I'm interested to see what people think about the boycott, divestment and sanction campaign against Israel.
Here in New Zealand the campaign seems to have the support of quite a few anarchists, despite the fact it throws up a few problems from an anarchist point of view e.g. supporting Palestinian nationalism, ethical consumerism and so forth.
Most people I know appeal to the success of the anti-apartheid movement's boycott of sporting relations in the 1980s, specifically the protest campaign against the springbok tour (the South African rugby team). This was a major movement in New Zealand history and there is no doubt it had some effect on the struggle in South Africa. However I think we should also look at the condition of many South Africans two decades on from the fall of apartheid, which is one of brutal poverty. Furthermore we are also dealing with a different country, in a different area and at a different time, meaning the political realities are different. Of course there are parallels between South Africa's system of racial oppression and Israel's persecution of the Palestinians, however that doesn't necessarily mean that we should dogheadedly stick with the same tactics.
Specifically I'm interested in what treeofjudas has to say as I remember him saying he was writing something about BDS not that long ago, though I could be mistaken. Is it possible to support the Palestinians in the fight against racial persecution without bolstering some bourgeois state-in-waiting?
Olly
Since I've been called out, I'll give a relatively short response now, though I hope that my article (the conclusion of which seems farther than ever, now that I'm finally employed again, but which will come about) will provide a much more thorough answer.
Regarding the oft repeated comparison to South Africa, there are two essential differences in the situation on the ground, even when one simply takes both to be forms of Apartheid: first, whites were less than 20% of the population in South Africa, while Jews are still more than 50%. Especially with around 10%-20% of the Palestinian population being kept behind a sealed prison in Gaza, the situation is a lot more manageable in terms of simple brute force.
The second difference is that, while during the period starting in the late '60s up to the first Intifada in the late '80s, the Jewish population had become as dependent on cheap Palestinian labor as the South African white population was on cheap black labor, the situation now is that the only portion of the Jewish population that really depends on Palestinian labor is some of the settlers - the rest use other kinds of migrant labor, mostly from South-East Asia. This means that a very important class leverage available to blacks in South Africa is no longer available to Palestinians in Israel/Palestine.
Therefore, this specific argument for BDS is simply divorced from fact.
On the other hand, a territory in which the analogy is a bit more apt is the West Bank, where Jewish settlers are closer to 10%-20%, and, where there is a lot more dependence on Palestinian labor, although most working-class settlers actually work inside of Israel.
If the connection between them and the Israeli state is severed, and they in particular are put under BDS, then perhaps the situation will be so similar to Apartheid South Africa, that it will drive towards the same conclusion: formal emancipation and a pluralization of the ruling class.
But while this severing seems to be implied by some recent events: settler agitators in the military, rising tensions between the Ministry of Defense and the Agreement Yeshivas, which is the venue through which many of the hardcore religious settlers join the IDF, and the civil disobedience against the so-called "Settlement Freeze", these are ultimately the kinds of shenanigans that have plagued Israel-settlements relations since the latter's inception, and I really don't see the Israeli state dropping this real-estate asset anytime soon, nor do I see working-class settlers, ideological or not, committing economic suicide by supporting secession from the overwhelming source of their livelihood.
In that sense, the particular ban on products directly produced in settlements, which is implied by EU regulations demanding that this be noted on exported products, and which stands behind the campaign against Ahava products, for example, is just as misguided as BDS.
Moving on to your second question, I don't think that it is the right question to ask, in this context. A better question is, I think, whether there is a way to oppose the racist policies of the Israeli state without assuming that the whole of Israel and its populace is a national organism with uniform interests. BDS is certainly guilty of the latter, as the policies of their leading organizations clearly dictate a complete lack of class analysis of Israeli society, Jewish or otherwise. Their ethnic framework leaves Jews with the choice of either yielding or fighting, a frame of mind which the Zionist ruling class is very comfortable with exploiting. Again, in this case, Jews are closer to 50% of the population; that, along with the IDF's overwhelmingly superior firepower would make it much easier for the Zionist ruling class to maintain the current situation, rather than make any radical adaptations which may weaken them.
Similarly, the ban on settlement products displays a complete lack of class analysis. For working-class Jews, which are the majority of Jewish settlers, the settlements are suburbs from which one drives or takes the bus to work inside of Israel. A ban on settlement exports does not affect them directly, as it only hurts some of their bourgeois neighbors. Its logical conclusion would simply be to stop production for international export in the settlements, assuming the tried and true method of creating pre-finished products in one place and then finishing them elsewhere won't work in this situation, as well. This will not stop non-export industries, and if anything it will simply encourage the ethnic cleansing aspect of the occupation over its exploitation aspect.