Opinion: What calls to boycott ‘The Woman King’ are really saying
The decision by the House of Representatives to call for a boycott of and a withdrawal from the upcoming London Olympics is a political mistake. There is a better way to respond to the boycott.
That was the message I heard when I joined more than 250 people in London (and other cities) last week for my own “Boycott the Olympics, Don’t Be Fooled by the World in Their Own Words Campaign.” There were also a number of people for whom the boycott of the Olympics was a protest against our own governments’ shameful treatment of the Palestinian people. We wanted to express our disgust and frustration with the events in Gaza and in Palestine and to show solidarity with the Palestinian people, as well as with the people of Gaza, in our own countries’ complicity in the events in Gaza.
The call for the boycott comes at a time when U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has come out in favor of “a two-state solution,” or a Palestinian state with a safe and secure Israel in its borders. Even some of the people who call themselves “pro-Israel” do not want any Israeli government to exist in a state of belligerence toward the Palestinians, despite the fact that Israel has been operating under the authority of the United Nations Security Council and the International Court of Justice.
The Palestinians have never accepted the establishment of a democratic state in Israel and in Gaza. They have called for the end of the occupation; they have demanded the right to self-determination; they have demanded the right to an independent state; they are demanding the right of return for all Palestinian refugees.
A boycott of the Olympics is a direct attack on these demands; the boycott of the Olympics and actions against Israel are a direct attack on the rights of the Palestinian people in that region.
A boycott is not a way of