The arguments raised against the possibility of a boycott of the Turin Book Fair are the most varied and stem from considerations of morality, expediency and effectiveness of such an instrument.
first need to distinguish between boycott and censorship. The boycott is institutional, that is what is targeted is the decision of an institution (such as Book Fair) to celebrate an event (60 years after the birth of the State of Israel), controversial and provocative, because offensive to an entire people, the who had to make room for the violence of the new state. Censorship, however, affects people, individual intellectuals who express personal ideas, perhaps even unpopular, but with every right to do so. The boycott does not intend to remove the right of expression but to the person objects to the exploitation of another end in sight (which is not cultural but political propaganda or otherwise). The same things that Israeli writers intend to say in the context of celebration of the fair, they could say in the next room, before the same audience, but without directly or indirectly contribute to the celebratory event that benefits only the image of Israel and of its current government. Opposing the boycott groped means to avoid the debate and contribute to maintaining the status quo. Every opportunity which excites the debate, were rather controversial, thus helping the cause of peace.
The boycott is morally justifiable?
When the boycott of a state becomes morally justifiable?
When the State has expelled and forced to abandon their land, the majority of the population, denying them internationally recognized rights to return to their homes? Israel did it.
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When has expropriated thousands of homes without compensating landlords now refugees in conditions that are often subhuman? Israel did it.
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When he systematically tortured prisoners, many of them detained without trial? Israel did it.
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When he murdered his opponents (by executing death sentences without trial), including those living in occupied territory? Israel did it.
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When he demolished thousands of houses belonging to another people and settled hundreds of thousands of its citizens (450,000 in 149 settlements) in the land of that people, uprooting olive trees centenarians? Israel did it.
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When has militarily occupied territories of others as the West Bank, Gaza and part of Syria in violation of international law? Israel did it.
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When he built a separation barrier with the territory of another nation not respecting international borders, but subtracting land, crops, separating families each other in the neighboring country? Israel did it.
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When he violated the law International and arrogantly ignored dozens of resolutions condemning the United Nations? Israel did it.
No country with similar responsibilities in protesting against it may be boycotted. The neighborhood of Beverly Hills is mobilizing to impose sanctions on Iran without the latter's never attacked or occupied its neighbors, but only because he was suspected of aspiring to the same nuclear weapons that Israel possesses a number of at least one hundred titles. In 1991 the international community went to war against Iraq, then also subjected to 10 years of economic sanctions (which caused almost a million dead, many of whom children without arousing much protest), for having invaded Kuwait. Israel is illegally occupying Palestine for 40 years and part of Syria, but no one thinks it must invade or subject to penalties.
I wonder how many of those who ardently condemn the idea to boycott an event which celebrates the birth of the State of Israel, an event that inevitably contribute to the acceptance of the status quo and the normalization of Israel's colonial policy, have visited the occupied Palestinian territory, its inhabitants and have encountered firsthand the conditions of the Palestinian people, also documented from various sources about what happened in that region in 1948 and beyond. In other words, how many really know the facts, according to some, also necessitates a hateful and extreme as the boycott?
In the language of international humanitarian law, neutrality means not siding with any party, or take no position as to the correctness or validity of a particular case. Fairness means treating the contenders in the same way, using the same evaluation criteria to evaluate the actions of both parties offer no benefits to either party. In the case of the Palestinian question is difficult to be consistent with these principles, and the behavior of the international community is a clear example. However, if one part impartiality can be seen as a realistic goal to be achieved, the other the principle of neutrality shows all its limits.
The most shocking reality that meets those who must move in the TPO and that forces anyone to assist you in taking a position are the checkpoint. It 'so hard a time with seemingly benign convey the full horror of such a place. Never seen a fence chock full of animals with a single exit gate controlled by a shepherd armed with a stick? Well, the minister put in place an Israeli soldier with a rifle and, instead of animals, the Palestinians. Code, sometimes very long in the hot sun or rain, where one by one, people show the documents, is questioned, someone is passed, someone else sent back, depending on the mood of the soldier. Screaming, shoving, women and children crying, humiliated men face tense. The explanation that these checkpoints serve to security is an obvious lie: it is situated between Palestinian towns and villages and between Palestine and Israel.
From 2002 to April 2007, 68 women were forced to give birth at a checkpoint, 4 of them and 34 babies have died http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit / 68births.html . Many of the children born in such conditions have suffered severe brain damage. Imagine the humiliation of a husband or son, powerless in front of his wife or his mother, forced to endure the pain of childbirth outside, armed with a callow soldier who assists indifferent, and perhaps you can understand how suicide bombers are born .
There is a group of Israeli women http://www.machsomwatch.org/en who spend whole days to check how they behave those who might be their children, grandchildren or siblings Israeli military. Equipped with portable seats, in the morning going to the checkpoint assigned, sit and observe quietly. Most of the time the young soldiers, clearly embarrassed and afraid of being rebuked by these courageous women, taking a conciliatory behavior with people waiting in line.
Since 1967 Israel has demolished 18,000 homes, often on the heads of its occupants ( http://www.icahd.org/eng ). The reason given? Safety. The truth is that if a Palestinian owns a piece of land to build or extend an existing dwelling to ask a question of the cost of $ 20,000, and then always rejected, if the family grows, she is forced to build without a permit. Then comes the bulldozer. The Palestinians, after the damage, they must also suffer the insult of having to remove the debris themselves and the Israeli Government to pay the cost of demolition.
not boycott culture!
One of the crucial points of debate is that culture is a symbolic of the few places where you can true dialogue and constructive. Academic freedom and free speech, it is argued, may represent the Israeli intellectuals for the strength to press Change of Israeli politics and thus to end the occupation of Palestinian territory.
What is not said, however, is that without real freedom of speech for Palestinian intellectuals and without freedom of education of Palestinian students can not conceive of a constructive dialogue that leads to a long-term solution of conflict. If freedom of expression and education means anything, must apply to everyone.
No one has ever protested against the violation of academic freedom, study, speech perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian universities and schools. In Gaza, 200,000 students have started this school year without textbooks because Israel maintains that this strip of land in the open-air prison conditions, such as paper and ink is not considered "fundamental human rights." No defender of Israel, not even his most progressive intellectuals have protested for the rights of Palestinian children to culture.
under Israeli occupation, all 11 Palestinian universities were closed at different times, that of Birzeit University for four years from 1988 to 1992, to Hebron for 8 months in 2003. The University of Tel Aviv is located on what was a Palestinian village, Muwannis Sheikh, whose inhabitants were expelled by Jewish militias in March 1948 and are denied the right to return to their homes. The Hebrew University in Jerusalem occupies over three acres of land illegally expropriated private Palestinian citizens after the 1967 war. The Bar Ilan University has a campus in illegal settlements in the West Bank. The same applies to the University of Ariel inside the barrier built by Israel (and not along the border) of Palestinian territory lies on the Israeli side and then decreed the next inevitable incorporation into Israel. This university accepts international students who are only Jews.
Since 2000 185 Palestinian schools have been bombed and dozens of professors and students injured, killed or arrested. Over 500 checkpoints and roadblocks, along with a complicated system of permits needed to be able to move, block access to schools and universities for students and teachers. This also means that students are limited in their choices of courses and teaching institutions to attend. The obstacles placed by the procedures necessary to be able to study or work in Palestinian universities are often huge and insurmountable. The systematic obstruction of Palestinian education system not only violates the human rights of those involved but also undermines the roots of the possibility of development of Palestinian society as a whole. And so, as Israeli academics and politicians are engaged in mobilizing the world to protect freedom of speech of their intellectual and other academic institutions, academic researchers and students who seek to exercise their freedom of speech and of the study are in fact boycotted and are prevented from doing so.
Freedom of speech for intellectuals, freedom of movement of culture is a crucial value for the development and growth as human beings to defend with force. But it is not an absolute value taking precedence over everything else, has nothing sacred or otherwise inherently superior to the other freedoms. And anyway, is always accompanied by the duty to respect the other freedoms. The values \u200b\u200bof life and human dignity are the ultimate goals and sometimes can not be completely compatible with full academic freedom.
Freedom of speech is also limited in practice not only when trying to pass off the criticism of Israeli government policy as an anti-Semite, but also with the use of instruments of pressure and conditioning more veiled but not less violent as personally threatening phone calls received by the writer. The accusation of anti-Semitism at those who criticize Israel is absurd and offensive, and assumes an identity of interests between the Government of Israel and all Jews of the world. This is clearly false: there are countless groups and Jewish organizations strongly critical of the Israeli occupation and in favor of the boycott.
Who is the tool against the boycott, but acknowledges the violence of occupation and the profound injustice which the Palestinian people is subjected by Israel has a moral duty to indicate an alternative that is as feared, and then potentially very effective to change the behavior of those who are made subject. In 2005, Palestinian civil society has launched a campaign international boycott, divestment and sanctions as a tool for non-violent pressure that Israel respect international law. Dozens of religious, civic, Jewish and Palestinian secular organizations, governmental and non-governmental organizations and universities have been active and are working in this direction.
Why Israel? Why pick on just with Israel when there are so many other governments that should be punished?
The tactic of the boycott is based not only on a question of principle but also on strategic considerations: Israel (as at the time South Africa) aims to be seen as part Western to be accepted but must comply with international rules. You can not have two weights and two measures. Israel cares about its public image and order has created a dense network of economic and cultural relations in the West. In this sense did not mean boycotting of third world dictators and regimes (such as Pol Pot), because certainly not interested in being accepted into the civil forum.
Israel presents itself as the bastion of democracy in the Middle East, the defender of Western civilization in the face of the increasing horde of Islamic fundamentalism and the alleged inevitable clash of civilizations. Israel is a shining example of enterprise and ingenuity, discipline, courage, willpower, determination and so on. It 'was the last victim of the last people, the noblest, the one who suffered longer, the most persecuted, the most intelligent, the Chosen by God then Israel can not be judged on more than one standard any other state since it presents the world with these credentials are accepted without question by crowds of fascinated generations. Israel has managed to escape to fierce criticism that the countries considered equally famous bastions of civilization and have instead agreed to recognize: the U.S. for the massacre of My Lai and the Vietnam War, Germany for the Nazis, France for torture in Algeria. Of these countries, we can ask: What went wrong? How did it happen that they come about? With Israel no, you can not. The atrocities of which we have evidence (from the violent expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their land with massacres such as Deir Yassin in 1948, to terrorist acts like the slaughter of the King David Hotel in 1946 made by the future prime minister Menachem Begin) belong to normal, the tradition to which Israel is based and which is fair.
Only Israel can defy with impunity whenever the United Nations, the global forum established to regulate its members, and refuse to obey with its resolutions. Israel has the capacity to prevent and silence any criticism: not just bombing "targeted" with many collateral victims, ambulances hit or blocked, fruit trees and olive trees uprooted, destroyed, sewers, curfews lasting weeks, roadblocks with food left rot, five times more water allocated to the settlers illegally established on Palestinian land that the Palestinians that the land has been confiscated, attacks on hospitals, schools and universities.
against its allies, it does not even pretend the retention of a minimum of embarrassment. In fact, it almost seems to try to humiliate those satisfaction 'Stupid American' and the entire West, saying: "We know that you do not like what we do not give a damn because we do not conform to the your own rules. The rules we do for others "(M. Neumann, Counterpunch, July 6, 2002). Israel is protected by a steel shield of impunity that has not only meant that the U.S. government has vetoed 41 resolutions condemning the Security Council (half of all used by the U.S. veto at the UN) but also that the President Bush has announced an increase in military aid to Israel up to $ 30 billion over the next 10 years.
It is now clear that the objective Israel is making Palestine a Jewish state with a presence as possible of the Palestinian population problem as a major concern of the current Israeli leadership. Hence the ever more explicit policy of ethnic cleansing carried out by Israel. The message proposed to run from the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe is that jew "in the XXI century a state that is based on this ideology can not be accepted as a member of the community of civilized nations. The boycott is the best non-violent, to send out the message that we recognize this ideological infrastructure of the Israeli state. "Just as had happened with apartheid South Africa.
The boycott tactic is a simple, non-violent weapon available to individual members of civil society. It 's just a form of protest, many of those who adopt are also active in other campaigns and movements against war, against the unethical practices of multinationals, against the death penalty. No one asks those campaigning against the occupation of Tibet by China, "why not Israel?" Nor deny that Israel participates in the boycott of Cuba The question then is not so much "Why focus on Israel when other governments deserve to be boycotted? "but" Why Israel is not it? "Other countries are currently subject to boycott (Cuba) and others were (Iraq) without the adverse effects caused too have broken the international community. The tool of the boycott, economic sanctions and other equipment is also included (Art 41 UN Charter) in the way that member states of the United Nations at their disposal to take action against those who violate international law.
The tactic of the boycott has the great merit of being non-violent and provide a way in which each of us, even the most gentle and timid person may express a moral commitment. The immediate effect of this mobilization has on the individual involved is no less important than its actual effect on the case itself (to change policy to the government of Israel) will take a long time to succeed. The boycott is an instrument inevitably divisive, cruel and that charges costs to those who do not deserve to be punished. Maybe they should the same Israeli intellectuals invited to Turin to make the choice not to accept being exploited to celebrate an event that if a party has given a land to a people, the other has been the catastrophe of another people. In this way they would make the best service to freedom of culture of all.
dismiss as anti-Semitism the critique of colonial and racist policies of Israel is a meanness which shows the inability to face facts and ideas. Such an attitude also ends up deeply devalue the very meaning of anti-Semitism in this powerful term to be reserved only to those who show contempt and prejudice against Jews as a group and as individuals, wherever they live, not because of what they do but for what am. The abuse of this word brings dangerously to the progressive dilution of its meaning and its symbolic power explosive.
Why not invite Palestinian intellectuals?
The objective conditions of "occupier" and "busy", and the obvious asymmetry between Israel and Palestine in terms of socio-economic power in the international community, media penetration and impact of events on world opinion (compare the noise that follows a journalist dead Israel killed over a Palestinian Authority), also make it problematic reconciliation efforts between the two sides that some propose. These attempts are usually built on the premise that, by facilitating joint action in key areas, such as cultural, health or social, you can create an independent channel of dialogue that leads to greater mutual understanding. Against such an approach and 'siding a large part of Palestinian society accusing its promoters, however well intentioned, do not know to discern the ambiguity and hypocrisy inherent in external initiatives that seek to offer solutions to problems created Israeli occupation, which do not reflect the priorities of the supposed beneficiaries, who do not take into account the guilty indifference of the scientific and cultural Israeli, and claiming to be apolitical when in fact most of the benefits in terms of image and power ends inevitably only be made to one of the contenders.
Those who suggest the possibility of a rapprochement not conditional on the common respect for international humanitarian law and human rights and the recognition of equal humanity are either naive or dishonest. If such equality does not pre-exist, and report any interaction is reduced to simply an exercise in asymmetrical negotiations between oppressor and oppressed. The mutual recognition of equal dignity of both parties have to be a necessary pre-condition for dialogue and not a consequence of it. It is not doing justice to the Palestinians ask to pay in advance the "political price" to sit at the table in terms of "moral equivalence" magnanimous in return for recognition by Israel of a skimpy set of "rights" (such as permission to pass a checkpoint, or going to school).
Conclusion
Many, many (no doubt many more than those who have the courage to expose themselves publicly and say their opinion) recognize the seriousness of the violations of international law by Israel. The challenge now is to do something that has an effect in practice, which shifts the deadlock in which we live. Only the pressure that Israel fears so that he could not disguise the fear of suffer them (ie those that put in crisis its membership of the forum of "civilization" west) can achieve this outcome.
The facts and numbers here recounted, though seldom mentioned by the most common media, are in the public domain and easily accessible. To those who, while sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, oppose the boycott address the following question: What would you do for the Palestinians, boycotted and left to themselves for so long by the world?
all know the reality, although many try to mystify. Hamas has suffered a coup by Fatah. The Bush administration and Israel are responsible for what happened. There is evidence of support for Fatah to overthrow the result of the polls against us. In another context, it should go to court because those responsible are punished. Instead, the coup took place, dividing the population and tightening the siege on Gaza. Now the situation is one we all know and have daily contact. It is not easy, because international pressure does not facilitate an agreement, but at least in Gaza has resumed dialogue between us and Fatah, because there are many Fatah fighters who have joined the resistance. The political divisions are overshadowed because our people ask us to stop this massacre. I will never share the political vision of Abbas, flat line across the Egyptian therefore more interested in western priority to those Palestinians, but offers a truce to the civilian population. Now this is the priority and Fatah and Hamas knows it. 
do not know, because people in the West Bank have been denied the right to demonstrate freely. Only a few people, very controlled. Many were arrested and threatened, even tear gas were used against the demonstrations of solidarity with the civilian population of Gaza. But it will not last long. If this continues massacre, the population will rise. Even against Fatah. 
and light on your newspapers tomorrow, it is impossible to any peace process, Israelis, unfortunately, do not have someone to talk to. And indeed - but how could they ever have and, entrenched behind the eight-meter concrete wall? And above all - why should it, if the Road Map is just another weapon of mass distraction for international public opinion? Four pages referred to us for example, are asked to stop terrorist attacks, and in return, they say, Israel will not take any action which could undermine confidence between the parties, such as - quote - attacks against civilians. Assassinate civilians undermines confidence, undermines the right, is a war crime not a matter of courtesy. And if it is an Annapolis peace process, while the only map that proceeds the meantime, here are the lands confiscated, olive trees flattened houses demolished, the settlements expanded - so why is not the peace process, the Saudi proposal? The end of employment, in exchange for recognition by all Arab states. We can have if only a sign of reaction? Someone there to hear the case, on the other side of the wall? 