This is how on boycotting a state 1 ended: So that’s how a boycott works out, at least for the population. I realise that, since its inception in 2005, I have supported the BDS movement against Israel. Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions. But is this what I would want for the Israeli population, what the Cubans are having to go through nowadays?
Well, of course there are fundamental differences between the blockade of Cuba and the idea and practice of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, both in terms of motivation and implementation.
The blockade against Cuba and the case of Israel
What could possibly be the motive for the USA’s blockade of Cuba for more than sixty years, while at the same time, since 1992, the vast majority of the UN has been calling for an end to it? In October 2025, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed for the 33rd time a resolution calling for the United States to urgently lift its blockade on Cuba. Hundred sixty-five states voted in favour of this resolution, seven were against (the USA and some of its toadies: Argentina, Israel, Hungary, Ukraine, etc.) and thirteen states abstained. Even the members of the European Union, generally US vassals, supported the resolution. So where does this unilateral stubbornness of the USA come from? Geopolitical considerations? Imperialist ambitions? Resentment on the part of the former rulers who fled after the revolution, and their descendants? The delusions of grandeur of US leaders, who believe that ‘America’ should shape the world? The ideology that Latin and South America, including the Caribbean, are merely a backyard of the US? The continuation of the age-old ambition to bring the island under US authority? Profit opportunities for investors and property developers? The undermining of a political system that could serve as an inspiration to other countries in the Americas? Whatever the case may be, the motives and practices are so dubious, even reprehensible, that – when looking at the United Nations – the vast majority of the world, at least in words, rejects them. Ultimately, though, what it comes down to is that the economic blockade and isolation of Cuba constitutes a form of warfare (including a lot of casualties) against an independent state that in no way poses any threat to its aggressor.
The case of Israel, with its colonisation and apartheid politics, is fundamentally different. It has a different history, different geographical situation and different economic & military interdependencies – not to mention its very specific worldwide practices of cultural and ideological representation. However, there are good reasons for a politics of boycott, divestment and sanctions against the state of Israel. Since its founding in 1948, Israel has denied Palestinians their fundamental rights, has refused to comply with international law and maintained a regime of settler colonialism, apartheid, and occupation over the Palestinian population. This is not just an opinion of some delusional or rabid Jew-haters. The International Court of Justice in Den Haag and the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Palestine Michael Lynk have accused Israel of politics of apartheid and occupation. Throughout history Jewish anti-Zionists (from the Bund to Freud, Einstein or Arendt) have rejected the idea of establishing a Jewish state on land already inhabited by other people. Even if you would assume that, initially, Zionists were primarily seeking to establish on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire a state-shelter where Jews would never again have to fear pogroms, that doesn’t change the fact that the land they claimed was already inhabited, and that Zionism, of whatever type, would never accept the indigenous population as equal to the Jewish immigrants. Contemporary Jewish intellectuals, such as Rabbi Jay Michaelson, Benny Morris, Ella Shohat, Ilan Pappé, Avi Shlaim or Shlomo Sand explain extensively that the ongoing destruction and eradication of Palestina and the Palestinians has been an inherent part of the Zionist project from the very beginning, with the logic of ethnic cleansing being actively pursued even before the Nakba in 1948.
On the true nature of the destruction of Palestina and the Palestinians, opinions may differ amongst critics of Zionism. The BDS website provides a clear overview of what is to be understood by Israeli Settler Colonialism and Apartheid.
Some argue that settler colonialism differs from occupation in that the former is not a moment in time, but rather a system developed to reform the land, law and life itself in order to establish permanent dominance over the local population. It is a structure aimed at erasing the indigenous political presence. In Palestina, this purpose is served through the daily machinery of control (permits, checkpoints, contingent residency rights, fragmented legal regimes) and the daily destruction by settlers and the army of the vital infrastructure (water wells, orchards, pastures and farmland, schools and community centres, etc.) belonging to Palestinians and Bedouins – all of this with the intention to make the life of the indigenous people precarious, conditional and under constant threat. How settler colonialism leads to outright pogroms is something you can follow live every day on Telegram, Quds News Network or The Cradle.
On the Israeli news site Haaretz, lecturer and writer Ilana Hammerman focuses on the concept of apartheid. “There is not a single principle of an apartheid regime that has not been implemented in Israel since 1948”, she writes and she agrees with the director of human rights organisation B’Tselem: “In Israel there is no democracy + occupation, but rather a single regime between the sea and the Jordan River that requires us to look at the full picture and to call it by its accurate name: apartheid.” And Hammerman pointing to “the entrenchment here of a reality that can no longer be successfully combated from within Israeli society alone”, while at the same time claiming that human rights organisations “must defend the right to call for economic and cultural sanctions to be imposed on Israel.”
Sanctions?
In the 13-14 December 2025 issue, Belgian newspaper De Standaard published an interview with ‘leading Jewish-American author’ Nathan Thrall. I copy a short section in translation:
Can only sanctions change Israel’s course?
“Absolutely, Europe is Israel’s most important trading partner. If Europe were to threaten to require visa for Israelis entering the country, or were to touch the Association Agreement (which regulates trade between the two parties, ed.), Israelis would suddenly experience difficulties: in their wallets, in their holiday plans, in following their football team in European competitions or in cheering on their country during the Eurovision Song Contest. Then you would get a real debate in Israel.
But that pressure is not coming. The Israeli economy has survived the genocide quite well. The arms industry, for example, had a record year in 2024, and half of its exports went to Europe. In some European countries, proposals have recently been made to ban products from illegal Israeli settlements, even though we are two years into the genocide. There is no chance that such a ban will be implemented across Europe. Ordinary Israelis hear a lot of barking, but see no one biting.”
(…)
“When Israeli policy is criticised, the debate here focuses on what is going wrong with our ‘hasbara’, our propaganda, rather than what is going wrong with the policy itself. As long as no concrete action is taken, Israelis feel no need to do more than wonder why the propaganda is not working.”
Reasons enough, you might think, to launch an immediate, widespread sharp campaign of criticism and condemnation. After all, didn’t the BDS campaign against South Africa lead to the abolition of apartheid there?
Well, first of all, you should keep in mind the significant differences between the situations in South Africa and Israel. The BDS movement against South Africa supported a decades-long internal struggle led by local trade unions, intellectuals, grassroots movements, artists … In short, there was long-standing and continuous internal resistance against apartheid in South Africa. All of this seems to have all but disappeared today in occupied Palestina, which might make international support seem a bit tenuous at first. What’s more – how shall I put it? – the Left isn’t what it used to be. Forty years of neoliberalism have led to widespread political cynicism, in which management and efficiency have become the key operating principles. The idea that one could commit to a ‘universalist’ ideal, such as liberté, égalité, fraternité for everyone, is now regarded by many governments and (international) agencies as somewhat ridiculous and unrealistic, and as an obstacle to ‘necessary growth’.
Generally speaking, three arguments seem to recur time and again when it comes to explaining the support shown by so many Western states for Israel’s policy of ethnic cleansing. There is the myth of the so-called common Judeo-Christian civilisation of which Israel is supposed to be the most forward outpost. In addition, virtually all Western countries are experiencing within their borders a growing far-right movement that is directed against Muslims, and which therefore applauds the killing of Muslims in Palestina. Finally, there is the effectiveness of the internationally very well organised pro-Israel lobby within the media and the political world.
But most of all probably, there is the general dependence vis à vis Israel of states or international bodies that might make a difference when it comes to putting pressure on Tel Aviv. For ‘the West’ South Africa was merely an external commercial partner. When the boycott began, many states carried out a meticulous replacement of suppliers: they introduced an exemption for materials that they could not obtain elsewhere and reintroduced the goods onto the world market, at virtually no macroeconomic cost. Israel, on the other hand, does not export raw materials, but rather advanced technology, digital semi-finished products and software, writes Widad Tamimi. “If a Western company could replace South African coal with Australian coal in a matter of weeks, a European bank that uses Israeli cybersecurity systems cannot switch systems at the flick of a switch. Over 55 per cent of Tel Aviv’s exports consist of intangible services, and removing these technologies from Western supply chains would require years of transition and cost billions. (…) Within the European Union, the debate on sanctions reflects this deep integration. Taken as a whole, the European Union is Israel’s largest trading partner in terms of total volumes of goods and services, a figure that stands at around 70 billion euros a year and is governed by the 2000 Association Agreement.” Each individual Member State is using the fact that the EU cannot reach a unanimous decision on the application of that Association Agreement as a pretext for not suspending it themselves just yet.
Behind the diplomatic façade lie specific and far-reaching industrial interests centred on the continent’s major economies. According to Tamimi, “Germany remains the leading European partner, with bilateral trade in goods amounting to around 6 billion euros a year and an extremely close military relationship, culminating in the purchase of the Arrow 3 missile defence system for a record sum of 4 billion euros.” And so, member states don’t feel inclined to put pressure on companies involved in trade relations with the Israeli regime. For instance: British Petroleum (BP) is still the operator and largest shareholder of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, which is supplying Israel with 28% of its oil during its genocide. Or: Israel Chemicals Ltd. Iberia is Catalonia’s largest potassium mining firm. According to Amnesty International and other NGOs, ICL has supplied white phosphorus to the United States, which was then used to manufacture lethal incendiary projectiles banned by international conventions but repeatedly deployed by the Israeli army both in Palestina and in Lebanon. (When it comes into contact with oxygen, phosphorus catches fire and sticks to the skin and clothing of its victims, causing extremely severe burns.) And as I’m writing this, a new shipment of four containers with weapons destined for Israel Military Industries (IMI) Systems in Ramat Hasharon is sailing on the vessel MSC Nita from the port of Marghera (Venezia) and bound for Gioia Tauro, where it is due to call on 30 July, il manifesto reports.
There are thousands more cases like this.
When it comes to the USA, Israel’s single most important trading partner, bilateral trade in goods and services amounting to around 50–55 billion dollars a year is concerned. “However, it is not traditional goods that make the difference, but an unrivalled financial and military lifeline. Under the current ten-year memorandum of understanding, the US provides Israel with $3.8 billion a year in fixed military aid, to which have been added extraordinary emergency packages approved by Congress totalling over $14 billion.
This is a closed economic loop: by law, almost all of these funds must be spent on purchasing weapons manufactured by US companies, directly supporting the American defence industry and over 20,000 highly specialised jobs”, writes Tamimi. And she concludes: “The historical parallel with South Africa thus becomes entangled in the knots of an intangible global network. Apartheid in Pretoria was defeated because Western capitalism realised it could survive even without the racist Afrikaners. The system of colonial domination currently imposed on the Palestinian territories, on the other hand, uses its digital indispensability as a shield. But this apparent irreplaceability is not an eternal sentence: it is a reversible political and economic choice.”
So, at last, this all leads to the questions at the heart of it all. What is this ‘boycott, divestment, sanctions’ all about? Against whom exactly should they be directed? And by whom? To what end? And by what means? And does it make any sense at all? Or have any effect?
I’d like to reflect on these points in on boycotting a state 3, coming soon to this site.
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The Jewish People bear full responsibility for the Torah curse of Amalek – understood through the ערב רב which lacked ‘יראת אלהים’, as the basis for the Golden Calf interpretation of the 2nd Sinai Commandment. The Torah curse of g’lut has its Amalek antisemitism consequences.
The Torah brit obligation of Blessing Curse defines Amalek antisemitism throughout the 2000+ years of לא לשמה cursed Jewish g’lut. Jewish assimilation to foreign cultures customs and manners, coupled with intermarriage defines the wisdom k’vanna of the 2nd Sinai commandment. Goyim simply the reactionary consequences of g’lut Jewry worshipping Av tuma avoda zarah.
When an institution claims a monopoly on ultimate truth, governance undergoes a fundamental shift. Legal status tied directly to ideological alignment. Populations divided into a caste system: orthodox (the inner circle), the tolerated/subjugated: dhimmi stateless Jewish refugees – European land restriction during an Agricultural based economy where crops produced national wealth.
The legal apparatuses designed to root out “heresy” established administrative precedents for state surveillance, ideological tribunals, and mandatory public alignment. Laid the deep cultural and institutional groundwork upon which 19th-century “scientific” racial anti-Semitism built and stands upon to this day. The failure to intervene during catastrophic moral crises often stems from cold geopolitical calculation rather than mere ignorance. While Leo Tolstoy denounced the horrific 1903 Kishinev pogrom and CS Lewis explicitly condemned Nazi racism and Hitler’s persecution of the Jews as early as 1933 in his private correspondence and published works (such as The Pilgrim’s Regress); arguing that Western civilization owed its fundamental moral concepts directly to Israel – their rebukes had little or no effect.
When secular political ideologies—such as totalitarian collectivism or radical ethno-nationalism—adopt the totalizing, non-negotiable structures of dogmatic belief, they replicate the same mechanisms of forced conformity, purging of “heretics,” and mass violence. The structure of dogmatic belief—whether religious or secular—creates a template for totalitarianism, where “heresy” (dissent or difference) justifies purification, segregation, and mass violence.
Religious institutions, when fused with state power, transform theological categories into tools of governance: Michel Foucault argued that power operates through “regimes of truth”, where institutions define what qualifies as “normal” or “deviant.” Reinhold Niebuhr held that religious absolutism, when unchecked by humility, can justify violence as “moral necessity.” Elie Wiesel stated that the Shoah, not just a failure of humanity but a failure of theology—when God’s silence was interpreted as permission for evil; effectively saying “Where was JeZeus during the Shoah or Allah during the ’48 & ’67 Nakba — Nietzsche ‘God is Dead’ philosophy which denounced the whole of both religious institutional belief in their “idol” Gods.
Both Stalinism, Nazism, and Maoism made absolute claims possessing a monopoly on truth. The Nazis converted “historical truth” unto “racial purity”, effectively defines the premise: Thought Crimes of heresy – from the Church concealing the ancient Greek polytheistic texts of philosophy to Pol Pot, Pinochet dictatorships consequent to Kissinger/Nixon great power imperialism. The modern Surveillance State simply replaces confession booths and kapo informants. Orwell’s 1984 directly addresses the concept of “thought crimes”. Dehumanized Jews as “Christ-killers” (John Chrysostom’s homilies), economic scapegoating (usury laws, guild exclusions), eschatological violence (Crusades, blood libels) etc. By these fruits produced later generations of hatred without cause.
Martin Luther’s On the Jews and Their Lies (1543), often cited as a precursor to Nazi rhetoric. Xtian anti-Judaism created a cultural template model which later morphed into Hitlers’ modern bureaucratic efficiency and pseudoscientific racism. Bolshevism, Nazism, and even post WWII UN – replicate religious structures. All had their “sacred texts, despised heretics such as Stalin’s “kulaks”, and public show trials to purge the Party! The Soviet gulag and Boar War concentration camps set the stage for Auschwitz.
The Inquisition served as a classic—purifying the body politic of “corruption” or “contagion;” similar to the Black Plague slander: “the Jews poisoned the wells”…ideological purity codes double as mechanisms for wealth extraction and state consolidation reappears whenever totalizing political systems operate without institutional checks. Religion used for power coercion, segregation, expulsions, and mass violence; forced conformity; violence framed as “truth” … Xtianity a 2000+ year thought crime against Humanity which reached apex crisis during the Inquisition, 30 Years War, and the Shoah…religious doctrine + centralized power + incentives to remove rivals + fear of revolutionary unrest against the corrupt status quo by peasants enslaved by church authorities who employed their cheap labor to build gross Cathedral abominations of church or mosque injustice against dhimmin minority populations.
Religious truth-claims repeatedly functioned as an authorized language of governance: when clergy/faith movements merged with centralized state or imperial power, theological categories used to define who belonged, who disloyal, and who could be removed—making coercion, segregation, expulsions, and mass violence easier to justify as moral necessity. The comparison to Bolshevik theology vs Menshevik and Social Revolutionaries counter “theology” smells similar to church heresy stench – such as the slaughter of French Huguenots! The war crimes of the Crusades which slaughtered almost all the Jews in Germany, coupled with the Blood-slander almost every Easter which resulted in pogroms and mass population transfers which post WWII so hardily condemns today!
Thought-Crimes against Humanity defined through church and mosque theological creeds at the point of a sword. The slaughter of Indian populations across the New World & Pacific by missionaries working with their great power Armies; which plundered South American civilizations such as the Aztec and Inca. The American First Amendment and French ‘Rights of Man’ fundamentally abhorred church + state, or missionary + empire slavery of feudal peasant populations. Citizen Rights + people living in cities rather than upon feudal villages defines the industrial revolution. Church and mosque forced conformity inquisition purity…race, expulsion/segregation, mass violence—control over the “Pravda-press”; salvation “monopoly” defines the 2000+ years of church/mosques thought crimes against Humanity.
The theology of Luther and Calvin compare to the Great Schism between the Orthodox and Catholic church – both of which claimed inheritance to the revived Roman Empire; the post WWII attempt to stamp “Palestine” upon Judea a harsh example of thought crimes against Humanity. The Shoah, the most powerful example of the Dreyfus Trial racism which infects the disease inherited by Europeans expressed through Church thought crimes. Church and Mosque religious theological fanaticism across medieval and early modern Eurasia and the colonial world, religious truth-claims repeatedly became tools of centralized power, enabling coercion of dissent, forced conformity of minorities, and conquest justified as moral necessity.
Religious institutions and imperial/state power merged, authorities used theology to delegitimize rivals and define outsiders as threats, making violence and forced conformity easier to authorize and carry out. Guilds in medieval Europe enforced by courts, armies, and property systems, belief and religious identity the primary weapons where religious doctrine functioned as an ideological weapon at the point of a sword. The annual Easter pogroms, taxation without representation, denuded Jews of all their wealth prior to forced mass population transfers England in 1290, France 1306, Germanic kingdoms; the fruits of crushing Par’o like judicial corruption and injustice produced the ghetto gulags of three Centuries duration and the mass population Jewish retreat to the Ukraine and Poland which thereafter witnessed the brutal Cossack revolts!
Neither the Dreyfus Trial nor the later Shoah occurred in a political vacuum. Attempts to declare the Shoah a Nazi crime ignores the 1939 White Paper and FDR’s closure of the Golden Medina to Jews attempts to flee. The contrast between the FDR policy and pre-WWI welcome of Jewish refugees from the Pale of Russia a day and night difference.
The Allied refusal to bomb the rail lines leading to the death camps coupled with the Red Army stopping its advance in sight of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt and the post War rat-lines and complicity of Pope Pius XII and Prostestant Luthern Church pro Nazi alignment against the Communists cannot stand exiled and excluded from the contexts of the Big Picture of European historical barbarism.
Nature/Nurture – genetics did not cause the Shoah. Rather the guilt rests upon the environmental cultural history of European and Muslim great power politics throughout the Ages passed down from generation to generations – straight from their mothers’ milk. Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil (ordinary people, indoctrinated by systems) support’s the “mother’s milk” cultural-historical conditioning metaphor.
Can faith in God be redeemed? Emphatically NO. Can Herzl’s dream of a Jewish State which righteously pursues righteous judicial justice among the Jewish people within the borders of our homeland, despite Jews being just like Goyim – only more so, define the definition of faith affixed to Sanhedrin common law Federal Courts which practice legislative review over the tribal economic autonomy and statute law Parliament in Jerusalem prosper? Emphatically YES. Why? Because this defines the vision of Zionist self determination.
A very interesting article that sheds a more thorough light on the often slogan-like statements about the situation in Israel/Palestine!
[…] end? And by what means? And does it make any sense at all? Or have any effect? That’s how the second episode of on boycotting a state […]