Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions & Normalization

No. I don't think I'm a straw manning the argument at all. I don't think it's a straw man to say that the anti normalization people ultimately just believe in a fantasy scenario of it, like, a united Muslim army marching on Jerusalem to liberate Palestine. That's not a straw man. It's just that the the anti normalization people, in my opinion, just haven't thought through their position to its logical conclusion because this is where that leads.

This is you know, this fantasy scenario is actually the only way that your argument can go in the end. I mean, you can say, no, rejection of Israel, boycott of Israel, and so on. That will force an end to the apartheid state just as it did in South Africa, and Palestine will be liberated without the need for any sort of military intervention, military campaign, or what or what have you. But if you believe that, it's I mean, it's if you say that, it's either disingenuous or you're just mistaken. Isolation of Israel by the Arab and the Muslim world has not had any significant impact in eighty years, you know, except to make Israel independent of the region economically and in every other way.

Look. I support BDS. In fact, for anyone who's old enough, they'll remember there there'll be people back in The US and in The UK who will remember me giving talks twenty five years ago about boycott and divestment, a good five, six years before BDS was founded. I agree with that approach, but normalization, in my opinion, is the other side of the BDS coin. It's a it's a second prong, to one strategy.

It's not a contradictory strategy if you think it through. Apartheid South Africa had almost no trade relations with the rest of Africa back in the, you know, apartheid days. Most of their trading partners or really all of their major trading partners were in the West, The UK, Europe, The US, and Israel. That's who their economy depended upon. So it made sense to push for boycotts and divestment in the West, which is what they did.

I mean, it's impossible to say what impact it might have had back in those days if African countries had simultaneously initiated trade with South Africa as the boycott campaign was underway to shift Johannesburg's dependence on the West to dependence on Africa, how African nations could have potentially influenced the South African government if they had economic leverage back in those days. I mean, remember, South Africa, after apartheid, went very drastically down the route of neoliberalism. I mean, even the anti apartheid boycott and divestment campaign. This campaign itself entrenched South Africa's dependence on the West, which left the West in a position to dictate once apartheid ended. Who knows?

The last thirty years in South Africa could have looked very different if this was not the case, if their relations and their economic relationships were more with Africa than with the West. Who knows how it would have gone? So today, Israel is in the very similar position. All of their main trading partners are Western, with the exception of China. So BDS makes sense in the West.

Boycott and divestment make sense for the countries that are key to Israel's economy. That makes perfect sense. But the strategy does preserve western hegemony. Exploiting Israel's economic dependence on the West is just one measure, but but the strategic and the logical complementary measure is actually normalization, transferring economic dependence to the Arab world. If you don't do that, and let's say BDS succeeds, Israel will remain a western client state independent of the region.

The West will still decide. Israel will still be just a lever of The United States in the Middle East as it is now. And The United States will just continue to use it to further dominate the region economically, assuming that, you know, once BDS succeeds, then everyone normalizes because there won't be any impediment to normalization then. But normalization at that time will have, it will have deflated value, and the Arabs won't have any meaningful bargaining power at that point. BDS alone is a strategy that upholds Western hegemony, and it wants to dictate to the Arab and the Muslim world what their policies should be, which is not to normalize.

Even if normalization, both, brings benefit to their domestic economies, to the Arab and Muslim domestic economies, and bolsters their own influence inside of Israel. But BDS doesn't want anyone to have influence except for Western economies. That may not be their intention, but that's the result. That's the that's the the practical reality of it. I mean, who says that if the Muslim world normalizes with Israel, that they can't then, at a later date, rescind that normalization once they have actually grown some kind of economic clout inside Israel, some kind of influence in their economy?

Right now, they have no influence. Right right now, they have no connection to the Israeli economy, so their boycott is of zero impact. It's like it's like if I said that I'm I'm participating in the boycott of McDonald's, but I never went to McDonald's anyway. So my boycott imposes no loss on McDonald's. You have to have some kind of economic relations if you want your suspension of economic relations to have any effect whatsoever.

If you don't already have relations, then there's nothing that you can threaten to suspend. So, yes, I think that BDS in the West is strategically logical, but it becomes, more logical with normalization. I think normalization is strategically logical. And I think active resistance to the occupation is strategically logical. Even opposition to normalization is strategically logical because it increases the bargaining power of any state that's considering normalization, particularly Islamic opposition to normalization.

That's useful. I see all of these as moving parts that work in conjunction. No one ever won a chess game by only ever moving one piece, but BDS alone does not liberate Palestine. No. I think that should be obvious.

It keeps The US and the West front and center as the dominant player. And as long as that's the case, that only ever has been and only ever could be a recipe for more injustice, oppression, conflict, and subjugation even if BDS's three goals are met, which are what the the end of occupation of the West Bank in Gaza, equal rights for the Palestinians who live inside of Israel, Israeli citizens, Israeli Arab so called, and recognition recognition of the right of return of the Palestinian refugees. That's what they're asking for. So if those demands are met, then they'll stop. Those are all good demands for sure.

But does but does that represent the liberation of Palestine? Not even remotely. Does it mean an end to conflict even? No. Not even remotely.

So, yes, you end up right back where you started, which is praying for Salahdin's army. But I'm telling you that today, in 2023, Salahdin's army comes in the form of capital, comes in the form of investment. It's a private sector army, and it can take over ports. It can take over utilities. It can take over real estate, infrastructure, energy, on and on.

And that can establish a level of power and control and influence beyond what a a traditional army can do anyway. I mean, there's no question about the dominating, subjugating power of investment and capital because the entire global South has been dominated and subjugated by capital for at least, you know, the last fifty years, since the nineteen seventies, at least. Well, now, though, today, the West isn't the only one who can play that game. The Gulf States have between, 3 to $4,000,000,000,000 in their sovereign wealth funds. That's 10 times the GDP of Israel.

But the, anti normalization crowd don't want them to use any of that money, you know, to seize economic territory inside of Israel. Well, that's just foolish, in my opinion. Normalization isn't a form of if you can't beat them, join them. It's a case of if you can't beat them, buy them. And the best time to buy is when they are being boycotted by movements like BDS in the West.

These are complementary measures in my opinion. And if if you think about it strategically, you'll see you'll see what I mean. Think about it strategically instead of ideologically. And, no, as I've said before, I don't necessarily believe that Mohammed bin Salman or any of the Gulf States are doing what they're doing because of their love for Islam or they're doing what they're doing for their, because of their concern, you know, for the Palestinians. They may be, or they may not be.

I don't know. I don't know their hearts, and it's it's not my business. And, frankly, I don't care. I care about the results. I care about the outcomes.

I think that they are probably just interested in power. They're interested in influence. And someone like Mohammed bin Salman, I think that he doesn't like for there to be any dominant player in the Middle East besides him, not Iran and not Israel. He wants to have dominion over the region. It could be nothing but pride and ambition and nationalism on his part, but, again, I don't know, and I also don't care.

If the outcome is an Israel that is increasingly less attached to The United States, less dependent on The United States, and more attached and more dependent on the Arab world and on the Muslim world, well, that's a net positive as far as I'm concerned. In that kind of a scenario and in those circumstances, Zionism is not sustainable, but it will remain Zionism will remain sustainable and or be alive and well as long as The United States is the dominant player in the region. And boycott, divestment, and sanctions without normalization ensures that The United States and that the West will remain the dominant player in The Middle East. So in my opinion, we need to activate more chess pieces if we wanna win.