Today's Stories

June 5, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Bush's Secret Deal Would Ensure Permanent U.S. Occupation of Iraq

June 4, 2008

Eric Walberg
Princess Patricia and the Taliban

Gary Leupp
Iran and EFPs: Chronology of a Lie

Ralph Nader
Disenfranchised Youth

Dave Lindorff
Of Whiners and Poor Losers

George Wuerthner
Farm Economics

Victor M. Rodriguez
The Puzzle of Race and Politics

Remi Kanazi
Why a Cultural Boycott of Israel is Needed

Stephane Luçon
Renault's Romanian Fairyland Suspended

Farzana Versey
The Tablighi Jamaat Movement

Laray Polk
The Militarization of Space

Website of the Day
Red State Rebels

June 3, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts /
Lawrence M. Stratton
Legislating Tyranny

Mike Whitney
The Withering Economy

Steve Early
San Juan Showdown

Manuel Otero
Why Hillary Won Puerto Rico: the View from the Colony

George Bisharat
The Hope of a Victimized People

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's VP Quandry

Dan Bacher
Death on the Salmon Highway

Website of the Day
Censoring Bill Knott?

June 2, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Olmert Scandal

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Latino Problem Getting Worse

Allan J. Lichtman
Revisionist History: Bush, Borah and Hitler

Malini Johar Schueller
The Color of Randomness: Returning to the US From Beirut Via Syria

Robert Weissman
What's Driving Skyrocketing Oil Prices?

Peter Morici
Bailing Out Wall Street

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Don't Get Burned: How to Protect Yourself From Raytheon's Pain Gun

John Ross
Celebrating Catholic Fanaticism in Mexico

Ahmad Al-Akhras
Encounters with the Watch List

Website of the Day
Man on Earth

May 31 / June 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Worst is Yet to Come

Jeffrey St. Clair
Arkansas Bloodsuckers

Gary Leupp
How McClellan Prettifies Bush

Stan Cox
Broken Agriculture

Rannie Amiri
Lebanon: the Domino That Wouldn't Fall

P. Sainath
A Guaranteed Day's Work--in the Fields, at 110 Degrees, for $2 a Day

Binoy Kampmark
Going Bankrupt in Vallejo

Robert Fantina
Bush, Rice and McClellan

Seth Sandronsky
Will There be Water Riots, as Sacramento Goes Dry?

Corporate Crime Reporter
Death Penalty for Bush?

Anthony DiMaggio
Gaming the Ghetto: Grand Theft Auto IV, Racist Media and the Concrete Jungle

Karl Grossman
A Half-Trillion for Nukes

Matt Reichel
From Vegas to the Heartland and Back Again

Paul Myron Hillier
Of Gas and God

Andy Worthington
Suicide at Guantánamo

David Yearsley
And the Winner is ... Wayne Shorter

Daniel Cassidy
Free Lunch

Charles Thomson
If Hitler Had Been a Hippy ...

Gary Corseri
A Dream Deferred: Activism and the Arts

Wajahat Ali
Sex and the City Through a Man's Eyes

Ron Jacobs
Robins Weep

Poets' Basement
McNeill and Davies

Website of the Day
Last Charge of the Light Horse

May 30, 2008

Bassam Aramin
Here's the Truth You've Been Running From

Andrew Cockburn
Petraeus' Iran Obsession

Saul Landau
How We Got Into This Mess

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet South America's New Secessionists

Robert Sandels
Turning Back the Clock on Cuba

Dave Lindorff
Talk is Cheap

Martha Rosenberg
Raiding Big Meat; Arresting the Wrong People

Harvey Wasserman
Lieberman & McCain: Linking Internet Censorship and Atomic Reactor Terror

Doug Giebel
A Plague on Both Your Houses (of Congress)

Shaun Harkin
The Trial of the Raytheon 9

Website of the Day
The Once and Future Environmental Movement

May 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Bill Clinton and the Rich Women

Nikolas Kozloff
Puerto Rico, Obama and the Politics of Race

Col. Dan Smith
Deceiving the Dead

Karl Grossman
The Most Lucrative Incentive for Nuclear Power in the History of the United States

William S. Lind
Inside the Washington Game

Robert Weissman
What to do About the Price of Oil

Dave Lindorff
Why Puerto Rico Won't Matter

David Macaray
A Union Fable

Chris Genovali
Fear and Loathing in the Northern Rockies

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Battle Over Oil

Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com

May 28, 2008

Wajahat Ali
The Libertarian Dark Horse: An Exclusive Interview with Ron Paul

Ralph Nader
What's Really Driving the High Price of Oil?

Brian McKenna
Why I Want to Teach Anthropology at the Army War College

Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Vincent Bugliosi Wants to Prosecute George W. Bush for Murder

Brian Cloughley
The Attack on Damadola

Eric Walberg
Opium for the Masses from Afghanistan

Michael Dickinson
Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You

Ijaz Khan
Opening Windows in Pakistan

Website of the Day
Older Than America

May 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Her Mind She's Killed Before: the Plot to Assassinate Ralph Nader

Greg Kafoury
Is Obama Turning (Further) Right?

Jean Bricmont
Western Delusions

Tim Wise
Farrakhan is not the Problem

Ricardo Alarcón
Puerto Rico's Turn

Stephen Soldz
APA Supports Psychologist Engagement in Bush Regime Interrogations

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo 16

Alan Singer
Vapid, Stupid and Insulting: Chuck Schumer Speaks to the Graduates

Richard Neville
Storm in an A-Cup

Susie Day
Gone with the W

May 26, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Syrian Option

Bill Quigley
War Immemorial Day

Col. Dan Smith
Retreating from Hell: a Different Memorial Day

Cindy Sheehan
Why Memorial Day is a Double-Whammy for Me

Marjorie Cohn
Hillary's Assassination Politics: Her Last Shot?

Fred Gardner
Does the VA Care?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Pain Pays: Getting Rich at NY Presbyterian Hospital

Harvey Wasserman
Mugging the Election System

Moncia Benderman
Truth Matters

David Rovics
In Praise of Utah Phillips

Website of the Day
Fox News Jokes About "Knocking Off" Osama and Obama

May 24 / 25, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate

Jeffrey St. Clair
Yellowstone: How Sununu Shrank the Ecosystem

Barbara Rose Johnston
Dam Legacies, Damned Futures

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan Waters

Adriana Kojeve
The Environment and the 2008 Elections

Robert Fantina
Justice Department's Revelations on Torture

Dave Lindorff
Bush's War on Children in Iraq

David Yearsley
The War on Kitsch

Nelson P. Valdés
The Buying of "Democracy" Agents in Cuba

Kathleen M. Barry
Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing

John Ross
Mexico's Narco Opera Reaches for High Point

Allison Kilkenny
Apathy Doesn't Live in Bronx

Fred Gardner
Orangeburg, 1968

Elizabeth Schulte
Can the Whole World be Fed?

Daniel Gross
Remembering the Wendy's Massacre: the Dangerous Side of Retail Work

Christopher Brauchli
The Search for a Token Right-winger

Richard Rhames
A Nation of Sheep

Daniel Cassidy
My Mother

Poets' Basement
Davies, Klipschutz and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Happy Birthday, Bob

May 23, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home

Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry

Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia

Mark Engler
The World After Bush

George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America

Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism

Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan

Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq

Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment

Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign

May 22, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar

Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet

Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid

Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard

Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman

Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement

Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard

Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

May 17 / 18, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The View from the Crusaders' Castle

Tim Wise
Testosterone is Not to Blame: Why Sexism isn't the Reason for Hillary's Loss

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trials: Betrayal, Backsliding and Boycotts

Robert Fantina
The Double-Talk Express Derails

Karim Makdisi
In the Wake of the Doha Truce

Harry Browne
Only Ireland Can Vote on EU's Future

John Ross
Suicide by Taco? The Demise of Mexico's PRD

Dave Lindorff
Fear at the Pump

Robert Weissman
Pharmaceutical Payola

Laray Polk
Bush Family Appeasement

David Yearsley
Puritans in Seattle

Ron Jacobs
Riot Squads, Privatization and the National Front

Paul Quinnett
My Last Flight

Sam Bahour
Refugees are the Key

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Poverty Wages

Dr. Susan Block
The Groom May Kiss the Groom

Kim Nicolini
Paranoid Park: Inside the Fractured Landscape of Male Adolescence

Jeremy Scahill
John Cusack's War

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Gerard and Davies

May 16, 2008

Stephen Soldz
Involuntary Drugging of Detainees

Jonathan Cook
Police Attack Al-Nakba March

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies of Aggression

Christopher Brauchli
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pharmacy

James L. Secor
Olympic Torch China: the View from Shaoxing

Franklin Lamb
Did Hezbollah Thwart a Bush/Olmert Attack on Beirut?

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Price of Protecting Racist Cops

Dave Lindorff
What West Virginia Means

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

Jeff Halper
Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Greg Moses
Living for the Children of Palestine

John Ross
Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism

Ron Jacobs
Go to Work, Go to Jail

Binoy Kampmark
Indian Jailbirds: the Case of Binayak Sen

Eve Spangler
We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

Martha Rosenberg
Meat Wars with South Korea

Website of the Day
Idaho Wolf Killers

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or the Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

Subscribe Online

High Time for BDS

60 Years of Nakba, 41 Years of Occupation ...

By OMAR BARGHOUTI

"The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet but not to make them die of hunger,” said Dov Weisglass, Sharon’s closest advisor, a few years ago. Today, Israel is slowly choking occupied Gaza, indeed bringing its civilian population to the brink of starvation and a planned humanitarian catastrophe.

If the US government is an obvious accomplice in financing, justifying and covering up Israel’s occupation and other forms of oppression, the European Union, Israel's largest trade partner in the world, is not any less complicit in perpetuating Israel’s colonial oppression and special form of apartheid. At a time when Israel is cruelly besieging Gaza, collectively punishing 1.5 million Palestinian civilians, condemning them to devastation, and visiting imminent death upon hundreds of patients, prematurely born babies, and others, the EU is extending an invitation to Israel to open negotiations to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), instead of ending the EU-Israel association agreement due to Israel’s grave violation of its human rights clause. The US and European governments are not only providing Israel with massive economic aid and open markets, they are supplying it with weapons, diplomatic immunity and unlimited political support, and upgrading their relations with it specifically at a time when it is committing acts of genocide.

By frequently freezing fuel and electric power supplies to Gaza  for long periods, Israel, the occupying power, is essentially guaranteeing that "clean" water is not being pumped out and properly distributed to homes and institutions; hospitals are no longer able to function adequately, leading to the death of many, particularly the most vulnerable – already more than 180 patients, mainly children and senior citizens have died in Gaza as a direct result of the latest siege; whatever factories that are still working despite the blockade will soon be forced to close, pushing the already extremely high unemployment rate even higher; sewage treatment is grinding to a halt, further polluting Gaza's precious little water supply; academic institutions and schools are largely unable to provide their usual services; and lives of all civilians is severely disrupted, if not irreversibly damaged.
In short, Israel is condemning a whole future generation of Palestinians in Gaza to chronic disease, abject poverty and long-lasting developmental limitations. UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, international law expert Prof. Richard Falk, considered Israel's siege a "prelude to genocide," even before this latest crime of altogether cutting off energy supplies. Now, Israel's crimes in Gaza can accurately be categorized as acts of genocide, albeit slow.

In parallel, Israel is slowly transforming the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, into unlivable reservations that make the term Bantustan sound desirable, in comparison. Israel is systematically causing the slow disintegration of Palestinian society under occupation through its colonial Wall, its policy of fragmentation and ghettoization, its denial of the most basic Palestinian rights, and its obstruction of human development. Israel is slowly, steadily and systematically turning the lives of average Palestinian farmers, workers, students, academics, artists and professionals into a living hell, designed to force them to leave. The fundamental objective of the mainstream of political Zionism, to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its indigenous population to make room for Jewish settlers and them alone, has undergone only one significant change in more than a hundred years since the beginning of the Zionist settler-colonial conquest: it has simply grown slower.

Ever since the Nakba, the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 through the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 indigenous Palestinians from their homeland and the ruin of Palestinian society, many “peace plans” have been put forth to resolve the “conflict.”  Virtually all these plans have had one factor in common: they have sought to impose a settlement based on “facts on the ground,” or the existing vast asymmetry in power that leave one side — the Palestinians — humiliated, excluded and unequal. They have been unjust; hence they have failed.

The path to justice and peace must take into account the particularities of Israel’s colonial reality. At its core, Israel’s oppression of the people of Palestine encompasses three major dimensions: denial of Palestinian refugee rights, including their right to return to their homes; military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), with massive colonization of the latter; and a system of racial discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, partially resembling South African apartheid. A just peace would have to ethically and practically redress all three injustices as a minimal requirement of relative justice.

The latest political developments in Israel -- particularly the last parliamentary elections, which brought to power a government with openly fascist tendencies and led to the criminal war on Lebanon and, most recently, the slow genocide against Gaza -- have unequivocally exposed that an overwhelming majority in Israel stands fervently behind the state’s racist and colonial policies and its persistent breach of international law. A solid majority, for instance, supports the daily war crimes committed by the army in Gaza, including cutting off energy supplies; the illegal apartheid Wall; the extra-judicial executions of Palestinian activists; the denial of Palestinian refugee rights; the preservation of the apartheid system against the indigenous Palestinian citizens of Israel; and the control over large parts of the occupied West Bank, particularly around Jerusalem, as well as Palestinian water aquifers. If this is the peace that most Israelis want, it clearly falls short of the minimal requirements of international law and fundamental human rights.

As a result of the failure of the international community in holding Israel to account, many people of conscience around the world started considering Palestinian civil society’s call for nonviolent resistance against Israel until it ends its three-tiered oppression of the Palestinian people. From the prominent Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, to the Jewish minister in the South African government, Ronnie Kasrils, to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, an increasing number of influential international figures have drawn parallels between Israeli apartheid and its South African predecessor and, consequently, have advocated a South African-style treatment.

It is quite significant that former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and the former U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Prof. John Dugard, while not endorsing boycott yet, have both accused Israel of practicing apartheid against the Palestinians. Given the time-honored U.N. resolutions designed to counter the crimes of apartheid, Dugard’s position should not be taken lightly. It may well be the first step — in a very long march — towards engaging the U.N. in identifying Israel as an apartheid state and adopting appropriate sanctions as a result.

As far back as 2001, in Durban, South Africa, despite the official West’s unwillingness to hold Israel to account, the NGO Forum of the U.N. World Conference Against Racism widely adopted the view that Israel’s special form of apartheid must be met with the same tools that brought down its South African predecessor. Many hope that “Durban 2” will build on this momentous achievement.

Soon after Durban, campaigns calling for divestment from companies supporting Israel’s occupation spread across American campuses. Across the Atlantic, particularly in the United Kingdom, calls for various forms of boycott against Israel started to be heard among intellectuals and trade unionists. These efforts intensified with the massive Israeli military reoccupation of Palestinian cities in the spring of 2002, with all the destruction and casualties it left behind, particularly in the atrocities against the Jenin refugee camp.

In 2005, a year after the ICJ’s ruling against Israel’s colonies and apartheid Wall, Palestinian civil society issued its call for boycott, divestment and sanctions, or BDS. More than 170 Palestinian civil society organizations and unions, including the main political parties, endorsed this call to make Israel comply with international law. Twelve years after the dismal failure of the so-called “peace process” that was launched in 1993, Palestinian civil society started to reclaim the initiative, articulating Palestinian demands as part of the international struggle for justice long obscured by deceptive and entirely visionless “negotiations.” In a noteworthy precedent, the BDS call was issued by representatives of the three segments of the Palestinian people — the refugees, the Palestinian citizens of Israel and those under occupation. It also directly addressed conscientious Jewish-Israelis, inviting them to support its demands.

For more than a century, civil resistance has always been an authentic component of the Palestinian struggle against Zionism. Throughout modern Palestinian history, resistance to Zionist settler-colonialism mostly took nonviolent forms: mass demonstrations; grassroots mobilizations; labor strikes; boycotts of Zionist projects; and the often-ignored cultural resistance, in poetry, literature, music, theater and dance. The first Palestinian intifada (1987-1993) was a uniquely rich laboratory of civil resistance, whereby activists organized at the neighborhood level, promoting self-reliance and boycott, to various degrees, of Israeli goods as well as of the military authorities. In Beit Sahour, for instance, a famed tax revolt presented the Israeli occupation with one of its toughest challenges during the period. BDS must therefore be seen as rooted in a genuinely Palestinian culture of civil struggle, while its main inspiration today comes from the South African anti-apartheid struggle. It is this rich heritage that inspires the current pioneering grassroots resistance in Bil’in against the Wall.

In the last few years, many mainstream groups and institutions around the world have heeded Palestinian boycott calls and started to consider or actually apply diverse forms of effective pressure on Israel. These include the two largest British trade unions, UNISON and the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU); the British University and College Union (UCU), which recently reaffirmed its pro-boycott stance; Aosdana, the Irish state-sponsored academy of artists; the Church of England; the Presbyterian Church USA; top British architects; the National Union of Journalists in the UK; the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU); the World Council of Churches; the South African Council of Churches; the Canadian Union of Public Employees in Ontario and, more recently, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers as well as ASSE, the largest student association in Quebec; and dozens of celebrated authors, artists and intellectuals led by John Berger, among many others. Many European academics and cultural figures are shunning events held in Israel, practicing a “silent boycott.” Most recently, Jean-Luc Godard, the iconic filmmaker, cancelled his planned participation in a film festival in Tel Aviv after Palestinians had appealed to him. Before him, Bjork, Bono, the remaining Beatles, the Rolling Stones, among others, all opted not to perform in Israel, effectively boycotting the “Israel at 60” celebrations.

In November 2007, hundreds of Palestinian boycott activists, trade unionists, representatives of all major political parties, women’s unions, farmers’ associations, student groups and almost every sector of Palestinian civil society convened at the first BDS conference in the occupied Palestinian territory. A direct result of this effort was the recent establishment of the BDS National Committee, or BNC, to raise awareness about the boycott and lead its local manifestations as well as act as a unified reference for international BDS campaigns.

For cynics who still consider the above too little progress for the given timeframe, I can only reiterate what a South African comrade once told us. “The ANC issued its academic boycott call in the 1950s; the international community started to heed it almost three decades later! So you guys are doing much better than us.”

Today, in the face of intensifying Israeli war crimes, impunity, and total disregard of international law, international civil society is called upon to initiate or support whatever BDS campaigns that are deemed appropriate in every particular context and specific political circumstances to support Palestinian civil resistance. This is the most effective, the most morally and politically sound, form of solidarity with the Palestinians. In these exceptional circumstances of slow genocide, exceptional, ethically coherent measures are called for. This is the most reliable path to freedom, justice, equality and peace in Palestine and the entire region.

Omar Barghouti is an independent Palestinian political and cultural analyst and a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). He presented this paper at the Bil’in Third International Conference on Grassroots Resistance, on 4 June 2008.

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