The legitimacy of boycotts
JVL Introduction
Stanley L Cohen traces the history of boycotts from pre-American War of independence with Boston merchants voting to block English trade, to Gandhi’s salt tax boycott, the US Civil Rights’ movement and the use of international boycotts against predator corporate or state policies and more.
Not least was the call by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise for an absolute boycott of German goods as the “duty of all self-respecting Jews”:
“As long as Germany declares the Jews to be an inferior race, poisoning and persecuting them, decent, self-respecting Jews cannot deal with Germany in any way, buy or sell or maintain any manner of commerce with Germany or travel on German Boats.”
Now we are witnessing an attempt by a Tel Aviv based law firm to prosecute the Berkeley Law School, Univ of California, over its “failure” to punish several student organizations for the temerity of adopting a pledge to engage in a non-violent boycott of Zionist or pro-Israel speakers.
Cohen is optimistic that this will fail and that anti-BDS legislation more generally will in the end be found to be in clear violation of the First Amendment.
And he has nothing but contempt for an Israeli law firm that deigns “to step into the United States protesting the loss of your clients’ “rights” to input the market place of ideas, but yet do nothing to challenge the theft of parallel opportunity and redress for millions of Palestinians and their supporters in Israel and the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza.”
This article was originally published by Counterpunch on Fri 30 Dec 2022. Read the original here.
Seeking Justice in the Name of Hate: In Defense of BDS
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Reading this article made me think of something I’ve never thought of before – ie why didn’t everyone boycott the 1936 Olympics given the Nazis persecution of Jews and Gypsies and socialists etc? – which led me to then check out the wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Summer_Olympics#Controversies
Shortly after writng the above, it occurred to me to check out where the Winter Olympics were held in 1936 AND – much to my surprise – they were ALSO held in Germany. So I then brought up the wikipedia entry for the Winter Olympics that year, and there was nothing about any controversy or boycotts. So I then did a general search, and this is the only article I found that said something relevant, albeit indirectly:
Amid preparations for the Games, the Garmisch-Partenkirchen town council passed an order to expel all Jews in its jurisdiction, but decided to wait until after the Olympics to implement the decree. Antisemitic signs and publications were removed from the region for the duration of the Games, as a concession to the International Olympic Committee.
https://vhec.org/1936_olympics/the_winter_games.htm
Here are several clips from an article linked to in the wikipedia entry for the 1936 Summer Olympics:
‘The Movement to Boycott the Berlin Olympics of 1936’
Avery Brundage [president of the American Olympic Committee] opposed a boycott, arguing that politics had no place in sport. He fought to send a US team to the 1936 Olympics, claiming: “The Olympic Games belong to the athletes and not to the politicians.” He wrote in the AOC’s pamphlet “Fair Play for American Athletes” that American athletes should not become involved in the present “Jew-Nazi altercation.” As the Olympics controversy heated up in 1935, Brundage alleged the existence of a “Jewish-Communist conspiracy” to keep the United States out of the Games.
Another important boycott supporter, Ernst Lee Jahncke (a former assistant secretary of the US Navy), was expelled from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in July 1936 after taking a strong public stand against the Berlin Games. The IOC pointedly elected Avery Brundage to fill Jahncke’s seat. Jahncke is the only member in the 100-year history of the IOC to be ejected.
Short-lived boycott efforts also surfaced in Great Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands. German Socialists and Communists in exile voiced their opposition to the Games…..
https://web.archive.org/web/20140202095138/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php
I understand the point that Stanley Cohen makes in an otherwise excellent article but he starts off with a quotation from Rabbi Stephen Wise, who was anything but ‘a respected Rabbi and leader of the American Jewish community of the early 1930’s.’
Wise only reluctantly supported the Boycott after being shamed into doing so by the real leader of the Boycott, Samuel Untermayer.
As I write in my book quoting Edwin Black’s ‘The Transfer Agreement’
‘Samuel Untermyer, an American Jewish lawyer who had organised the Boycott campaign returned to the United States on 6 August determined to quell the opposition of Wise to the Boycott. ‘You cannot put out a fire… by just looking on.’ Untermyer spoke of Wise as, ‘the kingpin of mischief-makers’ whose support for the Boycott depended on the audience he was addressing. On 14 August Wise was sufficiently stung by Untermyer’s criticism to declare his support for the Boycott when addressing the Prague Jewish community.
Wise’s later activities during the war qualify him for the title of Jewish War Criminal. Wise strove and fought, alongside Nahum Goldman, against the efforts of Peter Bergson and Shmuel Merlin & Ben Hecht to save Jews from Europe, no matter what their destination. (Black pp. 276-7)
Bergson asked Wise:
‘If you were inside a burning house, would you want the people outside to scream ‘save them’ or to scream ‘save them by taking them to the Waldorf Astoria?’ (Lenni Brenner p.242)
Wise was the recipient of Gerhard Riegner’s telegram of August 1942 which announced that the Nazis were exterminating the Jewish population of Europe. He immediately acquiesced in a request by the State Department to keep quiet for 3 months.
In a letter to Roosevelt of 2 December 1942 Wise admitted that
it is indisputable that as many as two million civilian Jews have been slain. I have had cables and underground advices for some months, telling of these things. I succeeded, together with the heads of other Jewish organizations, in keeping these out of the press and have been in constant communication with the State Department, particularly Under-secretary Welles.
This can be found in Walter Lacquer’s A Terrible Secret p.160 and in Wise’s own papers. Not content with keeping quiet about the Holocaust at its most intense period, when 1.5m were murdered, Wise did his best to prevent the establishment of the War Refugee Board in January 1944 which, belatedly set about doing all the things Roosevelt had refused to before.
It is estimated that up to a quarter of a million Jews and thousands of non-Jews were saved by the WRB but to the Zionists what mattered was that Palestine was the chosen destination. Saving Jews for its own sake was a heresy.
Legitimacy is undoubted.
Practicality is a separate matter,