Boycott (2)

In Wisconsin

I was sitting with Cole and a fidgety Rawy in one of the back rows in the basement at the La Crosse Public Library with a pen and a notebook stuffed away in my trusty Africa-patterned purse. We were close to the end to allow for a quick exit in case my two-year-old got too disruptive, which he soon after did, and Cole (thankfully) volunteered to be the one to sweep him up to the kids’ area with his siblings on the upper floor. The Community Conversation on the Roots of War in Gaza was the first event I attended in Wisconsin after the October 7^th attacks. It was delivered by the Coulee Region Coalition for Palestinian Rights, but I didn’t really know that when I went. It was held on October 29^th – so just a couple of days after Israel’s ground invasion – and I was desperate to attend anything to help me gauge where people stood. Where Americans stood. Wisconsinites.

At the beginning, it was extremely disorienting listening to the news and hearing American officials, Democrats and Republicans alike, expressing their unwavering support for Israel, completely dismissing the context that led to it, and feeding the fire of Israel’s fury that was from the get-go explicit about its objective to wreak havoc on Gaza to avenge the 1200 Israelis killed on the 7^th. It’s not like I didn’t know about the US’ double-standard. There was Iraq. Afghanistan. Syria. We all know. But it seems like nebulous knowledge doesn’t materialize into a paradigm-shifting gut-punch for everyone at the same time. For my dad, his breaking point came in the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution.  He lost faith almost completely in Western human rights rhetoric and was always wary of any dos-and-don’ts preaching the US imparts to Egypt. For me, Gaza was the breaking point.

I was more familiar with the Egyptian government’s blend of noxious hypocrisy, acknowledging all the right things (nakba, illegality of settlements, Israeli genocide) and doing effectively naught to back it up. But this Biden mix was brand new to me and I found it way more jarring and diabolical. The US administration not only failed to pay lip service to the cause, it was actively spewing lies and regurgitating Israeli talking points in a way that shocked me to my core. And it wasn’t just backing Israel with rhetoric but zealously pouring billions of untethered dollars in military funding, blocking and vetoing internal and external demands for accountability and a ceasefire.   The US administration’s paradigm was so far from anything that I recognized as truth that for a while it felt like I was being gaslit.

So when I heard of this talk at La Crosse, I was eager to attend but was half expecting it to be some version of the official line on Israel-Palestine.

It was anything but that.

The panel emphasized context in a way that reaffirmed the reality that I grew up knowing. More than that, it relayed information that I never knew before. Like how the US had anti-BDS laws. I found that so surprising that I initially doubted it and made a note to follow up on that piece on my own. And I did. And it was true.

BDS stands for Boycott, Divest, and Sanction. It is a Palestinian civil society movement that was born in 2005. It calls for boycotting Israel as a means to pressure it to comply with International Law and the Universal principles of Human Rights - both of which recognize the illegality of the Israeli West Bank occupation and Gaza blockade.

Regardless of where one stands on the effectiveness of the BDS strategy, the movement was gaining traction, particularly after Israel’s 50-day 2014 assault on Gaza, and 2016 seemed to be a pivotal year with BDS claiming wins all over the world.

But just as the move was gaining traction so was opposition to it. Originally established in 2006, a year after the launch of the BDS movement, Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs was dedicated to fighting “strategic threats,” high among them was BDS. From 2016 to 2021, the Ministry ramped up its fight against BDS, often branded as a fight against Israeli delegitimization and antisemitism.  By early 2023, the Ministry was to be dissolved and revamped under the Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism.

Part of the various iterations of these ministries’ core curriculum was firmly tying BDS with antisemitism and terrorism and then using that as the grounds for fanning global efforts against BDS.

The fruits of these efforts were particularly stark in the US, which witnessed a massive spike in anti-BDS legislation. The US went from having one anti-BDS legislation in effect in 2014 to 15 in 2016 and 38 in 2023.

Wisconsin was no exception.

In 2017, Governor Walker signed an executive order prohibiting state contracts with business entities boycotting Israel and considered such boycotting as legitimate grounds for terminating an existing contract.

By 2018, a narrower version of that EO was codified into law (AB 553).

But why? Why was the US going out of its way to thwart a peaceful means of protesting like boycotting, which has historically been employed by other movements, like South Africa’s Anti-Apartheid Movement, in similar fights against injustice? So if a nongovernmental entity – like a restaurant or a university - wanted to boycott or divest from Israel, this law would allow the government to withhold or renege any financial commitments it might have towards that entity solely based on its position to boycott. Why is that possible?

The US government was dishing up what Israel was serving. The US Department of State justifies its fight against the BDS movement by conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and using that as the grounds for labeling BDS discriminatory. Meanwhile, the US Treasury Department  habitually uses sanctions against companies with links to states and entities that it considers to be in violation of international law, like Iran and the Houthis. Why is it OK to use economic sanctions - the goal of which is to force companies to boycott the targeted countries – with some countries (like Iran) but not others (like Israel)? How is that not a violation of freedom of expression – as was acknowledged by the European Court of Human Rights in 2020 while the US Supreme Court is still choosing to be silent on the issue? The double standard is striking.

Shortly after the LaCrosse talk, I started collecting signatures along with the Driftless Palestinian Solidarity (DPS) group for a petition demanding from Senator Tammy Baldwin to call for a Ceasefire and support an end to Israeli military funding. As part of the process, I chatted with people and would hesitantly mention the anti-BDS laws in the US – in Wisconsin - which would prompt listeners’ eyebrows to furrow in disbelief. Just as I was skeptical about it in the beginning. I think that stems from a shared understanding of the US as a democracy – a model democracy and not a sham one like Egypt. There are certain expectations that are tied to such a status, ones that have to do with basic core rights – like people and entities’ ability to peacefully express dissent using internationally acknowledged means like boycotting.

For me, this – US anti-BDS efforts as a microcosm of how damagingly selective US democracy can be - was one of the many gut-punches that shattered the already fragile paradigm within which I operated. A paradigm that had recognized a certain level of legitimacy to US moral claims. But now I see the emperor really had no clothes. I’m slowly piecing together an alternative paradigm, one that I will likely pass on to my kids. I wonder what theirs will look like.