[lbo-talk] Palestine Think Tank: Jeff Blankfort - Chomsky and Palestine: Asset or Liability?

[Joseph Catron]

I'm unsure if our difference here is genuinely political or simply semantic,
but from where I stand, there's a significant difference between *calling
for* a strategy and *supporting* it. Like many others, I spent a number of
years supporting the Coalition of Imokalee Workers' boycott of Taco Bell,
although it would have been the height of silliness for me to call for such
a thing.

To answer SA's query from 5:33: "A right that Chomsky is denying to them by
expressing his opinion?" Once the boycott was launched, I could not have
opposed it in any meaningful way without putting myself outside and against
both the strategy and the struggle itself. (If, like Chomsky, I had claimed
to be doing so out of concern for the farmworkers' well-being, that would
have made me a bit of a condescending prick to boot.)

As for your own query of 9:27, "How do we know what that consensus is? And
how, actually, do we identify civil society in Palestine or anywhere else?"
We can argue about the number of angels on the head of a pin all night. A
more meaningful question is, are we in solidarity with the broad range of
Palestinian organizations calling for a boycott or are we not?

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 9:22 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:

On Jul 21, 2010, at 9:04 PM, Joseph Catron wrote:
>
> >> But, aside from that, it's weird for Americans to call for a boycott of
> >> Israel when our government supplies the IDF with money and weapons and
> >> diplomatic cover for whatever barbarity they commit.
> >>
> >
> > Umm ... Americans don't, Doug. Palestinians did.
>
> You're American. Blankfort is too.
>

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