As a sincere classical liberal, I am not the biggest fan of what Neomi Klein has to say. But on Palestine, her and I are soul mates.

Klein wrote a piece in The Nation magazine this past January finally coming out in support of a boycott of Israel. Klein made a good point. We should boycott Israeli institutions, but not the entire Israeli people some of whom are good individuals whom we need on our side to bring about an end to the occupation:

For eight years, my books have been published in Israel by a commercial house called Babel. But when I published The Shock Doctrine, I wanted to respect the boycott. On the advice of BDS activists, I contacted a small publisher called Andalus. Andalus is an activist press, deeply involved in the anti-occupation movement and the only Israeli publisher devoted exclusively to translating Arabic writing into Hebrew. We drafted a contract that guarantees that all proceeds go to Andalus’s work, and none to me. In other words, I am boycotting the Israeli economy but not Israelis.

Now Klein has visited occupied Palestine. Where she added,

“It’s a boycott of Israeli institutions, it’s a boycott of the Israeli economy,” the Canadian writer told journalists as she joined a weekly demonstration against Israel’s controversial separation wall.

“Boycott is a tactic ...we’re trying to create a dynamic which was the dynamic that ultimately ended apartheid in South Africa,”

“It’s an extraordinarily important part of Israel’s identity to be able to have the illusion of Western normalcy,” the Canadian writer and activist said.

“When that is threatened, when the rock concerts don’t come, when the symphonies don’t come, when a film you really want to see doesn’t play at the Jerusalem film festival... then it starts to threaten the very idea of what the Israeli state is.”

Klein also stated that Israel is practicing “apartheid, this is absolutely a system of segregation.”

But of all her words, she was none more eloquent than in talking about the Jewish tradition she was raised in:

“There is a debate among Jews. I used to say the Jewish community then I got excommunicated. There is a debate among Jews–I’m a Jew by the way” that boils down to: “Never again to everyone, or never again to us?... [Some Jews] even think we get one Get away with genocide free card... There is another strain in the Jewish tradition that says, ‘Never again to anyone.’”

If only more Jews would adopt that principle.

[To listen to her speech click here.]