There are some muffins there if you want . . .

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But now I feel that it has become more possible, more urgent to
reconsider the politics of the BDS. It is not that the principles of the
BDS have changed: they have not. But there are now ways to think
about implementing the BDS that keep in mind the central focus: any
event, practice, or institution that seeks to normalize the Occupation
or presupposes that ordinary cultural life can continue without an
explicit opposition to the Occupation is itself complicit with the Occupation. We can think of this as passive complicity, if you like. But the
main point is to challenge those institutions that seek to separate the
Occupation from other cultural activities. The idea is that we cannot
participate in cultural institutions that act as if there is no occupation
or that refuse to take a clear and strong stand against the Occupation
and dedicate their activities to its undoing.
So, with this in mind, we can ask, what does it mean to engage in
boycott? It means that, for those of us on the outside, we can only go
to an Israeli institution, or an Israeli cultural event, in order to use the
occasion to call attention to the brutality and injustice of the Occupation and to articulate an opposition to it. I think thats what Naomi
Klein did, and I think it actually opened up another route for interpreting the BDS principles. It is no longer possible for me to come
to Tel Aviv and talk about gender, Jewish philosophy, or Foucault, as
interesting as that might be for me; it is certainly not possible to take
money from an organization or university or a cultural organization
that is not explicitly and actively anti-Occupation, acting as if the cultural event within Israeli borders was not happening against the background of Occupation. Against the background of the assault on, and
continuing siege of, Gaza. It is this unspoken and violent background
of ordinary cultural life that needs to become the explicit object of
cultural and political production and criticism. Historically, I see no
other choice, since affirming the status quo means affirming the Occupation. One cannot set aside the radical impoverishment, the malnutrition, the limits on mobility, the intimidation and harassment at
the borders, and the exercise of state violence in both Gaza and the
West Bank and talk about other matters in public. If one were to talk
about other matters, then one would be actively engaged in producing
a limited public sphere of discourse that has repression and hence the
continuation of violence as its aim.
Let us remember that the politics of boycott are not just matters of
conscience for left intellectuals within Israel or outside. The point of

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