When in 1964 Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian philosopher of communications theory, predicted the advent of “the global village,” where we would inhabit a world contracted into a metaphoric village by electronic technology — affording us instantaneous movement of information — and where the Internet becomes an “extension of consciousness,” no one knew how prescient that prediction was — and how it would impact the global dialogue of cultures.
Consider, as a case in point, how it has impacted the struggle to combat Israeli apartheid. Last week, Israel came a hair short of being suspended from FIFA, soccer’s governing body, based on complaints that Israeli occupation — the longest and most brutal in history — has placed severe restrictions on Palestinian athletes’ freedom of travel, and the inclusion in Israeli leagues of teams from colonies in the West Bank. In international law, Israel’s colonies are illegal, and thus teams from there should be barred from participation in competitions. At the last minute, it appears, Palestinians agreed to drop their demand, agreeing instead to the formation of a FIFA committee to address the issue.
But that’s not all Israel has had to deal with in recent years. There are diverse movements around the world, from labor unions to progressive churches, liberal universities to human rights groups, connected together by the instant diffusion of information, which have dedicated themselves to boycotting and sanctioning this upstart entity — not to mention advertising its excesses.
And what has been the response of the Israeli establishment to all this? The usual one: Those who criticize Israel are anti-Semitic, which is the facile and oft-repeated accusation Israeli politicians level at anyone who dares criticize Israel. Since no one wants to be branded a racist, the accusation often succeeds in achieving its goal — the critic is shamed or terrorized into silence. I was witness to that reprehensible tactic and its devastating impact on the accused party, as far back as 1973, at the Arab American University Graduates Association (AAUG) annual conference in Washington, where I shared a panel discussion with the highly respected, and nationally known activist clergyman, Father Daniel Berrigan, who in his presentation voiced the mildest form of criticism of Israeli occupation. The next day, the Jewish establishment media lambasted him as, well, you guessed it, an anti-Semite. Subsequent to that, Father Berrigan never uttered a word about the Middle East in public nor was seen anywhere hobnobbing with Arab Americans.
Such was the power, then, of Jewish American advocates. But that was then, and now is now. The times have changed. We live in a global village where information travels literally at the speed of light.
Last Sunday, for example, two days after the Palestinian Football Association withdrew its proposal to have Israel suspended from FIFA, Israel’s fanatic Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ranted and raved about why “the world’s wrath seemed focused on Israel, when a hundred times more people are being slaughtered in Syria and Sudan.” He added that Israel faces an international campaign to blacken its name based on “its very existence.” He predictably called the critics anti-Semitic, citing anti-Semites’ constant refrain that “Jews are the focus of all evil in the world.”
These putative anti-Semites were not, this time, moved or cowed. In fact, a lot of Israelis, progressives one and all, did not take Netanyahu’s improbable rant seriously, Zehova Golan, of the left-wing Meretz Party, retorted on Facebook: “Israel can’t continue to bury its head in the sand, saying that the whole world is against us and that things in Syria and Sudan are worse. Continuing the occupation exacts an international cultural, academic and economic price. This is an excellent time to ask ourselves whether or not we’re willing to pay the price.”
Many Israeli commentators have described the FIFA battle as a wake-up call. But there are more battles ahead. Beyond the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, there are literally hundreds of others, as we all know, all the way from Ireland to Argentina, involving diverse activists, that are committed to combating Israeli apartheid, and they are doing it, thanks to the Internet, with more impressive ease than their counterparts in the past had done combating South African apartheid.
All this is scaring the heck out of the Israeli establishment. Last Sunday, the New York Times quoted Yuval Rotem, described as a high ranking official in Israel’s Foreign Ministry, as saying: “I know what to do in the United Nations, I know what to do in Geneva — now I need to build a base of power to deal with a trade union in Ireland or a church in Panama. It’s a new spectrum of arenas, it’s a new spectrum of battlegrounds, that takes us to all these trade unions, to all these churches, to all these campuses and universities and all those conferences of sciences, all museums and art exhibitions. Every element of Israeli activity is basically challenged.”
