Europeans waking up to Israel’s policies

Question: Let’s look at the situation now. We have the Rapporteur dealing with human rights situation and violations, continued human rights violation now in the occupied territories; Richard Falk now has issued several very strong statements regarding this. Will this make a difference?
 
Of course this is not the first time that Richard Falk is saying this and obviously it is not the first time that the human rights of the Palestinians have been totally ignored. What can make a difference? 

 Larudee: Well Richard Falk’s voice has made a difference actually. He has been consistent, he has been honest, he has been forthright and he speaks the truth with a lot of wisdom and his words over the years have inspired others to do the same.
 
    Now that Israel is reaching the end of its ethnic cleansing project in Palestine by pushing Palestinians into ever smaller areas and impoverishing them even more and making their lives as miserable as possible, even some of the Europeans are waking up to what is going on. Even Germany which is one of the closest friends that Israel has, has said words of criticism and as of now less than twenty percent of the German people approve of Israel. 
 
So this marginalization of Israel is of course of its own doing but for the words of Richard Falk to ring, there has to be an audience and that audience is growing by the day. 
 
Q: Let’s look at, you talked about the Europeans and the change that we are seeing in Europe and looking at more and more companies or entities talking about boycotting at least products, entities that are working out of the occupied territories or out of these settlement areas that they have called settlements.
 
Do you see this movement in general growing? Do you think that the ties in general have turned on at least the way that Europeans are starting to deal with Israel?
 
Larudee: What we can say is that it has been growing and it started on a popular level but now it is going to the larger companies which are moving away from it. The banks, the financial institutions and the governments themselves especially in places like Norway and the Netherlands are beginning to endorse, if you will, some of the boycotts.
 
It certainly is growing and whether it will continue to grow is uncertain but there is every sign that when governments do not step up to do what is necessary, the people seem to be willing to do so and that is the movement that we can hope will result in the change that we need.