A Response to Norman Finkelstein

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30586.htm
Date Written:  2012-02-19
Publisher:  Information Clearing House
Year Published:  2012
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX14167

A response to Norman Finkelstein's attack on the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Tilley says that Finkelstein's insistence that the movement has to adjust itself to mainstream public opinion is bizarre: "Since when do human rights campaigns adjust their arguments to please mainstream opinion? Changing mainstream opinion is their very task. If activists took mainstream opinion as the proper guide to moral action, we would never have had the anti-slavery abolition movement, or the women’s suffrage movement, and apartheid would flourish in South Africa to this day. Indeed, we wouldn’t have most human rights campaigns. The toughest ones, which are often the greatest ones, must often start small and grow slowly."

Subject Headings

• Israel
• Palestine