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By Gilad Atzmon
http://www.deliberation.info/
Arguing the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Campaign with Norman Finkelstein from HuffPoMonitor on Vimeo.
http://vimeo.com/36854424
Norman Finkelstein has recently bought himself a few enemies within the Palestinian solidarity movement for openly and enthusiastically advocating the Two States Solution. In the last interview it seems as if Finkelstein defends Israel’s right to exist.
From an academic point of view, Finkelstein has a point. He argues that in order to win we have to operate within the parameters set by international law. However, some points should be made here.
It is far from being clear who sets the parameters of international law. Is it really the international community? Or is it just a few powerful Western countries looking into their own particular expansionist interests.
- It is also far from being clear whether the international law is either ethically or sensible. Is it ethical to let the Jewish State celebrates its exceptional symptoms at the expense of the indigenous people of the land i.e. the Palestinians? Is it sensible to maintain an, aggressive, expansionist, racist, and exclusivist, nuclear Jewish State in Middle East? Is it safe? Is it good for world peace?
- It is far from being transparently obvious to me why an American Jewish academic or any other Western solidarity activist should have a say about the way or manner in which Palestinian should live on their land. I, for instance, have never come across a Palestinian academic preaching Britain to divide its island by resurrecting the wall at the Scottish border. The meaning of it is simple, there is something fundamentally pretentious in the solidarity discourse and in resolution discourse in particular. We, for some reason, like to tell others what is right or wrong.
- Do we need to discuss resolution for the conflict? Israel is already a one State, it has a single electric grid, one sewage system, one international pre dial number. Yet Israel is dominated politically by an oppressive and racially exclusive Jewish political philosophy. This has to be changed and it will be changed by means of resistance with our solidarity or without it.
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