Hydration packs and special seamless underwear don’t seem the stuff of raw emotion.
But a controversial boycott of Israeli goods, starting with items sold in Toronto’s cool non-profit outfitter Mountain Equipment Co-op, has made them just that.
A consumer protest has recently been adopted by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, a Montreal-based organization not previously a player in the boycott/divestment/sanctions (BDS) movement. In the last year, CJPME has held speakers’ forums in Toronto that attracted several hundred people each.
The fact that the group (former Liberal cabinet minister Warren Allmand sits on its board) has adopted the BDS strategy may signal a new level of frustration among human rights groups and create more challenges for activists who want to limit a boycott to Israeli goods from occupied Palestinian zones.
“We are pro-justice and pro-international law,” says CJPME president Thomas Woodley. “When we launched CJPME, we were not thinking about a boycott campaign. But it is really an inevitable evolution, [after] the International Court of Justice passed a scathing resolution against Israel [on the security wall] and yet nothing has happened. Most progressively minded people would say it’s worthwhile to [exert] economic pressure,” he says.
It was MEC members themselves who first made a fuss about the company carrying Israeli-made goods at an April 2009 AGM. But according to MEC rep Tim Southam, co-op members voted in favour of the board’s recommendation that MEC continue to purchase high-quality Israeli outdoors goods as long as the companies met strict labour standards.
“Our members have weighed in on this issue and have clearly indicated that they do not want us to politicize the sourcing process,” he says. Southam confirms that none of MEC’s contracted manufacturing is conducted in the Occupied Territories.
“We have looked at other hydration packs, and they don’t fit the bill. Source Vagabond supplies us, and apparently the company is working with the Israeli military. Their hydration systems are in demand by many of our customers for cycling, running and high-impact activity. (NOW was unable to reach Source Vagabond at press time.)
“We certainly recognize the valuable role that civil society groups play,” Southam says. “That said, we don’t always agree with their arguments.”
MEC has more than 3 million members in Canada, but he says the iconic outfitter has only recently received 15 email complaints. “You have to understand that the number of members voicing their concern is very small.”
The Canada-Israel Committee has a similar evaluation of the boycott’s weight. “It’s a marginal movement supported by a very small number of people who amplify their voices by using the internet,” says Montreal-based CIC exec vice-president Sara Saber-Freedman.
“The boycott campaign is not really an economic exercise. It’s an effort to isolate Israel, to make Israel a pariah state. The people behind it are not in favour of the two-state solution. There are any number of pro-Palestinian activists who have denounced the BDS movement for that reason,” she says.
The CIC in partnership with Jewish federations, she says, has launched a “buycott” encouraging counter-boycott buying of targeted Israeli goods. “There’s only one issue at the heart of the problem: the rejection of the legitimacy of the Jewish state,” she says.
While the CIC battles the boycott, Canadian Friends of Peace Now co-chair and historian Steve Scheinberg has his own complex take on BDS issues. Scheinberg straddles the mainstream (he’s a board member of the Quebec-Israel Committee) and the dissident community (he’s a vigorous critic of the settlements).
Like some Israeli activists, he opposes BDS. His preference is a focused boycott led by the Palestinian Authority against products made by Jewish settlers on occupied land. Its chances of success would be better, he says.
“I favour non-violence, but I’m not convinced BDS is a major movement among Palestinians, and even if it is, it does not reach out to Israeli progressives.”
Scheinberg believes that BDS is motivated by anti-Israel animus. He worries, for example, about the position taken by Palestinian boycott organizer Omar Barghouti, in favour of the “dead-end” solution of a binational Jewish-Palestinian state.
Ramallah-based Barghouti, founder of the Global Boycott, Divestment Sanctions campaign, confirms that a “secular democratic” state is his personal preference. But here a few weeks ago to speak at U of T, he pointed out that in his group, which represents close to 200 orgs in the Occupied Territories, the majority of leaders adhere to a two-state solution.
He also disputes the argument that BDS is ineffective. “When the prime minister of Israel calls the boycott ‘a strategic threat’ on a par with Iran, you know we are onto something,” he says.
Nevertheless, Barghouti says the boycott has to be selective. Any Israeli public figure, including performers, writers or journalists like Gideon Levy (who visited T.O. a few months back), who are not part of the Israeli government’s Brand Israel campaign are not targeted.
“I have always thought civil resistance was more effective than armed resistance in the Palestinian context,” says Barghouti. “BDS is a human rights-based approach.”
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