Mike Pompeo – revealing the enormous power of BDS
Lame duck US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, is on a visit to Israel. Pompeo knows the game is over for Trump and his own position will end in two months when Biden is sworn in as President.
So why is Pompeo in Israel? His visit, with its accompanying pronouncements, tells us three things:
Firstly, the continuing importance of Israel as a beachhead in the Middle East for US imperial interests. This has been the case since 1967 and with the US promising Israel almost four billion in “aid” every year for the next 10 years this will not change soon.
Israel works to ensure the current crop of dictators and medieval despots which rule Arab countries in the Middle East, and refuse democracy or freedom to their people, are kept in place.
While Israel upholds US interests in exchange for massive handouts, the US supports Israeli interests by condoning the wholesale theft of Palestinian land, denial of the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their land and homes in Israel, cover for the racist apartheid, policies towards Palestinian Israelis and Israel’s brutal military occupation of the entire area of historic Palestine.
On this visit Pompeo is announcing US policy to label products made in illegal Israeli settlements as “Made in Israel” and is promising to declare any support for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel as anti-semitic.
Pompeo is showing contempt for international law and contempt for Palestinians and their basic human rights.
Secondly, Pompeo’s visit shows us how much he wants the Republican nomination to run for US President in 2024. This trip to Israel is the first step in his campaign.
Thirdly, his visit shows starkly the enormous power of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement, whereby people around the world are campaigning for effective pressure on Israel to require it to abide by international law and United Nations resolutions.
The absurdity of Pompeo trying to equate support for BDS with anti-semitism shows just how vulnerable Israel is to the power of humanity joining hands around the world to force Israel to change direction. BDS was successful with apartheid South Africa and it will be successful with apartheid Israel.
Israel is terrified of BDS and the US is doing its best to forestall this popular movement with the likes of Pompeo tossing around claims of anti-semitism like confetti to try and protect filthy, racist, apartheid policies and unconscionable brutality towards Palestinians.
The international expert on apartheid, Bishop Desmond Tutu says the situation for Palestinians is worse that it was for black South Africans under apartheid there.
“I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing in the Holy Land that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under apartheid”.
Tutu points the way forward for the world when he says, in regard to Israeli polices, we should
“name it apartheid – and boycott”
In explaining this Tutu says:
“We (black South Africans) could not have achieved our democracy without the help of people around the world, who through… non-violent means, such as boycotts and disinvestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the apartheid regime,”
Pompeo has confirmed loudly and clearly that the international Palestinian solidarity movement is on the right path – BDS.
The last word in this blog should go to US based Jewish Voice for Peace which has denounced Pompeo’s idea that BDS is anti-semitic saying:
“We are proudly Jewish, proudly anti-Zionist, and proudly pro-BDS. BDS is a powerful tool in the work for Palestinian rights.”
Yes indeed.
Of course, Israel is ‘here to stay’. Just as Virginia USA where I grew up’stayed’ after school desegregation, and South Africa has ‘stayed’ after the end of apartheid. But the society of Israel must be pressured to reform if there is ever to be justice in the world. Yes, Israel is very powerful..frighteningly so..and ruthless. The regime has used cluster bombs, DIME, white phosphorus..has a thriving export business in weaponry and population control techniques.
Equating criticism of Zionism with anti-Semitism is a new form of McCarthyism. It’s a tactic to silence justice campaigners. Jewish Voice for Peace is so disgusted with Pompeo that they have run ads and collected thousands of signatures for its petition sending a message to the US government and the American people that ..” Anti-Zionism is NOT Anti-Semitism. BDS is not Anti-Semitism. Criticizing Israel is not Anti-Semitism.”
There are growing signs that more Americans are realizing that “the continuing importance of Israel as a beachhead in the Middle East ” is NOT in the interest of the American public. .
Strictly speaking, Semites are both Jews and Arabs so genuine anti-semites would dislike both those groups.
Anti-semitism has become a term meaning Jew hating only – actually defined as critic of Israel alone – like Noam Chomsky, Albert Einstein and all those other self hating Jews( anti-semitic semites!)
Actually Judaism is a religion and not a race. I can understand how people who lived in Europe, Asia or Africa for thousands of years can be Jews but not how they can be semites.
Maybe it all just about labels.
I would agree with you on the first two.
But while the Jewish religion can be called Judaism (and Jewish nationalism, Zionism), the Jews are an ethnic group larger than the number of the religion (though they add new members to the people via either adoption of Judaism or inter-marriage with non Jews). Their own religious law defines anyone born to a Jewish mother a Jew, and they remain Jews until they die even if they never have any faith in or practice of the Jewish religion. The exception is if they become a Christian or Moslem, then they are apostate in the eyes of the faith group (if not to their family).
The other thing is that Hebrew is a Semitic language, as is Arabic. Note many of those who speak Arabic are called Arabs (an Arabian people), yet not all of the peoples speaking Arabic today were Semites in earlier times.
Israel is so much more than an ally of America in the ME.
It is the bedrock for American end time (Zion kingdom come) Christian dominionism, their white race nation Christian identity new world exceptionalism. This is essential to understanding the Republican Party, which is the nexus of God and mammon authority in this world – whether arrayed against the Godless communist left or the Moslem resistance to Zionism. The sad thing for American women is that it is now linked in with Gilead, the old worlds church patriarchy ambition to assert their rules over the womans body via the Supreme Court and the promotion of Promise Keepers authority of the husband (Patron Saint of the church Joseph) over the bride (Patron Saint of the USA Mary).