Ironies of Boycotts

“All wars are useless … and sometimes in films we tend to
glorify them by making all those great characters and
they show you it's all about bravery and brotherhood of
man. And I don't believe in that.”
~ Ari Folman

Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman has just released Waltz With Bashir, an animated film that takes up the matter of Israeli military culpability in the massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Folman was serving in the IDF at the time and while the Israelis themselves did not take part in the massacre, they provided 'technical support' for those who did. I came across this short and not terribly well done interview with Folman from last week's New York Times Magazine which reminded me of this much more interesting interview I heard with him on npr a couple of weeks ago.

I have posted here about the ambiguities of John Berger's condemnation of the Israeli attack of Gaza and his call for boycott. Here are my questions: Does marshaling our purchasing power amplify our voices? Or does it depoliticize and moralize them? In the past week or so Naomi Klein too has published in several prominent venues - e.g., [1] [2] - a call to boycott Israel. Klein advances a fairly straightforward argument on what, I think, is an incredibly complex issue. Should we be avoiding Folman's film (for instance)? Or are our efforts more usefully directed at our own government which mindless supports Israeli actions - including abstaining last week on the U.N Security Council resolution calling for an immediate halt to the ongoing invasion of Gaza? Perhaps we might make contact with the many Israelis who dissent from their government's war and whose voices are, as I've said here and here, remain largely inaudible in coverage of the invasion? The latter strategies would shift us and our actions from the category of consumer to that of citizen.