Why an economic boycott of Israel is justified.

• Author: Finkelstein, Norman
• Position: Salvaging Democracy

In early January, Kristin Halvorsen, current Norwegian Finance Minister and leader of the Left Socialist Party (a member of the current three-party governmental coalition), expressed her personal and party support for a Norwegian boycott of Israeli goods and services. Almost immediately, the Israeli ambassador to Norway protested and Condoleezza Rice threatened Norway with "serious political consequences" if Halvorsen's statement represented the policy of the current government. Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store then dashed off a letter to Rice, assuring her that the Left Socialist Party's position on an economic boycott of Israel "has never been and will never be" the policy of the Norwegian government. For her part Halvorsen distanced herself from her previous statements, as top leaders of the foreign affairs department criticized her and drew parallels between a boycott of Israeli goods and the Nazi boycott of Jewish shops. Finklestein's piece was published late that month in Norway's most influential newspaper, Aftenposten.

The recent proposal that Norway boycott Israeli goods has provoked passionate debate. In my view, a rational examination of this issue would pose two questions: (1) Do Israeli human rights violations warrant an economic boycott, and (2) can such a boycott make a meaningful contribution toward ending these violations? I would argue that both these questions should be answered in the affirmative.

Although the subject of many reports by human rights organizations, Israel's real human rights record in the occupied territories is generally not well know abroad. This is primarily due to the formidable public relations industry of Israel's defenders as well as the effectiveness of their tactics of intimidation, such as labeling critics of Israeli policy anti-Semitic.

Yet, it is an incontestable fact that Israel has committed a broad range of human rights violations, many rising to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity. These include:

Illegal killings

Whereas Palestinian suicide attacks targeting Israeli civilians have garnered much media attention, Israel's quantitatively worse record of killing non-combatants is less well known. According to the most recent figures of the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B'Tselem), 3,386 Palestinians have been killed since September 2000, of whom 1,008 were identified as combatants, as opposed to 992 Israelis killed, of whom 309 were combatants. This means that 3 times more Palestinians than Israelis have been killed and up to 3 times more Palestinian civilians than Israeli civilians. Israel's defenders maintain that there's a difference between targeting civilians...