Photo: Flickr / david_shankbone

Avraham Burg in an op-ed in the Independent in the UK:

But the Israeli people’s eyes are blind, their ears are deaf and their leaders are flaccid and weak. This is precisely the situation in which civilised societies urgently need feedback and intervention from the outside: to mirror the absurdity of the situation created and to focus attention on the damage of human and political blindness. To tell Israel that it is impossible to be treated as “the only democracy in the Middle East”, while it is also the last colonial occupier in the Western world. [...]

I have decided to not buy any product that comes from the settlements. I do not cross the Green Line, not to promote public causes and not for family events. Because everything happening across the Green Line is the dark alter ego of Israel. Its hidden personality is manifest there. Evil, aggressive and impenetrable. This personality threatens to take over the good and humane parts of the legitimate Israel. With international help, we must return these demons to their bottles, or rather to those positive domains for which this state was established.

No one can dispute the Zionist credentials of a guy who was the Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organization chair.

He finishes by saying that, “if, God forbid, the Green Line will be permanently erased, from consciousness and from the ground, then Israel will also be erased. The struggle for the preservation of the Green Line is the struggle for Israel.” He also goes on to advocate for the changing of the erroneously labelled “made in Israel” stamps that are on all kinds of products around the world, even though they’re made in the West Bank.

It’s hardly surprising that he supports a settlement boycott — most Israeli liberals do nowadays. It does, however, provide even more evidence that these well within established Zionist parameters (despite what others may say), and there’s nothing wrong with being a good Zionist and refusing to financially support the settlement enterprise. It may not make all that much difference — that is, while the largest funder of the settlements, the State of Israel, continues pumping public funds in — but it is a reasonable and wise personal decision.

(Via @mikeb476)