Vikas, you bring up an excellent point. The BDS-movement is an ineffective way to demonstrate against the apartheid going on against Palestinians in Israel. But these zealous pompous self-righteous 'Leftists' have a convoluted, vague understanding of the capitalist mode of production, which is why they end up bring staunch defenders of the movement. The movement brings a huge amount of awareness and proliferates this type of defiance against the Israeli government but boycott is a petty bourgeois action.
The BDS movement is very similar to the situation in Africa--it is generally assumed that it was this mass sanction that actually was able to extirpate the South African regime, but the truth is that the boycott played a diminutive role--the role of the black working class, who had to face not only economic barriers but also the results of bourgeois decadence. It was the role of the black working class, who place their faith in the COSATU, the South African Communist party, and the ANC who was able to conflagrate this resistance. Unfortunately, due to the conciliatory policies of the ANC, the nation still remained in the clutches of capital, just with a black president. Still, what happened to South Africa? Racism is even more prevalent than the apartheid, just on a subtle scale. Black workers are treaty with admonitory and are underpaid, under-appreciated, etc.
In a way, the BDS movement strengthens Zionism and the Israeli bureaucracy. The BDS movement treats Israel as one entity--all the Jewish workers, bosses, leaders, masses, etc. as advocates of oppressing Palestinians. Furthermore, the logic made behind this is that it is necessary to boycott the whole economy--the whole commodity production in Israel in order to actually fight against apartheid. The Jewish working class has no interest in desecrating Palestinians—nor do they want to actually support the bosses, who cut from their checks, their pensions, etc., in waging war on these helpless people—who may also be their co-workers as well! The body of the working class in Israel is either Jewish or Arab workers!
When Marx talked about the “Irish question”, he basically said that the Irish worker was a supplement to the English worker—the capitalist uses the former for cheap labor for a perennial production of capital. As a result of the Great Famine that occurred in Ireland (and wiped out the majority of the peasants while the rich man lived in luxury), they were inclined to come to England or America. The capitalist class—who is in fact a monolithic group, with having no race or ethnicity, are pander for the desire of capital—a plethora of it as well. Thus, the capitalist class intensifies the hatred between the English and the Irish workers; you are probably wondering why I am bringing up something like this is because this question is applicable to the settings in Israel. The capitalist class—who are Jewish and Arabs—also even Americans (lol), is there to mitigate and spill the fuel in intensifying hatred between these two groups—although at the end, both the Jewish and Arab workers are being plundered by this class. At the end of the day, they both see that most of their checks goes towards igniting war under the false premise of ‘security’.
The BDS movement does not understand that. Boycotting is ineffective because you are boycotting goods—this is indeed an ethical, moralistic approach towards consumerism. Those products are made by the hands of the Jewish and Arab workers. Hate or love them, those academics are being paid every week for their jobs. This blanket boycott is ridiculous; it is a petty bourgeois moralist understanding of the economy and leads to dire consequences. Some of those dire consequences is alleviating and stimulating hatred and animosity between two groups who are disillusioned in their situations.
Instead of boycotting commodities, there needs to be a complete workers’ boycott of the Israeli regime—a total defiance against the caricatures, the bosses and the puppets of the state apparatus. The only answer to an end of this apartheid is not the BDS movement, but a revolutionary liberation of the Jewish and Arab working class and negating the mode of production into socialism.
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