07/26/12 – Stephen Zunes – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, scotthorton.org.
Also, scotthorton.org/donate, if you're into that kind of thing.
Next guest is Stephen Zunis from Foreign Policy in Focus.
This one is called Divesting from All Occupations.
Welcome back to the show, Stephen.
How are you doing?
Good, thank you.
Good to be on again.
Good.
Very happy to have you here.
So tell us all about the divestment movement.
It's something that's, I guess, been kind of a big deal for a few years now, and I haven't really paid any attention to it whatsoever.
So maybe you can help catch me and my audience up on it a bit.
In many ways, it's modeled after the largely successful divestment campaigns that took place in the 1980s regarding U.S. businesses investing in South Africa, taking advantage of the apartheid system there, where they had the advantage of a chief exploited non-union black labor, along with an affluent white consumer class.
And people felt there were some moral issues involved around profiting from apartheid.
But indeed, some places like Ford and GM actually sold Jeeps and trucks to the South African police and military to suppress pro-democracy protesters.
And you had IBM selling computers to the government to keep track of everybody.
Every black person had to have a pass card.
And so this movement not only succeeded in forcing a number of corporations to fall out of South Africa, but also paved the way for the United States, finally, after years of resistance, to put some targeted sanctions on the apartheid regime, which helped bring majority rule to that country.
A number of human rights activists have been looking at Israel's occupation of the West Bank.
Israel has an apartheid-type situation on the West Bank with Jewish-only roads and Jewish-only settlements, which are illegal according to the Fourth Geneva Convention and the International Court of Justice and a series of UN Security Council resolutions.
And they've been pushing for institutional investors, a similar strategy during the anti-apartheid movement, to get institutional investors like colleges and universities, churches, unions, state pension funds, that kind of thing, to sell stock to corporations, not just any corporation that invests in Israel, but specifically corporations that support the Israeli occupation, as in setting up facilities in the settlements, buying stuff from the settlements, and providing the Israeli military with the means of suppressing the people in the occupied territories.
The Presbyterian Church, by a very narrow margin, it was like two votes out of several hundred delegates, voted down a resolution that they'd divest from Caterpillar Tractor, the company that supplies bulldozers for the Israelis to bulldoze thousands of Palestinian homes, including killing a young American, as well as Motorola and I forget the other company that invests in the settlements.
Meanwhile, TIAA-CREF, the major retirement fund for people in academia, and non-profits, and research, and other fields, they divested their social investment fund from Caterpillar, some Quaker groups have done it, Hampshire College, some other places, so it's starting to get some headway.
The problem, though, of course, is whenever people raise concerns about Israeli human rights abuses, even though these human rights abuses are well documented, you always get this thing, why are you singling out Israel?
And this is particularly sensitive because Israel is the only Jewish state, so a lot of people start getting worried, oh, this is anti-Semitic, you know, what about all these other countries that engage in human rights abuses, and indeed there are countries, any number of countries, that are as bad or worse than Israel in terms of human rights, but generally there's an important legal distinction when it comes to countries that are engaged in occupying other countries.
I mean, human rights abuses are human rights abuses anywhere, I mean, morally it's all wrong, but equally wrong, but in occupied territories there are actually laws that say that foreign companies cannot go in and support these illegal activities, they cannot exploit the natural resources of these areas under occupation, and similarly there are human rights provisions about supporting repression and stuff, and so they say, here, this is what makes Israel different than these other countries, because it's an occupying power.
And what I point out in this recent article… Well, and wait a minute, now, it's also because the United States of America gives them $5 billion a year, and most of that is spent on the F-16s and the M-16s that are used to oppress those people, and I would hasten to point out, twice our World Trade Center towers were bombed because of it, and make enemies of the United States of America with this policy.
So China in Tibet, I'm sorry for the people of Tibet, but that's tough, that's not my problem.
And here it is, there is this important difference also frankly with South Africa, that at the time of the later days of Apartheid, the United States, while not doing enough in my view to support majority rule, they were not giving billions of dollars to the Apartheid regime, they were not providing arms, at least in theory the US government was against Apartheid, and so direct foreign investments was the number one way that Americans were backing Apartheid, whereas direct foreign investment frankly is pretty far down the list in terms of the military, the economic, the diplomatic, and all these other ways that the US government itself is backing the occupation.
So you make a good point there, but some people would argue that maybe… But I'll take it one further as long as we're at it here, Stephen.
I think it's such a cop-out for people to cry about free Tibet all day.
How brave is it to be a Democrat and live in North America and sit around crying about the policy of the government of China?
Like what, Hillary Clinton's going to make them stop or something?
When Hillary Clinton's killing people every day all over the place, why don't they worry about stopping her?
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
And again, I'm very sympathetic with the Tibetan cause, but I think as an American, my first responsibility is to work against the oppression of people who are being pressed because of the policies of my government.
Absolutely.
It's so much easier, though, to sit around complaining about China and their foreign policy all day when they barely even have one at all.
Exactly.
I wanted to ask you two real quick, and I'm sorry, I know you have a lot to say, and I want to give you plenty of time, and of course we have a whole other segment coming up too, but I want to ask you real quick about the Presbyterians.
I'm sort of surprised that any polite, society, mainstream-type group would entertain the possibility of boycotting anything Israel or having to worry about that level of negative public relations at all, and I wonder what's behind that.
Do they have a particular affinity for the Palestinian brand of Christianity or something like that?
I mean, there is a minority of Palestinian Christians, some of whom are Presbyterian, but I think by and large, you'd be surprised, a lot of the mainstream denominations, the Presbyterians, the Episcopalians, and others, do have a pretty strong concern about human rights.
This big Romantic thing that a lot of people had about Israel in earlier decades, earlier generation, seems to be fading somewhat.
I mean, they're not anti-Israel, they support Israel's right to exist and all that, but they're getting harder and harder for mainstream liberal church people to justify the kinds of gross and systematic human rights abuses in violation of international legal norms that we're seeing in the occupation.
Yeah, I guess really John Hagee and Pat Robertson and all those goons get all the press, but they don't represent American Christianity by a long shot, really.
Exactly.
All right, now hold it right there.
It's Stephen Zunis, everybody, writing at Foreign Policy In Focus, this time divesting from all occupations.
We'll be right back after this.
Scott Horton dot org.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
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Sorry about all the noise.
We turned the fans on during the break in here, because it's hot, because we live in Texas and it's summertime.
Speaking of summertime, let's talk about the Western Sahara.
We're on the phone with Stephen Zunis, and he's writing at Foreign Policy In Focus.
That's FPIF dot org.
You knew that.
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I do.
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Add their RSS feed to your toolbar.
U.S.
-based Cosmos Energy is the only oil company in the world licensed for offshore oil exploration in the territorial waters of occupied Western Sahara.
They have waters?
I guess that must be all the way to the west, Western Sahara.
Yes, it's right on the Atlantic coast, south of Morocco.
And so what's happening here is that Morocco is illegally, that is, they didn't get permission from the U.N. Security Council to invade, so illegally they're occupying Western Sahara and, what, stealing their oil?
And then Americans are making money off of this imperialism?
No way.
Exactly.
Not to mention the phosphate that a number of American firms are tied into, exploiting in this Colorado-sized territory.
Please name their corrupt names, these corporations.
To be honest, I don't recall them off the top of my head.
All right, well, I'm reading it.
PCS and Mosaic are major customers of Morocco's illegal phosphate production in occupied Western Sahara, reads this article that you wrote at FPIF.
Right.
Western Sahara was invaded by Morocco in 1975.
Basically, Henry Kissinger pressured the Spaniards, who were about to give up their colony, it was then called Spanish Sahara, to the Moroccans.
The United States blocked the United Nations from enforcing its resolution, calling for Moroccan troops to withdraw and to allow the people of Western Sahara a right of self-determination.
And the country's been occupied ever since.
There was a guerrilla war that went on until 1991.
At that point, the Polisario Front, the nationalist movement, said, OK, we will stop fighting and return for a UN-supervised referendum.
And everybody agreed, but Morocco refused to allow the referendum to go forward.
And the United States has continued to block the UN from enforcing its resolutions on the referendum.
In other words, this is as much an occupied territory as the West Bank or Golan Heights, or as much as when Iraq invaded Kuwait.
But, of course, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, we got all self-righteous saying, well, an Arab country invaded another Arab country, we need to make this war.
But when it happened just a few years earlier, when Morocco invaded Western Sahara, the United States said, oh, Morocco's our ally, so that's cool.
We'll let them get away with it.
We were just talking with Brendan O'Neill about that very same phenomenon where the do-gooder liberals get to pick and choose which of these violations are the ones that will get their back up and become an excuse for the next intervention.
They can just ignore one as well as intervene in the name of the other.
And not just ignore, but actually facilitate it through military aid, through special advisers, special forces, through blocking the UN from doing anything about it.
And indeed, the Bush administration, with the support of a majority of U.S. senators, led by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, has been pushing the Obama administration and the UN to recognize Morocco's takeover of Western Sahara by allowing them to have some so-called autonomy, which in reality is essentially an excuse for continued occupation because it really wouldn't grant that much in the way of real autonomy.
Yeah, here they are, as it says in your article, U.S.
-based arms manufacturers have supplied Moroccan occupation forces, engaged in what independent human rights groups have described as gross and systematic human rights violations.
And what we're talking about with Brennan O'Neill was the human rights groups pushing for the new UN so-called Small Arms Treaty, which is supposed to stop just this thing, except of course it's the powers that they want to enforce this treaty are the ones doing the selling of the weapons to the various death squads in the region.
They're sure as hell not arming the people fighting for their liberty in Western Sahara.
They're fighting for the people who are stealing the phosphates for their campaign contributors.
Exactly.
And Western Sahara is an independent country in that it's recognized by over 80 countries, it's a full member of the African Union.
This is not a secessionist movement, this is an independent nation-state.
But it is under belligerent occupation.
Indeed, it's the only, except for a tiny, tiny strip of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenia, it is the only country in the world besides the Israeli-occupied territories that is recognized by the United Nations, by the international community, as being under a foreign belligerent occupation.
So though one can make the case that the Chechens, the Tibetans, the West Papuans, and others have the right of self-determination, legally speaking, they're within the national boundaries of the occupier.
But legally speaking, Western Sahara is the only country besides the Israeli territories that are occupied by a foreign power.
I'm learning from Syria that if only this was a secessionist movement or some kind of civil war wholly within one so-called legitimate nation-state, America would have to intervene on behalf of the secessionists.
You know, like in Sudan, or in Kosovo.
I mean, the Serbs did terrible things to the Kosovo Albanians, and totally unjustified, but this idea that the U.S. says that they shouldn't even consider the very generous Serbian autonomy plan, and their independence should be unilaterally recognized, even though legally they're part of Serbia, they're part of Western Sahara, which is legally not part of Morocco, is an occupation, and whose autonomy plan is far less generous than what the Serbs are offering.
We're saying, oh no, they should just be part of Morocco.
So the double standard, I mean, it would be comical if it wasn't so serious in terms of the lives of the Western Saharans.
I mean, I've been to the occupied territory, and while Morocco itself has liberalized somewhat in the past few years, if you actually go down to the occupied Western Sahara, it's the worst police state I've ever seen.
And I've been in some pretty bad, nasty police states, but this is even worse, and over half the population are refugees, and in refugee camps in Algeria, to escape this kind of repression.
But the United States, we read in the press, that Morocco is a moderate Arab government, and the king there gets all this praise of how liberal he is, because his family law gives more rights to women than in other countries, even though, culturally, the Saharawis are far more advanced in terms of the rights of women than Morocco is.
And now, so what can anybody do about this?
I mean, you have to be an industrial-level farmer for it to matter one way or another, what PCS or Mosaic do, right?
To be able to affect what they do, I guess is what I mean.
What I talk about in this article is that I think Western Sahara should be included, along with Palestine, in the divestment movement, both because I think the people of Western Sahara deserve to get support and attention, but also it would help the BDS movement escape this kind of claim that, oh, why are you singling out Israel?
You're anti-Semitic and everything.
They could say, hey, Morocco is an Arab-Muslim country.
We're against occupation.
This is not an ideological thing.
This is just, again, this is about human rights and international law.
So against both occupations, which again, are the only occupations, really, in the world today that are recognized as such, where U.S. companies are coming in and profiting from it.
But also, I think it is something that – we remember East Timor, which is a very similar situation of Western Sahara.
It was a late decolonization effort where a powerful neighbor ended up invading it and gobbling it up because that powerful neighbor, Indonesia, had powerful allies like the United States.
They weren't held accountable.
But over time, global civil society mobilized and organized and essentially shamed the United States and Britain and Australia from supporting the occupation.
So when Indonesia's economy hit tanks in the late 90s, the U.S. and Britain and Australia said to the Indonesians, hey, we'd like to help you, but this East Timor thing is making it politically impossible.
This island isn't worth it to you.
Why don't you let them free?
And they did.
And I think this is what we're going to have to do in Western Sahara.
It's going to have to be global civil society that mobilizes and says, no, we are not going to be part of an occupation.
We are not going to have our government sending arms to the occupiers.
We're not going to have our corporations profiting from the occupation.
And just to make a big stink out of it.
All right, now what kind of organizations can people look up here real quick at the end if they want to participate in this?
Well, there's the Defense Forum Foundation located outside of Washington, D.C., does some work on Western Sahara.
The Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Group in Washington, D.C. does some stuff on Western Sahara.
You can check out my website, stevenzunis.org, which has a segment on Western Sahara under the list of articles.
And there's also a group called ARSO, A-R-S-O dot org, which is a trilingual site based in London which monitors the situation there as well.
All right, everybody, that is Steven Zunis divesting from all occupations at foreignpolicyandfocus.org.
Thanks.
Sure thing.