Thursday, July 2, 2015

BDS: The "Israel" lobby meets the genie...

By William PLEASANT


The genie is out of the bottle forever...

Today, the Obama regime insisted that it would abide the clause in the Trade Protection Authority act  that effectively shields the zionist regime in Palestine from European Union boycott/sanction measures. But Obama's State Department minions threw in a monkey wrench: They will only enforce the shield clause when European governments target businesses in the pre-1967 borders of Israel, meaning that zionist enterprises residing in the contested West Bank can be attacked without fear of any US retaliation.

The Trade Protection Authority (TPA) is primarily focused on international trade between the U.S. and Europe. The pro-zionist section of the legislation, the U.S.-Israel Trade and Commercial Enhancement Act, bans boycotts and other means of economic warfare against Israel or the “Israeli-controlled territories.” 
The amendment states that its objective is to:

"...[D]iscourage politically motivated actions to boycott, divest from, or sanction Israel by states, non-member states of the United Nations, international organisations, or affiliated agencies of international organisations that are politically motivated and are intended to penalise or otherwise limit commercial relations specifically with Israel or persons doing business in Israel or in Israeli- controlled territories."

Introduced by Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Illinois) with bi-partisan co-sponsorship, the anti-boycott legislation was unanimously adopted into the PTA in April 2015. Obama said today that he will not give backdoor US recognition to the so-called Occupied Territories (“Israeli-controlled territories” ) by providing diplomatic cover through the TPA. Obama essentially nullified the entire pro-Israel amendment. .

In a way, the addition of the anti-BDS (BOYCOTT-DIVEST-SANCTION) clause to the Trade Protection Act (paid for and ramrodded through congress by AIPAC and its assorted camp followers last week) in and of itself was a sign of the success of the global grassroots movement to force the State of Israel to end its occupation of stolen Palestinian lands, end Jim Crow segregation and come to a mutually beneficial peace arrangement with the Indigenous Palestinian Peoples--the political anathemas of zionist settler colonialism in Palestine.


There are two reasons why this is the case: 


1.


It acknowledges that not only is BDS putting a boot to the zionist economy, but it threatens to do even greater terminal damage. The zionists know that except for the EU market, they have no significant buyers for their agricultural goods and non-military technologies and products. In a like manner, they understand that their US-sponsored arms industry is highly vulnerable to grassroots political attack in Europe and the US. Moreover, their Third World patrons really don't have the funds to even buy US-subsidized weapons at a level that can remotely sustain the "Israeli" death factories. Inclusion of the Anti-BDS clause was actually a desperation move ordered by the Israeli government through its US-deployed agents, designed to sooth the nerves of its hometown constituents in the face of mounting international rejection and isolation. Once again, the bribe-fed US federal legislature was commanded to bark and growl on behalf of the zionist settler state so "Israel" and its US amen corner could rest easy. But maybe the tried and true narcotizing powers of that script have lost their political relevance.

2.

Fact of the matter is that the BDS movement has structurally changed the political landscape of US pro-zionist policies. Obama's apparent revolt against anti-BDS provisions represents a domestic political concession that BDS is unstoppable, just as the South African anti-apartheid divestment and sanction movement quickly became a social snowball.


Obama has signalled his zionist sugar daddies, "Look, boss, you're on your own now..." 

The zionists are absolutely correct in charging that BDS is a strategy for destroying the State of Israel, not just ending West Bank military dictatorship. BDS makes no operative distinction between the occupied territories (BTW: All of Palestine is zionist occupied territory.) and the UN-manufactured 1947 zionist colonial entity. BDS puts the lash to the occupiers and their state apparatus wherever they may reside. 

As constructed, the anti-BDS provisions actually handicap US corporate transaction negotiations with the EU by chaining the US into a role of making concessions to European marketeers for the sole sake of keeping Europeans on the anti-BDS bandwagon. And of course, that will get increasingly difficult to do and more expensive (in respect to US finances and political interests) in the face of grassroots European political rejection of all pro-zionist policies, i.e., the expanding social popularity of BDS. 

In that respect, Obama's side step of the zionist-led anti-BDS campaign is a message from Wall Street to Tel Aviv and the pro-Israel Fifth Column in the US that the game has changed.


--30--