IP: Well, definitely. I think the whole campaign, the BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions. We don't have sanctions as yet. I think the idea that we should have sanctions is very, very important. First of all it galvanized activists all around the western world after years of being sort of more low key in their support of Palestine. It really gave new orientation to the solidarity with the Palestinians, which is not an easy thing. We don't have an ANC, as we used to have in the days of anti-apartheid. But things are fragmented, are not united, it is not very clear who leads them. And yet people wanted to show their sympathy and solidarity with the Palestinians. And I think the BDS, this campaign was very powerful.
Secondly, I think it is a very important definer, a kind of signifier of what Israel is. You do not adopt or you do not support the idea of boycott if you believe that a society can change from within. And I think what the importance of this message is a very clear, and to my mind, accurate analysis of the political mood in Israel. Israel is a society that will not change from within. And the only way it will change, if someone would send it a powerful message, kind of a wake-up call, "You have to change, otherwise you will pay a price."
And, the final point I would say about the BDS, the Palestinian society that asked for the BDS replaced this as a strategy, replaced the arms struggle, the suicide bomb, with these ideas. I think it is far better to have this non-violent means of trying to force Israel to change its policies, than the horrible kind of things, that suicide bombs brought with them. Not only to the Israeli Jews, but also to the Palestinians themselves.
DB: And there's an amazing model in that they've seen what happened in South Africa.
IP: Exactly. There is a proven success story there, which inspires people to go on with this.
DB: Alright. I want to have you respond to the situation in Syria. Incredible impact on Palestinians there, over the border, in Lebanon. These are stories we're not hearing about.
IP: Right. No, definitely, the whole Yarmouk Camp, one of the largest Palestinian refugee camps has been wiped out, and nobody is talking about it.
DB: How many people is that?
IP: It's about 20,000-30,000 people who just disappeared without trace, in many ways. I think that what happens in Syria took us long time to digest, and its connection to Palestine is very important, on two levels. One is, of course, the level of the suffering of the people there. And, instead of trying to take sides, who is to be blamed? ... the Assad regime that nobody should celebrate as a human achievement, or the opposition that doesn't seem to be much better?
In every respect, the people themselves, for every Syrian that is killed there is a Syrian who is a hero. A physician who remains in a city, and continues to treat his patients, and so on. So, there is out of the inhumanity, Syria shines also the humanity of the people. So I think on one level there is this, next door to Palestine, there is both the most horrific scene that you can see, but also the most inspiring one, in many ways. But the West doesn't report the inspiring stories.
The second aspect is far more important in a way. Israelis believed until recently that they are not connected to the Arab world. They are located somewhere between Norway and Scotland. And they have nothing to do with what's going on. And the fire, and the slaughtering and everything, it's not their world.
And, of course, this is a mistake, they are in the middle of the Arab world. They are part of the Arab's world's problems. They could be a part of the Arab world's solutions, but they don't want to, they don't want to. And the turmoil, the storm that is now sweeping the Arab world, will reach Israel as well. It won't help them.
You know, I said to an Israeli newspaper, they interviewed me lately and they usually don't. But he started arguing with the interviewer and me about, he kept saying, "You know, but the Arab world, whatever happens in the Arab world has nothing to do with us." So, I decided what else could I tell him, I gave him two images, which I think, for me, sums up the relationship between Israel and what's going on in the Arab world. One image, I said to him, you know, even if you occupy the best deck on the Titanic, you are still on the Titanic.
DB: You are going down.
IP: Exactly, so it won't help you. And since I saw that didn't work too well. I said think about the roof of the American embassy in South Vietnam in 1975. I said, "Do you remember the images of the helicopters and how people were fighting to get on them? This is one scenario that Israelis should take very seriously." Of course, Israelis say, "We have 250 nuclear weapons, we have the strongest army. This will never happen." And I said: "Be careful."
DB: I've got two minutes left so I'm going to ask my dumb question, my dumb popular public affairs question: How could it be that a nuclear renegade like Israel where there's, as you suggest, 250 nuclear weapons, could get away with threatening to go across a couple of countries, and bomb Iran because they might some day, sometime in the future, think about having nuclear power and maybe the beginnings [of a nuclear weapons program], how could the world accept that kind of nonsense?
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