BDS is a Picket Line

Last week, Shadi Hamid, a scholar affiliated with the Brookings Institute, announced on Twitter that he was visiting “Israel” and the “Palestinian territories” as part of a “study tour” sponsored by the Philos Project, a Christian Zionist outfit with warlike proclivities which “believe[s] that the Jewish nation is an indigenous nation of the Middle East with a right to live in its ancient homeland.”  The announcement didn’t go over well with members of the Palestine solidarity movement. 

Hamid anticipated pushback, but still complained about the low quality of trolls in his mentions.  He insisted that it’s silly to expect a delegate to agree with everything his sponsoring organization believes and that he should be exempt from criticism because the visit was for research, not activism. 

Hamid regularly invokes the merits of disagreement to rationalize his promotion of racists and reactionaries.  He described Islamophobic chauvinist Niall Ferguson as “a person who [sic] I disagree with on an endless number of things,” before volunteering Ferguson (along with Paul Berman) as a major influence. 

“I know the organization and its founder @rwnicholson,” he said of the Philos Project.  “I recently spoke about Islam and politics at their HQ.  Robert [Nicholson] and I don’t agree on everything, but we respect each other and we learn from each other, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.” 

But Hamid doesn’t practice this principle consistently.  He rarely promotes a radical with whom he disagrees; instead, he engages individuals and institutions capable of furnishing prestige in the pundit marketplace.  His willingness to transcend ideology isn’t some mark of sophistication; it is opportunism masquerading as open-mindedness.  Nothing emerges from the habit but a reproduction of conservative wisdom. 

In any case, Hamid’s participation in the study tour is troublesome not simply because Philos is a colonialist shitshow, but because he crossed a picket line.  Philos’s core funder is the Paul E. Singer Foundation, which supports a wide range of pro-Israel causes, rendering it subject to boycott.  Beyond his questionable affiliations, then, Hamid is a scab.  And scabbing, more than anything, ought to be the point of contention with luminaries who defy BDS.  

Citing research as the reason for ignoring an international picket line is both a rhetorical failure and a testament to self-absorption.  Nobody needs Hamid’s research.  Economic and political elites certainly welcome it, but they would get on fine without him.  Colonized nations, however, need solidarity.  Palestinians have requested that scholars and artists defer personal aspirations in order to pressure their oppressor.  It’s not an onerous ask.  Nobody needs Zionist chaperones to produce research, either. 

Individual pursuits are never so important as to override the sustenance of a community in struggle.  BDS is a collective effort; no person, regardless of fame or eminence, is exempt from ethical obligations to the dispossessed.  

Let’s spend a moment with the word “scab.”  I don’t deploy it to insult BDS violators, but to clinically describe the nature of their actions.  (Offense exists in the behavior, not the term.)  Hamid, for example, was aware of the boycott before visiting Israel with a right-wing organization.  He decided to visit anyway.  That makes him a scab.  Other descriptors apply, but I’m keen on those that highlight a metaphorical picket line thousands of people choose to respect, often at significant personal cost. 

Although Hamid absolves himself by saying he doesn’t agree with BDS, and thus has no obligation to boycott, he’s still a scab.  His disavowal doesn’t cancel the boycott.  It’s not his boycott to disavow.  Palestinian resistance exists apart from—and in fact supersedes—his predilections.  The essence of scabbing is prioritizing selfish pursuits over appeals to cooperation. 

Crossing the BDS picket line is especially dubious in this moment.  Palestinians suffer increasing brutality from an Israeli government determined to reify ethno-supremacy.  The Trump administration is talking about moving West Bank residents into Jordan.  The Gaza Strip is a site of unconscionable suffering.  While Palestinians are being murdered by the dozen, Western intellectuals can surely find something better to do than signal boost the people handling the ammunition. 

Moreover, the boycott is working, as evidenced by the fact that governments across the globe are trying to shut it down.  Those three letters—B, D, S—have become synonymous with Palestine’s national struggle, even among writers and activists skeptical of its utility as a revolutionary politics.  Its ascent required a ton of hard work, some of it painful, much of it unacknowledged.  Ignoring that work requires a vampiric sensibility.  

To cross the picket line with delusions of independence won’t do; it’s still a gift to the Israeli government.  The crossing itself subsidizes Zionist propaganda. 

There’s a reason that pro-Israel organizations find easy marks in prominent intellectuals:  their prominence exists in part because they’re accomplished sycophants with an excellent instinct for discerning which formations are most advantageous in navigating relations of power.  While folks with minimal decency adhere to one of the oldest political rules in the world, “never cross a picket line,” the class of intellectuals to which Hamid belongs observe a different maxim:  “never cross anybody capable of conferring influence.” 

So let’s scuttle the pious rhetoric and speak plainly:  if you cross the BDS picket line, you’re not honoring disagreement; you’re not fostering dialogue; you’re not helping the natives; you’re not discovering new knowledge; you’re not upholding academic freedom.  What you’re actually doing is much less complicated:  scabbing.