Since Israel's brutal invasion of Gaza, calls for international boycotts of various aspects of Israeli society have gained prominence. Workers’ Liberty condemns and opposes Israel's invasion of Gaza, and its occupation of the Palestinian territories. We believe solidarity with the Palestinians should be the left’s starting point on the question of Israel/Palestine. We also believe that the proposal to boycott the entire nation of Israel is, at best, a distraction from more important solidarity work; and is, at worst, reactionary and counter to building an effective movement of solidarity with the Palestinians. Calls to boycott the Jewish-Arab movement Standing Together are an example of BDS at its worst.
Standing Together is a grassroots movement mobilising Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel in pursuit of peace, equality, and social and climate justice. They are the largest organisation in Israel calling for a ceasefire. They have offered direct protection and legal support to Palestinians in the West Bank facing racist violence and state repression during the war. PACBI has issued a call for a global boycott and no-platforming of Standing Together because their work “normalises” Israel. This means a boycott of one of the most prominent anti-war voices in Israeli society.
HOW ARE BOYCOTTS INTENDED TO WORK?
The Israeli economy is built to be resilient to boycotts. Some Israeli firms use third-country subsidiaries to bypass them. Because Israel was subject to a boycott by many Arab countries from its inception, much of its economy naturally developed in areas less sensitive to boycotts. Many Israeli exports are difficult to source elsewhere, mostly tech and intermediate goods not bought by final consumers. You can buy or not buy Sabra hummus, but your action will not exert any meaningful pressure on the Israeli economy. In contrast, the war itself has done huge economic damage. 18% of the Israeli workforce is currently not working due being called up or evacuated. Palestinian workers have been shut out and denied permits to enter Israel. If Netanyahu was deciding whether to bomb Palestinian hospitals on a rational economic basis, he would not.
The boycott is less about directly exerting pressure on Israel and more about creating a political climate. By accusing anti-occupation Israelis of “normalising” Israel, BDS paints all of Israeli society as monolithically responsible for the oppression of Palestinians. In Israel, as in all states, there are people with different politics and interests. From school students being sent to prison for refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories to far right ministers in government.
There is an Israeli working class, the majority of which is ethnically Jewish. Most workers support the war, but as socialists we think the right-wing politics of Israeli workers can be changed. Boycotts will weaken leftist, internationalist and pro-Palestinian forces inside Israel, and strengthen the right by making Israelis more isolated.
Nothing about Standing Together’s activity “normalises” the Israeli occupation. Standing Together has mobilised thousands for demonstrations against the war; supported mobilisations against settler violence in the West Bank; and explicitly criticised the “genocidal rhetoric” of the war.
Another justification for the boycott is that Standing Together promotes “liberal Zionist arguments of dialogue and unethical coexistence”. Standing Together calls for “co-resistance” against the Israeli government, anti-Palestinian racism, and occupation. One strand of that is to persuade working-class Israelis that they have more to gain by turning against their government and supporting equal rights and freedom for the Palestinians. This is the same argument socialist internationalists make to the working classes of any imperialist state.
Socialists oppose the oppression of the Palestinians by Israel both because we are against oppression in general, and because it undermines the development of the kind of politics we want to see in the Middle East and across the world – revolutionary politics, with workers of different national and religious groups uniting in the struggle against capitalism and oppression. Unless workers in the region fight for the right of everyone to freely determine their own future – a right the Palestinians are currently denied – they will never build a movement capable of overthrowing capitalism.
WHY ISRAEL?
Supporters of the boycott need to explain why they do not also advocate boycotting other states which commit human rights abuses, for instance Turkey for its treatment of the Kurds, Sri Lanka for its massacres of the Tamils, Russia for the invasion of Ukraine, or the US or Britain for their imperialist wars.
Clearly, refusing to engage in struggle because it seems inconsistent can just be a way of shirking responsibility. But in a world of nationalism and racism, inconsistency needs interrogating and boycotts can shade into antisemitism.
Starbucks has been targeted on the basis that it “funds Israel” and specifically “donates its profits to the Israeli military”. Its Jewish CEO, Howard Schultz, is a rightwinger but claims about Starbucks directly “funding the Israeli military” are simply not true.
At this year’s conference of the National Union of Students, some delegates made speeches calling for the removal of the Union of Jewish Students from the conference. Graffiti in the venue daubed swastikas next to a condemnation of “zios.” Removing the entire Jewish students’ organisation is clearly antisemitic in logic.
The flat demand to remove “zionists” is a conflation of all Jewish people who feel some affinity with Israel, no matter how critical and how anti-occupation, into a monolith as if they are no different, and equally culpable, as the Likudniks, Ben-Gvirs and Smotriches prosecuting the war on Gaza.
SOLIDARITY NOT BOYCOTTS
When a peace group in Israel is accused of “normalising” Israel, we must ask: what is it that is not normal about the only Jewish majority state in the world? Sadly, Israel is not the only country to launch wars, to deny freedom to occupied nations, to have an extreme right-wing government and to have a population who place ethno-national identity at the heart of how they view themselves. Perhaps Standing Together is “normalising” Israel by breaking through the assumption that Jewish Israelis are a monolith who can never be won over to class politics or peace.
Progress is only possible on the basis of a framework that guarantees equal rights to both peoples, Israeli and Palestinian, including an equal right to national self-determination via two independent states. “Normal” Jewish and Arab workers uniting to demand freedom and equality for both peoples should have our solidarity. Any group or tactic that pushes against that is a dead end for solidarity with Palestinians.
• Standing Together: www.standing-together.org
• UK Friends of Standing Together: www.ukfost.co.uk