Why boycott Israel?
Israel is distinguished from other nations in the following ways that justify a boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign:
From the website of USACBI:
http://usacbi.wordpress.com/faqs/
a) Israel is the largest recipient of US aid and weapons, receiving currently about $3 billion per year. It uses US weapons and aid in the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including not only the use of weapons like white phosphorous or cluster bombs against civilians, as in Lebanon in 1982 and 2006 and in Gaza in 2009, but also such daily offenses as collective punishment, systematic torture, and, indeed, the extended occupation of Palestinian territory.
b) Israel has violated more United Nations resolutions than any other country in the world, and has been consistently protected by the US’s Security Council veto power from any attempt to enforce those resolutions.
c) Israel is institutionally racist. It engages in ethnic cleansing or “population transfer” and policies that conform to international definitions of apartheid for the sake of territorial expansion. In practical terms, “Jewishness” is a racial identification in Israel. Israel defines “Jewishness” partially in genetic terms: a person is legally Jewish if his or her mother is Jewish, regardless of place of birth or religious belief. Its “Basic Law” recognizes two categories, citizenship (ezrahut), which is available to Jews and non-Jews, and “nationality” (le’om), which is only available to those of Jewish descent. It is nationality that guarantees innumerable discriminatory laws that benefit Jewish Israelis and disadvantage Arabs. Zionism is a program of supposed or purported racial purity and territorial acquisition. It is a nineteenth century nationalist ideology, analogous to the 19th century US ideology of Manifest Destiny, as a program for territorial acquisition by the white “Christian nation.” Insofar as it underlies a racially discriminatory system of rule, Zionism should not be accepted by the rest of the world as a legitimate form of social organization.
d) Criticism and open discussion of Israel in the US is suppressed, and critics are aggressively silenced and censored. Public servants and politicians who criticize Israel are subject to virtual witch-hunts by what Charles Freeman has described as “a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East” and whose tactics “include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth.” Academics who attempt criticism of Israel face similar campaigns of distortion, intimidation, and threats of termination, and/or denial or loss of tenure. Israel is the ONLY country that cannot be criticized openly in the US and on university campuses without dire consequences. A boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign is a logical response to censorship and a nonviolent form of opposition to the lock-down on open discussion of Israel and Palestine in the United States.