An Interview with Dr. Simona Sharoni – The Case for Boycott

May 20, 2015

As critical as I think I have been and am of Israel, and as I think is perceived of me, the term “BDS” and boycott in relations to Israel have at most times seemed outlandish to me. If questioned about my stance vis-à-vis the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement, I have always respected anyone supporting this movement. However I have not supported it myself, although I have always fully supported the principles of the movement, if they were to apply to the settlements only.

I still have a lot to learn about this conflict, and as one of the motives of this blog, I want to break some barriers. I am curious. I want to learn. I would like to understand the motives, the ideologies, the background of individuals and especially of those, whose principles and ideologies I think I don’t adhere to.

In the months leading up to the Israeli elections and also in the time following the elections, my thoughts about this conflict, this region and Israeli society became filled with even higher levels of frustration, sadness mixed with anger, levels which I did not think could surpass my former frustrations.

One of the first sentences that popped into my mind, and which I confidently blurted out to friends and family members following the exposing of the elections’ results was: “Everyone around the world, please feel free to boycott anything Israeli!” Perhaps never too good to rely on your decision-making and thoughts when in anger and when frustrated, but my curiosity vis-à-vis the BDS movement grew over some time and not just in that specific moment.

Still not sure of whether I myself support it entirely. But I am curious and want to understand what has incited others to fully support this movement, especially from those who deem to be supporting the well-being of both sides to this conflict, not only the Palestinians but also to create a healthier (in all its definitions) future for the Israelis.

Too often the BDS movement for me has seemed like a perfect playground for global inciters of extreme hatred towards Israelis (and sometimes even Jews). That has been the image that I often have retained of BDS.

However, on the other hand, there are people who seek to do their very best to turn this “Holy Land” into a better land for people from both sides, the Palestinians and the Israelis, who have been involved in what one very confidently could term a protracted conflict. They deem that the best and most effective way to reach those goals is via supporting the BDS movement.

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Simona Sharoni is a feminist scholar, researcher and activist. She is Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the State University of New York in Plattsburgh [full biography at the end of post]. Her name is one that has covered the list of sources used for quite a few of my essays written during the time of my Bachelor and my Masters when writing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as it become impossible for me to not write about it from a gender perspective.

Simona Sharoni is also a vanguard supporter of the BDS movement. Being in awe of the work that she has written, and all the work that she does now, which her biography will explain in more details, I interviewed her in order to understand her motives for supporting this movement and to get a better understanding of what would incite someone with strong ties to Israel to make this decision. Perhaps it will influence my own personal decision on this matter as well.

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Interview

When did you begin being supportive of the BDS movement or of what led to it and the general concept of boycotting ties- and relations with Israel worldwide?

I made reference to analogies between the Apartheid in South Africa and Israeli Apartheid for at least two decades, long before the BDS movement came onto the scene. In March 2003, after my student Rachel Corrie was crushed to death in Rafah by an Israeli bulldozer, I reached the conclusion that new strategies need to be employed to hold the Israeli government and military accountable. So, when Palestinian civil society issued its call to the international community to join the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign, I was more than ready.

When did you begin being active within this field, if acting upon this support came at a later stage?

I’ve been involved in solidarity work with Palestinians since the first intifada. Joining the BDS movement was an extension of my solidarity work.

Assuming that the process of choosing to be supportive of boycott was gradual, was there a specific moment that made you realize that this was the direction you wanted/had to/needed to go towards?

Supporting BDS and educating people about it is one aspect of the education and advocacy work I have been involved for more than three decades. Though my support for BDS was not gradual in that I fully endorsed the campaign, including the academic and cultural boycott right away, the escalating crisis for Palestinians and the move of Israeli society to the right have convinced me that for now, BDS is the most likely avenue toward a just and lasting peace in Israel and Palestine.

In general terms and in a few sentences, why do you support the BDS movement?

As a daughter of a Holocaust survivor I interpret the slogan “Never Again” as applying to everybody, especially Palestinians, who unfortunately became the victims of the victims.  BDS is a solidarity movement with the oppressed; it is designed to make the oppressors realize that inflicting pain on others can be costly, that our futures are intertwined, that there cannot be business as usual in Israel while Palestinians in Gaza struggle to survive in an open-air prison.  Lately my main motivation, as an Israeli-Jewish feminist activist and scholar is to support the movement of Boycott from Within and convince Israeli-Jews that joining this movement is a viable option.

And now, going into details: Why the BDS movements? What are your motives? What is your reasoning behind this conscious decision?

BDS appealed to me because it is an international movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people and offers people around the world concrete strategies to be part of the struggle for justice and peace in Israel and Palestine.  It is also important to note that BDS is a nonviolent movement, reflecting nonviolent strategies that have been used successfully in other situations, most notably in South Africa.  For me the success of the BDS movement will usher in a real peace process that would result in a just solution to the conflict, not something that looks like the Oslo Accords.

You have yourself lived in Israel for quite a few years, and you have a connection to this country. For someone who do not know you personally, your choice to support the BDS movement may appear to show a form of antagonism towards Israel and to support the demise of the Israelis in some ways. How do you justify your decision to support the movement in relations to (assumingly) yearning for the increased well-being of the Israelis as well (alongside the well-being of the Palestinians evidently)?

I lived in Israel for 27 years (from the age of 2 through 29), was educated there, served in the Israeli military and completed both my undergraduate and graduate degrees at Haifa University. All my family resides in Israel.  When we founded Women in Black during the first intifada we were called “traitors,” and accused of caring more for Palestinians than for our fellow Israeli-Jews, so the accusation that those of us who support BDS don’t care about the wellbeing of Israelis is nothing new. The BDS movement targets Israel as a regime, as a system that has been oppressive to generations of Palestinians and has gotten away with numerous violations of international laws and conventions. The support for BDS is a call for accountability. Israeli-Jews will be more secure and accepted around the world if Israel ended its occupation and grave human rights violations. There were numerous efforts, both diplomatic and at the grassroots level, to advocate a just and lasting solution to the conflict.  Sadly, the Israeli peace movement has dwindled and following the attack on Gaza this summer and the increased racism in Israel, BDS seems the only viable option to change the status quo.  I support BDS because it is the JUST thing to do at this point. If my support for BDS is perceived as choosing sides then I should clarify that I don’t side with Palestinians against Israeli-Jews. Instead, I choose to be on the side of justice rather than accept injustice as an inevitable reality. This is a similar position to that of white South Africans during the Apartheid era. Thinking about that struggle, I draw inspiration and hope from an anecdote relayed to me by a colleague who visited South Africa a year after the end of Apartheid. As he traveled the country, he could not find one white person who admitted to have supported the Apartheid system in the past. In only a year, Afrikaners realized that they too have benefited from the end of that unjust system. My hope is that this would be the case in Israel as well.

Why, in your opinion, is boycotting, divesting and sanctions a better and more effective way of reaching peace between Israel and Palestine, in whichever way peace will be reached here (if ever) than projects based on reconciliation and dialogue between the two sides? Or do you support these projects as well while supporting boycott at the same time?

I was involved for a decade in Israel (in the 1980s) in an array of conflict resolution and reconciliation projects based on dialogue. Right now, such projects, devoid of a critical political analysis that recognizes the asymmetry of the conflict simply perpetuate the existing situation.

Do you believe in a two-state, one-state solution or in a third way in this region? Please explain your choice.

A two state solution is no more viable as there is no contiguous Palestinian territory where a Palestinian state can be established. Personally as an anti-racist feminist, I would like to see one state: secular democratic. However, for that to happen the occupation must end and Israel must first become a state of ALL its citizens rather than continue to privilege its Jewish citizens and discriminate against non-Jews.

I sometimes believe that the BDS movement does more harm than hurt, because it may put Israel and Israelis into a corner making them more suspicious and antagonist vis-à-vis the outside world and as such act in a more selfish way than ever in a “the whole world is against us, so we will do whatever we please” sense. What do you say about that?

I grew up with this mentality. It’s a defense mechanism, used to silence dissent and calls for accountability. This is why Israel has been held to a different standard than other rouge states.  Can the situation in Israel get any worse?! I believe that if the movement continues to gain momentum, more Israelis will recognize that they have much to loss from the continuation of the status quo and a lot to gain if it changes.

What is your perfect end-result, should the BDS movement manage to achieve what it seeks to achieve? What would happen here, for the Palestinians, the Israelis and the whole situation in general?

I sometimes believe that the BDS movement does more harm than hurt, because it may put Israel and Israelis into a corner making them more suspicious and antagonist vis-à-vis the outside world and as such act in a more selfish way than ever in a “the whole world is against us, so we will do whatever we please” sense. What do you say about that?

I grew up with this mentality. It’s a defense mechanism, used to silence dissent and calls for accountability. This is why Israel has been held to a different standard than other rouge states.  Can the situation in Israel get any worse?! I believe that if the movement continues to gain momentum, more Israelis will recognize that they have much to loss from the continuation of the status quo and a lot to gain if it changes.

What is your perfect end-result, should the BDS movement manage to achieve what it seeks to achieve? What would happen here, for the Palestinians, the Israelis and the whole situation in general?

The goal is to end the Apartheid-like policies in Israel (towards Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship) and in the West Bank and its illegal control and violent attacks of Gaza. Ideally, the Israeli government will be forced to negotiate a real peace agreement with Palestinians, addressing the root causes of the conflict. If current leaders are not willing or able to do so, they should be forced down before they cause more damage. I also envision a truth and reconciliation commission that would deal with crimes against humanity and the toll of the conflict.

To this date, you have written a lot of works about gender, including the role of gender and women with regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Does this in some way correlate with your opinions- and actions with regards to boycott?

Absolutely. I believe that at its core BDS is a feminist strategy and an example of feminist solidarity.  My understanding of feminism is rooted in an analysis of multiple and intersecting oppressions as the basis for cross-community and transnational solidarity. BDS provides a strategy, a coherent discourse and radical platform for action. It is an example of feminist praxis. Moreover, the BDS movement has provided feminists and other activists in Palestine, Israel, and worldwide with a clear vision and manifold opportunities to mobilize the international community to confront Israeli apartheid and to join the struggle to bring about a just and lasting resolution of the conflict. BDS calls the bluff of Israeli propaganda that has portrayed Israel as a heaven for women and the LGBT community. It makes clear that one cannot reach gender equality and fight for social justice for particular constituencies while the structures of military occupation and Zionist colonization are taken for granted. We will not be able to get any closer to a just and lasting peace in the region as long as Israel is allowed to get away with granting democratic rights only to (some) of its Jewish citizens. Feminists should realize that there is a serious contradiction between Zionism and feminism and that it would be impossible for us to achieve equal rights in a militarized country, which had been denying basic rights to Palestinians (both inside Israel and in the Occupied Territories) for more than half a century.

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Full Biography:

Simona Sharoni is a feminist scholar, researcher and activist. She is Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the State University of New York in Plattsburgh. Sharoni holds a Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University and MA and BA degrees in Counseling and Special Education from Haifa University, Israel. Prior to joining SUNY Plattsburgh, she taught at the Evergreen State College in Olympia Washington and at American University in Washington DC. She also held semester long distinguished scholar appointments at the University of Oregon and the University of Cincinnati.

Sharoni, a daughter of a Holocaust survivor, emigrated with her family to Israel at the age of two and lived the first 27 years of her life in Nazareth Elit, Israel. She served in the Israeli military and was a founding member of Kibbutz Tuval in the Western Galilee. She also worked for ten years coordinating and facilitating encounter groups between Israeli-Jews and Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship with various organizations in Israel. There she is a founding member of Women in Black and active in a number of women and other peace organizations, which have struggled to end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. She has also been involved in solidarity work with Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and in the Diaspora.

Dr. Sharoni’s research and writing have included a comparative analysis of gender dynamics in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and in the North of Ireland as well as a critical examination of militarization and masculinities and especially the interplay between political violence and gender-based violence.  She is the author of Gender and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Politics of Women’s Resistance and more than 50 refereed articles and book chapters and numerous other publications. She is currently completing a manuscript titled Gender, Resistance and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (1994-2014).

A former co-chair of the Board of Directors of the Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA) and its founding Executive Director, Dr. Sharoni has played a key role in advocating for the centrality of feminist perspectives to peacebuilding and conflict resolution. Sharoni is also a founding member of the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Section (FTGS) at the International Studies Association (ISA), a co-editor of a book series Gender, Culture and Politics in the Middle East that has been in existence for over two decades and a member of the Editorial Board of the International Feminist Journal of Politics (IFJP). Recently she was the co-founder of Faculty Against Rape (FAR), a newly founded national organization advocating for an increased role of faculty in the struggle to confront sexual assault on college campuses.

From: Sorte Sarah fra Sahara / Sarah Arnd Linder (Blog)