those reading this list, and I will likely vote for him.
> 
> I appreciated Joel raising the issue of BDS, including the Illinois bill that Biss voted for (and that nobody opposed). Biss's analogy regarding using state investment to both move beyond dirty energy and oppose BDS made little or no sense. Just a bit of political hocus pocus, now you see it now you don't.
> 
> Nevertheless, I wouldn't care if Biss opposed BDS, which I think is mostly over-rated as a tactic, and actually supported a two-state solution seriously promoted by USFP. But he gives no indication that he has ever lifted a finger to do so.  When I drive through Skokie on my way to Evanston (Dempster Ave.) there are synagogues with "We Stand with Israel" signs displayed. If Biss was interested in confronting the obstacles to two states, he might start there. That's his district. But clearly his political calculation is to play it "safe" with Jewish voters.
> 
> If he doesn't understand that the primary obstacles to a two-state solution are the U.S. government and the Israel Lobby, then he is quite naïve or quite in denial.
> 
> In addition, Joel's statement regarding support for Palestine as an aspect of "intersectional feminism" is also not my cup of tea. I'm not sure why the right of Palestinians to govern themselves should be put in those relatively narrow terms, and I don't see Jewish feminists who still identify as Zionists responding to that; nor do I see the "intersectional" movement as having much interest in Palestine, to be honest. There needs to be a more fundamental case made regarding Palestinian rights, and Israel's wholesale movement to the right as the result of the occupation.
> 
> Joel asserted that Palestinians (in Palestine) support BDS, and that's well and good. But the Palestinians will need a much stronger resistance movement, otherwise there is no way BDS is going to contribute to their liberation. As the atheist Norman Finkelstein asserts in this context, "God only helps those who help themselves."
> 
> One might argue that this discourse shouldn't be part of the gubernatorial race, and indeed there's no reason to place too much significance on it relative to those issues for which the governor is obviously most accountable for. Nevertheless, Illinois, including its "public" universities, does business with Israel (and its universities) in ways that should be opposed. I believe that Quinn and Rauner both went to Israel; is Biss willing to say he won't go--or at least not in order to strike deals with the apartheid state? That might have been a better line of questioning.
> 
> On the other hand, if candidates at any level want to promote themselves as clean-living, family-devoted, etc., which have next to nothing to do with their political views, then perhaps they should at least deign to take a stand on war, foreign policy, etc., including I/P, which is pretty big issue in this state. I'm more interested in that than how pretty their children are, or even their track record as "community organizers."
> 
> But then again, when Rauner/Killeen cut their deal with Israeli universities, where was Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, etc.? This just went down without any organized response whatsoever. 
> 
> DG
> 
> 
> 
> 
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