In June 2013 more than 100 activists gathered in Auckland for a weekend conference of discussions and debates that led to the formation of the Aotearoa Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions network. This was the first national Palestine conference in Aotearoa for more than 20 years. The sense of unity and purpose the call for BDS sent out energised Palestine solidarity campaigners.
If the conference was the theory, a picket in Wellington on 22 February was the practice: 60 protesters, some of whom had travelled from Auckland, demonstrated outside a performance by the dance troupe Batsheva, part of the New Zealand Festival running through February.
Batsheva, which is funded by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and which was sponsored at the Festival by the Embassy of Israel is, in the words of Israel’s Foreign Affairs ministry, “the best known global ambassador of Israeli culture.” Their presence in the Festival was part of a campaign by the Israeli state to enhance Israel’s public image. As the Aotearoa BDS Network noted, “this is part of a deliberate strategy of using arts and culture to whitewash Israel’s human rights abuses and violations of international law”.
Israeli apartheid is a particularly charged topic in this country, given the importance of boycott of South African rugby in the anti-apartheid movement in the 1970s and 80s. John Minto, a veteran of that movement, made the obvious comparison between Israel and South African apartheid during the Batsheva picket, to the feigned outrage of the 40 pro-Israel counter-picketers who had gathered to support the performance.
These counter-protesters, many of whom had been bussed in by evangelical protestant churches, obviously hoped they could discredit the Palestinian cause by smearing it as anti-Semitic and as “racist lies”. No such luck – between 5 and 10 people decided not to attend the performance after talking with BDS picketers. We came away feeling inspired for further protest in favour of boycott, divestments and sanctions.
The International Socialist Organisation has been a proud supporter of BDS from its inception.
This is just the beginning.
In the latest outburst of national security hysteria, ASIO spy chief Mike Burgess declared, in a speech on 28 February, that an unnamed former Australian politician had betrayed our beloved country by clandestinely working for an evil foreign spy network—which he called “the A-team”—to provide secret information to a rival power.
Measured by the sheer volume of stuff produced, capitalism is a very successful system. According to World Bank data, in 1960 global gross domestic product (GDP)—which measures the monetary value of goods and services sold—was just under US$1.4 trillion. By 2022 it had risen to $101 trillion. The world’s population has increased a lot in that time, but the volume of stuff produced has increased by far more.
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In a monumental betrayal, Melbourne University’s Students’ Council last month voted to rescind a motion supporting the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and the global Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.
The year is 2070. A global catastrophe—climate change, nuclear winter, civil war: pick your poison—recently ended civilisation and opened a new chapter in your life. So far you’ve ridden it out smoothly in your luxury bunker, but one day you’re swimming laps in the pool, living out your Bond-villain dream, when an alert blinks on your home security console.