No space for apartheid: toward an academic boycott of israel among geographers

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Notes

1. Despite Israeli claims to the contrary, Gaza is still very much occupied by Israel. Israel—and, where they share a border, Egypt—controls absolutely everything and everyone that enters or exits Gaza, whether by land, air, or sea. Drones regularly patrol Gaza's skies; the Israeli Navy regularly fires at Palestinian fishermen who venture too close to the imaginary line of six nautical miles off Gaza's coast; the Israeli Army regularly shoots Palestinian farmers who come too close to the imaginary line that marks 300 meters from the Israeli border; and three times in the past six years, Israel has launched ferocious attacks on Gaza, killing thousands of people and destroying the territory's infrastructure. As one Palestinian man said to me during a recent trip to Gaza, “we are occupied by remote control.”

2. Keller notes, “Though it is difficult to detect this type of involvement, as it is rarely written or publicized in official documents, indicators of this process can be found in the cooperation and connections between academic institutes and companies such as Elbit, RAFAEL and other weapon developers. This is most apparent in the Technion, which…has also trained engineers specifically for work in Elbit and RAFAEL and where students have even dealt directly in the development of complex weapons in the process of researching their academic theses” (2009, 10).

3. Such Arabic‐language programs, in both high schools and post‐secondary institutions, have been deeply embedded within the Israeli military for decades now. A recent article in the Israeli daily, Haaretz reveals “the teaching of the [Arabic] language has been coopted by the [Israeli] army's intelligence corps, leading to teachers who don't speak Arabic and students who study it only in the hope of foiling terrorists” (Kashti 2015).

4. An overwhelming majority of Palestinians support the BDS campaign. Eighty‐six percent of Palestinians within the occupied territories support BDS, according to a June 2015 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (Shikaki and Ladaweh 2015). Three hundred twenty two Palestinian civil society organizations, unions, associations, and other groups endorsed the original BDS call. These organizations represent the breadth of Palestinian civil society in the West Bank, Gaza, Israel, and the refugee communities. Opponents of the BDS movement have cited recent polls that they suggest show that Palestinians are divided on BDS. These claims are distorted and false. The Israeli nonprofit organization, United with Israel, for example, claims, “Palestinian support for BDS is consistently dropping, a poll shows” (United for Israel 2015). Just 49 percent of Palestinians within the occupied territories “support boycotting all Israeli products” in Palestinian markets. But the poll they cite, conducted by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre, does not ask Palestinians whether they support the BDS call. Rather, it asks only whether respondents support “boycotting Israeli products in Palestinian markets” (Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre, 26). As a cursory survey of any West Bank or Gaza market's shelves will reveal, it is nearly impossible to boycott all Israeli products from within the occupied Palestinian territories, as Israel exercises near total control over the Palestinian economy, including which products can be imported and which Palestinian industries suffer from all the movement restrictions and military attacks. Moreover, the poll suggests that despite these difficulties, just 10 percent of Palestinians “don't support boycotting Israeli products” (26). The Washington Institute for Near East Policy suggests that another poll, which reveals that two thirds of Palestinians in the West Bank and three fourths of Gazans “would like to see Israel allow more Palestinians to work inside Israel,” is evidence that Palestinians “have surprisingly nuanced views” on “boycotts against Israel” (Pollock 2015). Such a claim is preposterous, as it again fails to identify the BDS movement as a call to action for internationals—people who have the capacity to boycott, divest, and sanction—not Palestinians themselves, who are largely prohibited by the Israeli occupation from working within Israel.

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Notes on contributors

Robert B. Ross

Dr. Ross is an associate professor of global cultural studies at Point Park University, 201 Wood Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15222; [[email protected]].