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Captain Boycott, and his Israeli friends

By Michael J. Smith on Tuesday June 22, 2010 02:40 PM

Shown above is Captain Charles Boycott, apparently wearing a jacket derived from his Norfolk homeland. The Captain gave his name to a fine old custom, in the course of his work as land agent for Lord Erne, an absentee landlord in the County Mayo, and a right grasping old bugger too, by all accounts.

The Captain has his contemporary friends -- among them Bernard Avishai, Israeli professor, financial finagler, and editor of the Harvard Business Review, whose pissy sour puss is shown at left. Bernie writes in the Nation -- yes, the Nation! -- as follows:

Against Boycott and Divestment

[T]he Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.... will be coming soon to a campus near you.

...professors, students, union activists, etc. torturing logic to depict Israel's faults—which are serious enough to be unique—as "apartheid," while rehearsing the principles of action that arguably worked against South Africa a generation ago.

I say "arguably" because some of apartheid's most courageous critics, who helped to bring about an end to white rule, were opposed to B and D, even when they cautiously favored S.... Tony Bloom, CEO of the South African food processing giant Premier Group... rejected apartheid's foundations... [and was generally wonderful; some eulogy snipped --ed.] Though he eventually moved to London, he continued to transform his conglomerate into a model postapartheid firm.

What Bloom told me in 1987 was that, yes, foreign government sanctions on South African trade made sense in certain cases. But the boycott of South African universities and business people, and especially divestment campaigns against international companies doing business in the country, were seriously counterproductive. Why? Because those actions generally undermined the very people who advanced cosmopolitan values in the country. To get social change, you need social champions, in management as in universities.

This is rich, isn't it? Enlightened corporate honchos like Bloom, and beautiful professorial souls like Avishai -- relatively beautiful, anyway, compared to, say, Bugsy Siegel -- are the folks we have to rely on to vanquish Israeli apartheid.

(Lemma: The Palestinians themselves have no agency in the matter, and need to shut the fuck up and behave themselves while the Blooms and Avishais work their magic.)

This is an awfully familiar argument. It seems to be especially compelling among academics, who know in their bones that they are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, and feel a tender guild solicitude for their brothers of the mortarboard in Fort Zion. For example, a correspondent of mine at a well-known university writes:

[WKU] has a Holocaust Studies Center, founded by the late [famous name], the dean of Holocaust Studies. So an academic boycott would be a particularly hard sell. The current chair of Holocaust Studies has already written complaining how such a boycott would interfere with the work of his center given that many of the scholars are in Israel.
It would certainly be an awful tragedy if some "studies center" were interfered with, and particularly a Holocaust studies center, considering how poorly studied the Holocaust has been.

But of course this is all complete nonsense; boycott or no boycott, people will continue to study history, and use or misuse it to the top of their bent. There is really no fear that the "work" of the Holocaust Studies Center, for what it's worth, will grind to a halt if Israeli academics get the Quaker shunning treatment, or that people will stop scratching their heads about string theory or what have you.

Even if it were interfered with -- thought experiment here -- really, what's the downside? Some splendid monograph appears a few years later than it otherwise might. An Israeli mathematician who might have been first past the post with a proof of Scheisskopf's Conjecture has to content himself with place position. Bernard Avishai has to stay in one spot, instead of dividing his time, academic jet-setter that he is, between the Promised Land and the bosky dells of New Hampshire.

(I have no great love for New Hampshire -- more of a Vermont- and Maine-type guy, myself -- but even so, for New Hampshire's sake, I hope Bernard is enough of a Zionist patriot to choose the Mousehole on the Med, to borrow a phrase from my old pal Lenni Brenner.)

It is gratifying to note that there are people in the world who are more intelligent and more principled than college professors, or The Nation magazine (what were they thinking of, to publish this bolus of reactionary Chamber Of Commerce bromides?).

For a quasi-nautical and quasi-musical guy like me it's particularly nice to see that the honest intelligent stand-up folk include longshoremen and rock musicians:

----------

Sweden to launch weeklong boycott on Israeli ships

Swedish dockworkers are set to launch a weeklong boycott of Israeli ships and goods to protest Monday's raid on a Gaza-destined aid flotilla, a union spokesman said.

----------

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/32579/unite-votes-boycott-israel

Britain's largest union, Unite, has unanimously passed a motion to boycott Israeli companies at its first policy conference in Manchester on Wednesday.

-----------

June 4, 2010 -- At its central executive committee (CEC) meeting Friday, SAMWU unanimously endorsed a motion to immediately work towards every municipality in South Africa to become an Apartheid Israel free zone.

As part of the global Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions Campaign (BDS) SAMWU has agreed to engage every single municipality to ensure that there are no commercial, academic, cultural, sporting or other linkages whatsoever with the Israeli regime. Every SAMWU branch will immediately approach municipal and water authorities to become part of the BDS campaign, and to publicly declare their solidarity with the Palestinian people.

http://links.org.au/node/1725

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http://pitchfork.com/news/39050-pixies-gorillaz-elvis-costello-klaxons-cancel-israel-shows-as-political-protest/

The Associated Press reports (http://www.billboard.com/news/pixies-calls-off-israel-concert-after-gaza-1004095841.story#/news/pixies-calls-off-israel-concert-after-gaza-1004095841.story) that several bands have canceled scheduled concerts in Israel in the wake of international outcry against the country.

Pixies (http://pitchfork.com/artists/3324-pixies/), Gorillaz (http://pitchfork.com/artists/1767-gorillaz/), and Klaxons (http://pitchfork.com/artists/4964-klaxons/) were among the bands scheduled to play Tel Aviv's Pic.Nic festival (http://picnic2010.walla.co.il/) this week, but all three groups have pulled out. According to festival organizers, the cancellations are related to the naval raid, AP reports.

Elvis Costello (http://pitchfork.com/artists/835-elvis-costello/) was also scheduled to play a pair of Israeli shows this summer, but he also pulled out, though he did so before the flotilla raid. On his website, Costello wrote an entry explaining his decision (http://www.elviscostello.com/news/it-is-after-considerable-contemplation/44):

"There are occasions when merely having your name added to a concert schedule may be interpreted as a political act that resonates more than anything that might be sung and it may be assumed that one has no mind for the suffering of the innocent... It is a matter of instinct and conscience."

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Responding to calls by the Palestinian Workers Union and other calls by different workers unions and organizations around the world, the Norwegian Ports Union decided to join its Swedish counterpart in boycotting all Israeli ships starting on June 15.

http://www.imemc.org/article/58917

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*Activists prevent Israeli ship from unloading at US port *

For the first time in US history, a peaceful protest was able to stop workers from unloading an Israeli cargo ship on Sunday, 20 June, in the San Francisco Bay area. From 5:30am until 7pm, social justice activists and labor union organizers blocked and picketed several entrances at the Port of Oakland, preventing two shifts of longshoremen with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) to come to work and unload the Israeli Zim Lines cargo ship.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11348.shtml

Comments (20)

op:

"Israel's faults—which are serious enough to be unique.."

prize catch that line

i couldn't begin to do it
the injustice it deserves

i'll simply picture katrina in my mind
and return to my idling

op:

"he(bloom) continued to transform his conglomerate into a model postapartheid firm."

this bloom cat
he has a nice ring to him no ??

pliable adaptable ready for anything
with a touch of useable empathy
to mask his nudgenomical guile

hank scorpio comes to mind

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/Scorpio_with_Bont.png

" An Israeli mathematician who might have been first past the post with a proof of Scheisskopf's Conjecture has to content himself with place position"

Hmm... yes, the proof of that old Scheisskopf's Conjecture has been bothering me for years.

/snicker

Jayzus, what a goddamn' tool this guy is... and publishing his spew in The Nation, at that. In The Nation! Why am I not surprised?

I'm hearing a lot of whining about not boycotting BP gas stations, too, something about their being independently-owned franchises, and how a boycott would hurt innocent local businesspeople. Cripes, man, give me a big, fat break. The muthafuckas are making money off of BP, and BP is making money off of them. Why the hell shouldn't they be made to suffer? Stop me if I'm wrong, but weren't the lunch counters targeted by SNCC also locally-owned businesses?

Augh. What a goddamn' dork.

Aaron:

@ Drunk Pundit:

Right, because the only thing Israeli universities do is come up with mathematical proofs and publish treatises on the Holocaust.

"Right, because the only thing Israeli universities do is come up with mathematical proofs and publish treatises on the Holocaust"

I know... I'm such a Scheisskopf!!!

Aaron:

@DrunkPundit:


lulz, you called yourself a "shithead"…..

MJS:
the only thing Israeli universities do is come up with mathematical proofs and publish treatises on the Holocaust.
This is very unfair to Israeli universities. There's also all the military and snoopmeister research, and all the bogus archaeological discoveries.

But even so -- even granted that the Israeli universities are shining beacons of brilliant disinterested scholarship -- even though they eclipse Oxford and Cambridge and the Sorbonne and Padua and Bologna and Heidelberg and Tubingen and New College, Sarasota, Florida, put together -- I would still cheerfully put 'em in an isolation booth, if I could push a button and make that happen, and resign myself to doing without their matchless intellectual glories for a few years, until their awful little country resigns itself to acting halfway civilized.


@ Aaron

Um... yes, I did call myself a shit head. Because I am.

You on the other hand appeared to think that I was implying that "the only thing Israeli universities do is come up with mathematical proofs and publish treatises on the Holocaust", when all I really did was get a laugh out of MJS's "Scheisskopf Conjecture".

See, I'm not only a shit head but I'm also easily entertained.

Boink:

Jerusalem is to the historical David as Anaheim is to the historical Belle au Bois Dormant.

op:

mike most of their oil comes from other refiners
the gas retail game is much more complexly interlaced with the refiners then you might think

i'd simply occupy noram hq wherever the fuck that is and send a flying squad over to britain to besiege international hq
concentrated numbers baby
and maybe some psycho brit
skin head reaction
too
agitation as u know only to well flugnutz
is an art
a piece of theatre
performed at the same level of precision
as a parking lot portrait of nixon
drawn in seconds
out of pre set exploding paint cans

op:

"great corporations, like great universities, are teaching institutions. Bloom thought foreign, technology-heavy corporations were especially important breakers of apartheid taboos, bringing what might be called scientific doubt.... had they been forced to pull out by their shareholders, it would have been a disaster for him and others devoted to reform."

this in the Nation

my land

why such craven pandering
gives
tom hayden a bad name

op:

"Who gains from economic decline and the inevitable consequence of most educated Israelis fleeing to, well, the Bay Area?"

everyone who isn't a rabid zionic settler


thesis :
don't tread on global hi tech israel
vessel of humanity
just to spite greater israel

kick the prog you help the trog

stop me before i appease again

op:

obviously global israel virtual wanderers i guess
really ought to move to the bay area
or the back bay

we bostonians
could use many more bright sevelt
militarily trained women
walking the streets of bean town

MJS:

I see I've awakened the sleeping, or rather anesthetized, anti-Zionist beast in OP. Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck. I knew that picture of Bernard Avishai would do the trick.

CF Oxtrot:

Yahweh Krust!

Avishai looks like Ira Kaplan + 10 years older. Bet he can't play guitar or keyboard, or write a tune, half as well as Ira. And that dour face shows he probably lacks 85% (at least) of Ira K's wit.

There's a girl with Cherry Chapstick on, and nothing more!

"...until their awful little country resigns itself to acting halfway civilized."

You're going to need to put them in one of Vinge's Bubbles, then.

op:


what revived the beast
was the prospect of more fine zionist
warriors
like my mimi
walking among us fizzled yanks


http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_IGxSpHS7KAs/SpKN8-1yIpI/AAAAAAAAAtM/MgvnYzV-EQ8/s400/mimi-rogers-1.jpg

op:

take em out of there
but bring em to me

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