 The following video show, organized as a last-minute substitute show by our regular host for this hour, is about USA CBI. That is, the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. Some people feel that USA CBI is a rampantly anti-Semitic organization. In these times of national controversy about racial and religious bigotry, this show gives us a certain level of concern. Especially in that it is taking place here in Hawaii. So, while we will allow these individuals to appear on ThinkTech, we advise you that the views they express do not in any way represent the views of ThinkTech or its management or staff. Further, to provide balance, we will be broadcasting a Community Matters show immediately after this show to address anti-Semitism on campus 2017. Please stay tuned to get that side of the story. While this event has been championed by every U.S. administration since as a great step forward for justice, the reality is far more complicated. The 1948 creation of Israel is known as Al Nakba, or the Catastrophe, by Arabs, as it resulted in the forced expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians, the military occupation of Palestinian land, and the creation of an apartheid system of laws to govern the Palestinians who remain within the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel proper. Nevertheless, U.S. support for Israel has remained unwavering and uncritical. The Israel Lobby, one of the most powerful in Washington, has sponsored a bill that would make it illegal for U.S. organizations and citizens to conscientiously boycott Israeli-made products, a form of First Amendment protected free speech. Hawaii's Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa is a co-sponsor of the bill, known as the Israel Anti-Boycott Act. My guest today is Jewish American scholar and co-founder of the Hawaii Coalition for Justice in Palestine, Cynthia Franklin, who visited Israel in the OPT in 2013 and who has worked extensively on the U.S. academic and cultural boycott of Israel. Cynthia, thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me on the show. Okay, so the first thing I want to talk about is BDS a little bit. There's a lot of misinformation now about what it is and why it was created on the one extreme end. Some people call it a terrorist organization, less extreme but just as unhelpful. Some people say that it's anti-Jewish. Can you fill us in a little bit about what BDS is really all about and how you first got involved? First, what is BDS? BDS was founded in 2005. It was a call put out by Palestinian civil society, 170 organizations and groups, asking that people across the world observe a boycott, a boycott divestment and sanctions program of Israel until three conditions were met. These three conditions were a way of applying nonviolent pressure on Israel to comply with international law. So there are three planks to BDS and when those are met, there would be no more boycott. So the three things are first of all to end the colonization of all Arab lands and to dismantle the illegal apartheid wall or separation wall. The second condition is to provide equal rights to Arab or Palestinian citizens of Israel who currently exist under a set of unequal laws or 50 laws that on their face discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel. The third condition is to respect and promote the right of return for those Palestinians who have been displaced from historic Palestine. And I think those numbers are over 7 million. The diaspora, yeah. And that is a UN protected right of return. And when you say illegal, you're talking about based on UN? Based on UN Resolution 194 has stipulated that Palestinians have right of return. And that the settlements and the wall are illegal as well? Yes, that those are illegal. And how did you get involved with BDS? I got involved with BDS as a result of a trip to Palestine in 2013 where I observed for myself conditions that I had read about and learned about. And I met up with many Palestinians and what the uniform thing they said was, please go back, tell people what you've seen and also support the boycott. And so when I got back, I was invited on to the organizing collective for the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, also known as USACV. And so I have joined that organizing collective and been part of that for the last four years or so. Okay, so in that trip in 2013, right? That's correct. You were there for a, you were looking for contributing writers for a special edition of the journal biography, which you co-edit. That's correct. And what were some of the things that you witnessed there and how did they either change or solidify your understanding of the Israeli state and what's going on on the ground there? Well, one of the things that I really learned right from before I left for the trip, before I left for the trip, I was told, you know, make sure your computer doesn't have anything on it that indicates you are going to the West Bank. Make sure there's no contacts in your phone that indicate that you're going to the West Bank because you will, you can get in trouble right at the airport and meet with obstacles there. So right away, I encountered a sense of the kinds of repressions. On the way into the West Bank, there's a sign that says, you know, if you're not Palestinian, I don't remember the exact language, but it's basically do not enter. This is dangerous. Your life is in danger if you cross into the West Bank. So I then crossed into the West Bank and met with amazing hospitality. But again, right away, driving into the West Bank, I was going on roads with potholes and badly maintained and knew there was a separate set of roads for Israeli settlers who are living in the West Bank. So I immediately observed two sets of roads. I very quickly came to understand how to recognize who are settlers, Israeli Jewish settlers and who are Palestinians by who had water tanks on their roofs because one of the things Israel does is it takes the water from the West Bank and keeps about, I think it's 80%, but I'm not totally sure. And then it sells back the rest of that water and delivers it once a week to those water tanks. So there's a perpetual water shortage. I also experienced delays at checkpoints and witnessed violence at checkpoints. One particularly horrific and memorable experience was seeing a small child run down by an Israeli settler at a checkpoint. And I witnessed and heard about people's difficulties getting to school, difficulties getting to the hospital because of the checkpoints because of the wall making mobility very difficult. I talked to students who had themselves been arrested or who had fiance's or friends arrested for things like setting up chairs for demonstrations to protest the wall. So I experienced a whole range of ways that the occupation affects people's lives and bureaucratic ways and ways that endanger them physically that are just exasperating. And I think that the most dramatic experience I had was in Hebron, which is a place of really intense repression. It's one of the few places where settlers actually live basically on top of Palestinians. They've moved into Palestinian homes and we were shown around Hebron by the international temporary presence in Hebron who made sure that we were kept safe from all the Israeli soldiers who were pointing their guns down at the street. Palestinians cannot walk on. There are streets they cannot walk on. They cannot enter the front doors of their homes. There's netting above the streets. We actually have a picture of that, of one of the pictures that you brought back of the street in Hebron with the net sort of covering that. And that's to protect from rocks and things that are thrown down, but the people that are the international observers said that people will throw acid down on the street or they will throw sewage down through those nets. And we observed, you know, we observed evidence of that as we were walking through the streets. So that was the most dramatic thing that we saw, but in addition, there was just the kind of daily erosion of people's rights and ability to function and the kind of normalization of occupation that really makes life even for the best off Palestinians quite difficult. So, you know, Hebron is an extreme example, but we were in the homes of quite wealthy people who made us these beautiful meals. But the stories that they told were ones of, you know, losing family and losing friends to violence from the Palestinians. It's basically what you have there is it's under military rule. And so even the best off Palestinians still are living under an occupation that is quite brutal and leaves them with great deal of uncertainty about the most basic of things. And now you're Jewish Americans. So can you talk a little bit about in your summit essay about sort of the difficulty with coming to terms, I suppose, with the fact that anti Zionism is not opposed to being Jewish. So real quickly, could you just share a little bit about that with your experience? Well, that's that's such an important thing to really underline that being Jewish and being Zionist are two different things. And for me, Zionism is a political, you know, ideology. It's a form of nationalism. It's a form of settler colonialism. And I as a Jew want no part of that. I work with Jewish voice for peace quite actively. And I think that they have been very clear sided and developing a position that very clearly lays out the fact that being anti Zionist is not being anti Jewish. The two are Israel depends upon those two being substitutable for one another. And in fact, the US State Department makes those substitutable. You're not allowed to criticize Israel or you're anti Semitic. That is Israel's most powerful way of keeping its human rights violations in check. And it's one that I think Jews of conscience have particular responsibility to refuse and to say that as Jews, we do not need to support Zionism. And this is in no way a reflection on our, we are not self hating Jews. We are not ourselves anti Semitic. We are just against settler colonialism. We are against apartheid. We are against occupation and not in our name. So the situation on the ground being what it is and the separation of wall doing what it's done to Palestinian land. And then on top of that the, you said 50 laws that are different that treat Palestinian citizens of Israel differently. What is that equal? What is all of that sort of equal in terms of like the Israeli state? Is it an apartheid state would you say? I think Israel is an apartheid state and Desmond Tutu is one of the people that supports the BDS movement. And he has said that apartheid in Israel is worse than it was in South Africa when South Africa was an apartheid state. And I think one of the things that often is confused is that apartheid is, it's a set of, you know, it's a definition that involves separation and discrimination. It doesn't have to look like it looks in South Africa for it to be apartheid. And so apartheid does look different in Israel and Palestine than it does in South Africa. Some South Africans have said it looks worse. We have to go to commercial real quick but we'll be right. Plan for fun and responsibility to the D.G. Captain of our team is the D.G. For every game day, a sign a designated driver. I'm Helen Dora Haydn, the host of Voice of the Veteran, seen here live every Thursday afternoon at 1 p.m. on Think Tech, Hawaii. As a fellow veteran and veterans advocate with over 23 years experience serving veterans, active duty and family members, I hope to educate everyone on benefits and accessibility services by inviting professionals in the field to appear on the show. In addition, I hope to plan on inviting guest veterans to talk about their concerns and possibly offer solutions. As we navigate and work together through issues, we can all benefit. Please join me every Thursday at 1 p.m. for the Voice of the Veteran. Aloha. Before the break, we were talking about the situation on the ground in Palestine that's given rise to the BDS movement. A nonviolent international protest against Israeli policy as it pertains to Palestinians. Now we're going to switch gears a little bit and talk about the reaction to BDS here in the United States where the government is still uncritically pro-Israel. So, recently in the news, there's been talk of a bill going through Congress, the Israeli Anti-Boycott Act, which would criminalize organizations and individuals who wish to participate in the BDS movement, either through boycotting Israeli products or through divesting from Israeli companies or projects. 253 representatives in the House, including our own Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa, have cosponsored that version and 48 senators have cosponsored the Senate version. The ACLU, however, opposes the bill strongly. So can you explain a little bit more about what the bill would actually seek to do and why it's particularly dangerous for free speech? So the bill is kind of an amendment of a 1979 Export Administration Act, and it's kind of technical. But basically what the bill does is it makes it punishable for businesses or individuals to be fined anywhere from $250,000 up to a million dollars and a year in prison for supporting the boycott. It's often called a BDS bill, and in fact I was struck at the town hall meeting that Colleen Hanabusa referred to it as the BDS bill. It's not technically a BDS bill in that what it says is that businesses that are supporting kind of foreign entities or organizations that are calling for boycott of Israel that you can't listen to them. You can't adhere to that boycott. Now what that means is, for example, let's say Kaku'a Market says we're not going to stock Sabra Hummus because Sabra Hummus violates the boycott, which it does. Now if that means that they would be susceptible to these fines and to imprisonment. Now if they said we're not stocking Sabra Hummus because we think it tastes bad, that would be cool. And so this is actually punishing businesses and individual business owners because of course it is not businesses that go to prison, it is people for their political beliefs. But that bill goes even further. And what that bill says is that any individuals who are inciting or even finding out about or even inquiring about this are also punishable. So if I call up Kaku'a Market and I say well which of your products are Israeli products and I'm not going to buy those products and I don't think you should sell those products. That bill would allow me to be, I would be eligible for penalization under that bill. So the reason the ACLU has come out so strongly against it is it is a direct infringement of First Amendment rights and also the right to boycott is protected. It is a protected and long respected form of free speech. And so the ACLU has taken a position against this as have some Zionist Jewish organizations including J Street. And so there's been some widespread resistance to this but as you mentioned there's also bipartisan congressional support for this bill and it's a very alarming bill. What does it say about, so essentially though it's seeking to criminalize or even perhaps outlaw the BDS movement because as you said you can't even inquire about it. You can't even advocate on behalf of the BDS movement or you're susceptible to these fines. So is that correct? Yeah, I mean it's okay. So like the EU has a list of products that are made in the Palestinian territories and they have this list of products. They actually haven't even said don't buy them but it's a kind of implicit boycott, call for boycott. So if you as a business boycott one of those or if you as an individual put pressure on a business related to that because the EU as an international entity has put that up there. Then even if you're not saying the EU called attention to this and that's why I'm interested. But even if you just yourself say this is something I'm interested in you are still subject to penalization according to the lawyers who have looked at this very carefully including ACLU lawyers. And so that's part of the reason there's so much upset around this bill. So the Israel lobby is like I said at the beginning one of the most powerful in Washington. So what does it say about the fact that they're leveraging Congress so hard because they came out and sponsored this bill. They helped draft it I believe, IPAC in particular. What does it say about the state of things that they are so intent on making it difficult or in some ways outlying the BDS movement in the US? So I think to me it speaks to the success and power of the BDS movement and the fact that you can't really stop it in any legitimate ways because it is nonviolent and it's grassroots and it is principled. It's basically a liberal movement. It's true that the results of it would be quite radical. Let's say obey international law. That's all it's doing. It's saying these three precepts of international law should be upheld. And so the fact that there is no really principled way I think to stop that leads to a kind of, I think we're seeing backlash right now. And Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel has declared BDS the largest strategic threat facing Israel. He has poured $25 million into stopping it. And Israel is very much working in tandem with Zionist groups in the US to promote this kind of legislation. The IABA Act that we've been talking about is not the only such legislation. Some of it has passed. There have been about 26 states that have passed some form of legislation. And city level as well. And city level too. So this is part of a kind of panicked response, I think, to the fact that BDS has been working. There are companies that have been pulling out of their investments in Israel. And there are others that are scrambling right now and kind of figuring out what to do. And so I think it's both a sign of success but also a kind of evidence, I think, of the fact that Israel is not a democratic state. And those supporting it are having trouble finding democratic ways to support what is not a democratic state. So speaking of support for Israel, last year under the Obama administration actually, the United States and the Israeli government signed a $38 billion military aid deal spread out over a decade. So I want to ask you how US military money impacts or affects the situation on the ground in Palestine and what needs to change in the United States policy or in terms of just social movements that need to happen to change that situation on the ground? Well, I think it's very clear this has to be grassroots citizens mobilizing and saying no. Because I think we see from every administration, and now we have Kushner leading peace talks, which is, I think, safely to say that's not going to go anywhere. And so it really is up to individuals to say to their representatives, this is actually, you know, this is not okay. We don't want this because I think unless there's this kind of pressure, it will continue. The $38 billion aid packet is up from what was a $3 billion a year to $3.8 billion a year. That money creates a lot of misery. Gaza is bombed approximately every two years. 2014 was the last all-out assault on Gaza. It is under the World Health Organization deemed to be unlivable by 2020. There is unsafe water. They have rebuilt almost nothing from a ravaged infrastructure because there is blockade. Building materials cannot enter. People cannot enter in and out. It is the world's largest, you know, outdoor prison. That is what the U.S. money is doing. It is supporting that. But it's also more complicated because Israel also uses Gaza and the West Bank as testing sites to develop weapons and surveillance technologies. There's a film called The Lab that talks about this made by an Israeli, Jewish Israeli filmmaker. There's big money involved in this and it's not just us helping them kind of thing. Our police are trained by Israel, which is part of the reason that Ferguson and Gaza had a lot of exchange going during the summer of 2014. When people in Gaza were like, oh, we know what to do with this kind of tear gas. This is how you do this. So I think that there is a lot of violence basically. We are supporting a violent occupation with that money is the short answer. So for viewers who are interested in pursuing this further, who are interested in learning more, who are interested in taking action to either or support the BDS movement or oppose legislation and policy, what can we do? Well, one thing in terms of this IAVA act is right to, you know, if you're in Hawaii, right to Colleen Hanabusa. Maybe she won't answer you as she has yet to answer me or any of the 20 people or so that I know of that have written to her. But it's important that she listened to her constituency and at least know even if she is not going to answer to us. More importantly, I think you can support the U.S. campaign for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel and BDS. And the BDS website gives more information about how to do that. Okay, great. Well, thank you so much Cynthia. Thank you. Thanks for having me. In these times of national controversy about racial and religious bigotry, this show gives us a certain level of concern, especially in that it is taking place here in Hawaii. So while we will allow these individuals to appear on Think Tech, we advise you that the views they express do not in any way represent the views of Think Tech or its management or staff. Further, to provide balance, we will be broadcasting a Community Matters show immediately after this show to address anti-Semitism on campus 2017. Please stay tuned to get that side of the story.