Friday, December 29, 2017

Debating BDS with Cornel West

by Alan M. Dershowitz • December 29, 2017 at 10:00 am

Zionism was the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, not a colonial enterprise. Nor is Israel in any way like South Africa, where a minority of whites ruled over a majority of Blacks, who were denied the most fundamental human rights. In Israel, Arabs, Druze and Christians have equal rights and serve in high positions in government, business, the arts and academia.
BDS is not a protest against Israel's policies. It is a protest against Israel's very existence.
West argued that BDS would encourage Israel to make peace with the Palestinians. I replied that Israel would never be blackmailed into compromising its security, and that the Palestinians are disincentivized into making compromises by the fantasy that they will get a state through economic and cultural extortion.

Debating Cornel West about BDS, which Prof. Dershowitz (right) says is not a protest movement against Israeli policy, but against Israel's very existence. Photo: CSPAN/Screenshot.

I recently debated Professor Cornel West of Harvard about the boycott movement against Israel. The topic was resolved: "The boycott, divestiture and sanctions (BDS) movement will help bring about the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

West argued that Israel was a "colonialist-settler" state and that apartheid in the West Bank was "worse" than it was in white-ruled South Africa and should be subject to the same kind of economic and cultural isolation that helped bring about the fall of that regime.