As one who was born there I welcome the refreshing attitude of the writer. But I had to look up the expression "anathema", and of the many interpretations given by Wikipedia I take it to be the one meaning "off-limits". not for consideration.
Why not? Surely a United Midle East is in the long run the only realistic solution towards a peaceful co-existance. Isn't it time for all people to realise that nationalistic ambitions are a thing of the past milenium, and any country that still deems itself to be ethnically or regiously pure (or God-chosen) is bound to miss out on all the benefits multi-culturalism is in the mean time bringing to the rest of the world.

I am not anti-semitic; I realise there are jews in Israel who do not approve of the treatment of Palestinians by the Zionist regime that controls their country where prior to 1948, Jews, muslims and Christians lived in harmony.

However, I too believe that nothing short of a global boycott will succeed in forcing Israel to comply with U.N. demands to vacate the settlements and negotiate a peaceful solution.

I too believe that such a settlement is anathema to the Israeli's therefore, a single state solution must be reached with full equality for all and if it takes a boycott to bring them to the table, then so be it. Apartheid is not acceptable.

I know that there are many Israelis who are horrified by the way their government is treating Palestinians at this time. The Brisbane organisation, Just Peace recently organised a visit from Prof Jeff Halper who is on the committee to stop housing demolitions. His presentation included a map which shows how Palestinians are imprisoned behind huge walls which isolate them from each other and from all kinds of support. We heard about the vindictive ways in which young Israeli soldiers treat people trying to pass from one area to the other and, of course, we saw one family whose home was being torn down without their permission. One would have thought that people who had undeergone the holocaust would treat other people with care and kindness - it is difficult to understand how the Nettanyahu government can practise this cruelty on an innocent people. Boycots
could be a peaceful answer.

I've written a response to Neve Gordon's position as a personal opinion at the Australian Jewish Democratic Society website.

One of the greatest difficulties with Gordon's position isn't that he opposes the current occuption or activities of the Israeli government, but that it is a tactic that only serves to alienate Jews (both in Israel and especially abroad) from taking acting to stop what is happening. Given that the problem is between Jews and Palestinians, it's a bit of an own goal. See http://www.ajds.org.au/node/74.

Uri Avinery, another long-standing activist and opponent of the occupation, also puts forward a powerful case as to why the strategy won't work http://www.ajds.org.au/node/74http://www.ajds.org.au/node/74.

The strategy might make a lot of people feel good, but it will only harden the Israel government's resolve to resist change.

I sympathise with the objective that the author is trying to achieve, but I suspect that sanctions will prove ineffective or even counter-productive.

History shows that usually – not always – sanctions don’t work.

Unless carefully targeted, they usually do most damage to the poor and the vulnerable. In Saddam’s Iraq child mortality soared as a result of international sanctions.

The kinds of governments we are most inclined to apply sanctions to are the ones whose members are least affected by the impact of sanctions, and whose leaders are least concerned by the misery sanctions cause. Again, witness Iraq - Saddam and his cronies lived in luxury while the living standards of ordinary Iraqis plummeted.

Indeed, sanctions can be counter-productive, allowing bad governments to blame their people’s suffering on external enemies. Few people take kindly to moral lectures from foreigners - think how even mild criticism of Australia by outsiders (or even ex-pats) produces defensiveness and a tendency to national solidarity.

Almost every instance of sanctions I can think of has been unsuccessful – Burma, Iraq, Cuba …

The outstanding exception of course is South Africa. It seems likely that external sanctions contributed to the demise of apartheid, although I know South Africans who dispute this. However, the case of South Africa was totally different to Israel, in that in South Africa the ANC could claim to speak on behalf of the black majority. It integrated sanctions successfully into its political campaign and ensured that sanctions buttressed a strong domestic movement for reform. This also ensured the legitimacy of sanctions (the people they were intended to help actually wanted them).

The political mythology of the Israeli right already paints Israel as the victim of international conspiracies by its enemies and indifference by its purported allies. Sanctions would only reinforce this tendency, and unless they can be integrated into a vigorous reform movement within Israel I suspect they will be counter-productive

The feasibility of two differentiated groups living harmoniously together as good neighbours depends on trust. But there is hardly any trust between Israelis and Palestinians so inevitably separation, not by deliberate design but because of the reality of the situation, is the only alternative. And this separation increases its intensity by the fact that Palestinians and Israelis are locked in a ‘permanent’ war.

The writer’s proposal for a boycott that would negate this mistrust that a majority of Israelis have toward the Palestinians and hence cancel the existing separation is therefore a pie in the sky. And with a modicum of political acuity he would have seen by his own facts that a boycott would be an absolute failure. He says, that “Israeli politics are moving more and more to the extreme right.” So what other conclusion can one derive from this fact other than that the majority of Israelis tend to lean to the extreme right as a result of their reasonable fear toward Palestinian radicals and their fanatic suicide bombers? In such a political incandescent with fear situation how can a rational person expect that a boycott could force the Israeli government to change its policy?

The way to utopia is paved with good intentions.

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