Witnessing Israel’s war crimes against Palestinian sovereignty from a young age led me to quickly despise the Occupation, the government of Israel and its policies against Arabs. However, I have yet to understand why a disastrous government, such as Israel’s, has made it acceptable for progressive and liberal Western spaces to launch targeted attacks against innocent civilians and cultures of that country. Not only does attacking civilians prevent change, but it is also quite possibly the least effective way of hurting those who are actually in power while making us believe we have done something good. Boycott, Divestments, Sanctions, or BDS, could have prospered in pushing for economic and military sanctions towards those in power within Israel, or the Occupation of the West Bank. Yet, time and time again, BDS has made colossal errors in fixating on and encouraging war against culture. BDS has allowed for violent cultural boycotts which impact Israeli civilians, and therefore disproportionately hurt the Israeli working class- many of whom are Arab, in the name of progress. In fact, International Marxist Tendency states that BDS’s ‘campaign does nothing to weaken Israeli imperialism and [actually] pushes Israeli workers and youth into the arms of imperialists’. Sally Rooney recently refused to commission any Hebrew translations of her work, in the name of BDS. Rooney’s attack on a language is an attack on its speakers, or civilians, rather than on a government. It’s fair to conclude that this wasn’t an attack against Bibi and his love for romance novels. Rooney endorses and encourages this idea that civilians are the ones to be punished, because of wars they cannot and do not control. Rooney, among many others, defines these liberal and progressive spaces that celebrate and justify boycotts against civilians and culture, over a government. I naively believed that BDS was an anomaly on the left, yet we are now seeing a similar spectacle emerge through boycotts against Russia.
Russian military attacks on Ukraine, much like Israeli military attacks on Palestine, are deeply unjustified, violent breaches of power that lead to vast bloodshed and suffering. Nobody is disputing this, obviously, and Putin’s decisions don’t represent core Russian values. Legitimate sanctions against the Russian elite have been imposed, and Western nations have declared Oligarchic assets to be seized. Through these aggressive economic sanctions against the elites of Russia comes increased pressure against the Russian government, as the two are intertwined. These sanctions target power, or those who decide whether the attack on Ukraine prevails. However, this justification cannot be made when we boycott the Russian civilians or the Russian culture. Yet here we are, again, deciding to impose a cultural boycott, this time on all things Russian.
A multitude of actions against both Russian civilians and Russian culture, unrelated to the government, have demonstrated that the West is in fact imposing a cultural boycott against Russia, following Putin’s war. U.S. lawmakers have gone so far as to suggest that Russian students are dangerous to American safety, and therefore must be expelled from America, with Arizona Democrat Ruben Gallego stating that ‘a strong message can be sent by sending [all Russian students] home’. This clear assault on civilians is just one of the many Russophobic attacks since the war. Russian figures, such as composer Valery Gergiev, have been told to publicly condemn their nation or face rejection from all Western stages. At first, condemning a nation after the war may not sound unreasonable, but one must take into consideration the threat of Russian state punishment towards those who publicly condemn Putin’s government. There is also the risk of exile that civilians face with being barred from returning to their motherland, where loved ones may reside. Yet, even when Russian civilians accept this discriminatory contract to condemn their own country and put themselves at risk, they will unsurprisingly still lose out. Anna Nebtrenko, a Russian vocalist who did publicly denounce the war, was then told by the Metropolitan Opera that her condemnation was not satisfactory, and she was dropped from her agency and the institution. As civilians are clearly being negatively impacted by this boycott, so too is Russian culture. Russian cinema is being removed from Western stages through film academies and institutions. Dalley states in the Financial Times that the European Film Academy has pushed for ‘a clear blanket exclusion of Russians from their awards — on the grounds that almost all Russian-made films are state-funded’. As almost all Russian directors receive grants, almost all Russian films will have technically benefitted from aid provided by the Russian Government, so almost all new Russian cinema will be suppressed. The European Film Academy has never enforced such draconian rules and did not threaten any American directors, even if they benefitted from state support, during the U.S.war on Iraq in 2003. IMDB has also reportedly removed Tarkovsky films from its lists, and no longer are any Tarkovsky films in the ‘Top 250’, despite the director’s revolutionary approach to filmmaking and everlasting presence in cinema. Vandalism towards Russian shops and communities has also increased in the U.S., and many outlets now refuse to sell goods related to Russia and Russian culture.
From bans on book translations in Israel to Russian performers and cinema, boycotts against cultures and individuals fail to harm warfare, but they will harm powerless citizens of a nation, and sow the seeds of ethnic prejudice across the world. With the Washington Post stating that ‘Anti-Russian hate is rising’ in the West, we must now stand and resist these clear Russophobic attacks. It is time to accept that both cultures and civilians, powerless in the faces of their governments, should never be ostracised and excluded from our spaces. While economic sanctions against governments and powerful elites have proven to be somewhat effective measures at discouraging war, cultural boycotts have only proved that our progressive and even our liberal and progressive spaces can and will willingly become violent and prejudiced towards those born on the wrong side of a border.