Setting a precedent for Palestine

Tomorrow's boycott of Israeli produce, called for by activist groups, may have only a small economic impact , but it is symbolic in putting the debate on the table, writes Jon Ihle

Since 2002, the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) and other activist groups in Ireland and around the world have been trying to institute a global boycott of Israeli economic, academic and cultural institutions, as well as Israeli goods and companies that do business with Israel or Israeli firms. The movement arose in parallel with the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank that had begun in 2000, but had reached a climax two years later with a series of suicide bombings in Israel and the controversial Israeli assault on Jenin. As peace looked less and less retrievable, campaigners turned to what is now a well-known litany of activisim: boycott, sanctions, divestment.

The goal of the organisations involved is to brand Israel as a pariah state for its policies in the Palestinian territories and to isolate it from the community of democracies, as the anti-apartheid movement cut off and discredited South Africa in the 1980s. The similarity in tactics is no accident: to the activists, today's Israel is itself an "apartheid state" that has segregated the Palestinians in "bantustans" in the West Bank and Gaza. In their rhetoric Zionism is a doctrine of racial superiority, and not of national liberation as an overwhelming majority of Jews understand it.

The IPSC is leading a national boycott day tomorrow, when supporters will be picketing shops in an effort to convince shoppers to shun Israeli produce, such as potatoes, avocados, Jaffa oranges and herbs. But food represents only a small amount of the €600 million trade between Ireland and Israel, which is almost evenly split between imports and exports - mainly computer components and pharmaceutical goods in both directions.

Whether the anti-Israel movement can generate mass appeal remains to be seen but, at the very least, the IPSC and its allies have introduced a boycott of Israel into everyday debate in Ireland.

Until this summer, the campaign had been almost completely ineffective in Ireland. Although the Presbyterian Church in the US and the Church of England have voted to disinvest selectively from companies involved in Israel, churches in Ireland did not follow suit. The largest lecturers' union in the UK resolved in May to boycott Israeli academics who failed to dissociate themselves from their government's policies, but nothing similar happened here. Attempts in 2005 to turn soccer fans away from Ireland's World Cup qualifier with Israel at Lansdowne Road were widely ignored as punters walked past protesters on their way to the stadium. A year earlier, the well-known anti-war activist Caoimhe Butterly initiated a 14-day hunger strike outside the offices of CRH, which has a large holding in an Israeli cement company believed to have helped construct the separation barrier in the West Bank, but shareholders took no notice.

But since the war between Israel and Hizbullah, the boycott has been gaining traction. Late last month, the chairman of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the composer Raymond Deane, circulated a call to arts organisations to enact a cultural boycott of state-sponsored Israeli cultural institutions by refusing to accept financial support from the Israeli government, as is customary when Israeli artists visit Ireland.

The appeal didn't generate much activity in the arts sector - not least because few Israeli artists visit Ireland - but it did prompt a characteristic exchange of statements between Deane and the director of the Dublin Fringe Festival, Wolfgang Hoffmann, just a week before the festival got under way.

In a statement referring to film director Ken Loach's vociferous support for a boycott, as well as sympathetic decisions by other Irish arts organisations earlier in the year, Deane said the IPSC was "deeply disturbed" that the Fringe would accept sponsorship from the "rogue state" of Israel to help pay for the participation of an Israeli dance company in the festival. Hoffmann still accepted the sponsorship and said he refused to take sides in the complex political issue.

This wasn't the first time these two had come into conflict. As the Fringe Festival was about to start last year, Deane and Hoffmann engaged in a charged exchange of correspondence over Deane's insistence that the Fringe either cancel a play about the Holocaust by an Israeli company or dispense with the support it received from the Israeli embassy. Hoffmann refused, insisting he would not be "bullied into not working with artists". Deane responded by insinuating that Hoffmann's German nationality was a factor in his refusal and that "the Holocaust is shamefully and repeatedly exploited by Israel and its fellow-travellers in order to prevent dialogue" about the Palestinian situation.

The difference this year, though, was that the IPSC had achieved unprecedented success in its campaign over the summer as the war in Lebanon turned global opinion sharply against Israel. While Hoffmann has appeared no more willing to participate in the boycott now, some of his colleagues in the arts have shown themselves more sympathetic.

While the fighting was still raging in southern Lebanon and northern Israel at the end of July, the Irish Film Institute decided to drop Israeli embassy sponsorship for a film at the Dublin Gay and Lesbian Film Festival after Palestinian film makers protested. IFI director Mark Mulqueen said the decision was "taken in light of the current activities of the Israeli government". The film was still screened, but the Israeli embassy expressed disappointment at the decision. Senior figures in the arts sector also expressed misgivings about a cultural body taking a political stand outside its remit.

It emerged shortly afterwards that the Dún Laoghaire Festival of World Cultures had also turned down a €1,500 Israeli travel grant for two Israeli musicians. In this instance, the IPSC was directly involved in the decision, as Deane had lobbied the festival organisers and members of the county council.

The IPSC has also claimed credit for the cancellation of training for Israeli tram operators on Dublin's Luas lines. The Luas operator, Veolia, says the cancellation was due to operational problems. But both Ictu and Siptu, whose members work for Veolia, had passed motions supporting economic sanctions against Israel prior to the decision.

These precedents are significant, since for the first time well-known public organisations have adopted the logic of activists who, until recently, held views outside the mainstream. While the IPSC can only rally numbers in the low hundreds at its protests, the group's persuasive power appears to have gathered disproportionate strength.