movement and then if you have any questions or any suggestions about discussions about how we can interpret big or implement some of the major directions of b d s here in san diego or any other political questions you may have  and some of the challenges we faced some main arguments that have been posed against b d s and how we refute those arguments just very briefly boycott is very much inspired by the south african movement but it's not soley inspired by south africa it is also very rooted in palestinian history of civil resistance people forget that in the last hundred years of resisting th mostly resisted nonviolently through civil resistance and people just remember the most violent parts and forget that entire history of trade unionism of women's movements of marches on the streets of different kinds of boycotts and and so on and so forth so we are very much rooted in the palestinian tradition of civil resistance but the modern inspiration for the movement certainly came from south africa specifically in two thousand and one the  un and to racism conference in south africa durban on the side of the official conference where the states were meeting there was an ngo meeting non governmental organization meeting which had hundreds and hundreds of groups from all over the world in that  s conference at the un conference against racism it was decided that israel was practicing apartheid in fact and it was recommended that the same boycotts and sanctions imposed against south africa during the apartheid era should be imposed against israel to use that tool in order to end israel's oppression of the palestinian people so there were many initiatives around palestine in the west as well to support a boycott of israel but nothing was was institutionalized until two thousand and four when we started the academic and cultural boycott of israel the palestinian campaign for the economic and cultural boycott of israel which is called pack acronyms back when we started that there was a huge uproar in israel just to give you an example we were six individuals academics and intellectuals in palestine calling for boycott we started the movement there israeli counter boycott committee was formed of benjamin number one number two they don't have the weapon to combat it in any armed kind of confrontation with israel they always when we are no match we will never be a match to israel's power militarily but when it comes to moral right boycott movement in two thousand and five just a year after we started the call for academic boycott the most important academic union in britain there u t association of university teachers decided to boycott two israeli universit universities the academia so for them to call for boycotting that was too shocking to the israelis it was a real cold shower for them so they took notice very much and they started a very strong very powerful intimidation intellectual terror campaign professional and financial ruin i'm quoting if they did their it to boycott any israeli university and of course congress was mobilized and that was the first time in history possibly that congress met and decided to condemn the decision but not the two thousand five but a later decision by the british academic union to boycott israeli universities i mean it's unheard of that congress should meet to discuss the decision of a union in a second country that wants to boycott a third country it's ludicrous but that's how it is that's how scared they are of the b d s movement b b s s such came into existence in two thousand and five so we start to the academic and cultural in two thousand and five it was the full blown sanctions movement that we issued on nine july two thousand and five came a year after the international court of justice at the hague decided that the wall and the colonies israel is building an occupied palestinian territory were legal th decision was in two thousand and four a year after that we established the b d s movement endorsing that called was almost the entire palestinian society almost every major union every major organization women's group students gr so on everyone signed on to that call and we represented the palestinian people in three areas because since the oslo accords between the p l o and israel the palestinian people has been redefined very intentionally very deliberately the palestinian people what we did in the b d s call and the pact because before it is to reestablish that the palestinian people are three main segments palestinians of the occupied territories sixty seven palestinians in forty eight which is no and palestinian refugees who are the majority so what they were ignoring is the majority of the palestinian people the west bank and gaza are a minority of one third one third of the palestinian people plus or minus and even in that one do each one of us does but in the movement we don't we focus on our rights based approach we say that no matter what the solution is there are three fundamental rights of the palestinian people that need to be addressed these are sanctioned by the un these are conforming to universal human rights and international law no one should debate that among the palestinians the three rights are ending the occupation and colonize ation of the west bank gaza including east jerusalem the second is ending the system of racial discrimination against palestinian citizens of israel the forgotten palestinians and the third is the right of return for the refugees according to un resolution one ninety four this trouble a lot of people zionists and their supporters w troubled that anyone would call attention to israel's system of racial discrimination which we called apartheid and a lot of arguments were posed israel is different than apartheid south africa palestinians in israel can vote blacks in south africa never were able to vote and so on our answer is that of course there are differences we never claimed that israel is identical to south africa but no two oppressive regimes are identical anyway when you say that the us is an occupation of iraq that doesn't mean it's the same as the is i occupation that doesn't mean it's similar to any other occupation but we call it occupation because it has the it conforms to the definition of occupation similarly apartheid is not a south african brand name it was most famous as south africa but you had that here in the us in the south that was apartheid when you had two sets of laws one for a certain category of people a second for no another category the unwanted people that is apartheid when it's institutionalized in the law legalized that is apartheid very much practices apartheid according to the definition of the crime and punishment of apartheid it fits very perfectly what israel is practicing against the palestinian citizens of israel let alone the west bank and gaza inside israel there are two sets of laws every single aspect in israel is divided among jewish israelis jewish israelis the state itself does not define itself as a state of its citizens it's the only state in the world that is the state of some virtual people of the jewish people which is not its citizens some jews live in palestine but israel is not for those jews it's for every jewish person around the world and it's not for its own citizens or palestinian state in the world that defines itself in such a strange way it's like italy defining itself as the state of the catholics it would be just as ludicrous that none catholic italians cannot claim this as their country movement is out to end what political solution comes out we don't care as long as it satisfies our three basic rights since two thousand and five till now we're talking about four years only four years we've  the mainstream in the west particularly in britain increasingly in france italy spain the netherlands in many european sweden of course we have wall to wall support in south africa the south african council of churches the main south african trade union federation the british trade union federation just very recently supported b d s the team you see the trades union congress which represents six point five million british workers so this is not small we're talking about a very large scale of western mainstream organizations that have endorsed b d s of course the academic union in britain unions in canada from the postal workers to many many other unions public employees and so on have indoor speediest as well aside from the south african council of churches the church of sweden endorsed it in directly they don't endorse boycott directly but they endorse divestment from israel for example the world council of churches which represents about half a billion christians around the world most of the non catholic churches have endure sed selective boycotts against israel just very recently and a few years ago they supported ethical investment which means divesting from companies profiting from occupation and human rights violations as all israeli companies are doing so in the last few years we've achieved quite a lot in the mainstream many cultural figures from john bircher in britain to now make law in canada and many many others have come out in support of boycott so there was a big breakthrough the most important achievement we had in the cultural field was that many artists decided to heed the call for a boycott not to go to israel in two thousand and eight israel celebrate celebrate its anniversary but we said celebrating israel's anniversary is dancing on palestinian graves you're ignoring the ethnic cleansing of forty eight you are ignoring the fact that israel is denying our basic rights coming to israel to sing and celebrate with it is equivalent to dancing in our graves so we had not called for boycott it tactically called for just not going to israel not performing in israel not exhibiting your art and israel and many many artists tens of artists who were neither did we ask them to boycott the b word is a tough word we don't care about the word you can call it anything as long as it's just you don't go there and that's what we achieved in britain many academics don't go to israel they never say we're boycotting israel they use all kinds of excuses  i have a problem in scheduling you know i have a conference somewhere all can go but they just don't go we call it the silent boycott they don't announce the bucket but they don't cope so we've achieved quite a lot in the mainstream in such a short period just to give you a perspective in comparison in south africa it took them about twenty to twenty five years to achieve what we achieved in four years in palestine it took them a very long time in south africa because people seem to remember the end of the anti apartheid struggle i was at columbia so i was not apartheid movement did achieve divestment but it took a long time for us to convince columbia university to divest south africa a very long time i mean people started in the late seventy's that struggle and we just saw it at the end of the eight so we did go much faster there are many many factors explaining why it went much faster just very briefly the technology south africans did not have the internet or facebook or whatever we used to spread the movement it's extremely conflict and that helps us spread the word around but also many people feel that the injustice that it was committed against the palestinians is so basic it's so anti human that people will not put up with it it is not the most violent country on earth i mean in rwanda they killed hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people in a short period of time so it is not there they don't crush demonstrators as in killing thousands at a time it is much too smart to do that they do in a very short span of time so israel feels it has total impunity it can do everything against us as long as it does it gradually because it has u s support mainly because it has u s support but also western support  the most common argument against media in the west was anti semitism the most common from the beginning of the movement this was the first issue that came out isn't this anti semitic your boycotting israel isn't that like boycotting the jews that reminds us of germany and so on and so forth well there are many many problems in this argument and i think the proponents of the arguments realized just quickly that it's not working really it's not sticking to the movement our movement b d s movement is based on international law europe and in north america have been jewish disproportionately we have a very high percentage of jewish citizens in the leadership not just among the activists of the movement that is doing boycott against israel including some very very famous no so it doesn't work then there's not representing the jews the second most important argument used and now it's used more often is that isn't this counterproductive for the palestinians aren't you guys shooting yourself in the foot because if you isolate israel more it will become even more aggressive and it will hurt you even more and you will suffer much more because financially economically are so dependent on israel and if israel becomes isolated you will be the first to suffer more than the israelis are using it much more often now especially in europe i don't know about the u s but in europe they're using this argument a lot of our main response to this is that first let us decide what's in our benefit because we're mature adults we know what's good for us and we second major union organization is involved in the b d s movement they speak for the palestinian people we don't accept even people in solidarity with palestine to say doesn't that hurt you well we know what hurts us don't speak on our behalf ask s movement but i'll stop here to have a discussion but that's very briefly the history and the principles of the movement thank you he might lead to some change within the u s in the domestic agenda maybe even internationally we're not seeing it yet but maybe maybe on the environment on the u s and on multilateralism and so on i mean it can't get worse than bush but that doesn't say much being better than bush doesn't say much because you're out there real bottom of the humanity so being better than bush doesn't say much but how much better as far as palestinians are concerned we don't know yet because we're not seeing absolutely any change i change unfortunately not at the u n not anywhere how effective are the new technologies like twitter and google are that was the question in promoting b d s very effective very effective let's take the most basic email without email we couldn't exist literally i mean clandestinely in a hidden fax machine and somebody has a basement until it reaches i mean it was ridiculous to get anything out of south africa to the movement outside used to be extremely cumbersome with us it's so much easier i'll give an example the frenc activists go and occupy a shop selling israeli cosmetics company from the dead sea components that manufactured in a settlement in the west bank so they go they don't even occup they march into that store and they hold up the products and they say this is violating international law because it's extracted from the dead sea and they explain to the customers and then nobody buys their you tube it they put it on  minutes within minutes people activists everywhere else are seeing this and they're very inspired within days you see the action repeating itself in scotland in los angeles and and this is happening oh all the time all the time we're seeing this diffusion of information of arguments of activist inspiration sometimes i'll give you another example student activists at n y u occupied a campus building to support the palestinians i guess there's really a question on gaza earlier this year of course there were imitating a similar action in britain and britain more than thirty universities had occupations of buildings demanding divestment from companies selling weapons to israel so many other demands but then we're used to it as did this and they had a twitter connection i had no idea what this twitter connection was i mean i i really do not know anything about twitter but some one of them one of the activists sent me an e mail said it whatever i'll do it and they had the big screen and they gave me the connection i could see them i could see the students so i wrote them myself note of support and they were cheering like i'm seeing them on my computer cheering what i just wrote so that's effectiveness of the stick oh it's amazing i mean the potential is amazing so it has helped us tremendous