Malaysiakini : “Therefore, as responsible and concerned Members of Parliament from Malaysia, we demand the following:…..”

Anonymously signed letter by opposition MPs, 2021

COMMENT | A young Malay grab rider who routinely communicates with me texted me recently, worried that the threat of boycotts would affect his livelihood.

He wanted to know who these people calling for boycotts on social media were and wondered if they were rich people because only rich people could care about something happening so far away. 

I told him nothing would come of these boycotts because, eventually, whatever homegrown economic issues would trump the fervour of the political class to gain mileage from the Palestinian issue. Not in those words, of course, but close enough.

Who are these people calling for boycotts, anyway? To the best of my knowledge, nobody from the political class has openly called for boycotts of local business enterprises.

Indeed, the political class has remained more or less silent on the issue of boycotts but has engaged in various controversial tactics of their own.

This is not to say that the current batch of political operatives have called for a boycott when they were not in power. In 2021, a group of opposition MPs anonymously signed a letter calling for an end to the Israeli aggression and upholding Palestinian rights. One of the “demands” were as follows:

“Boycott products/services of, and/or mobilise institutional pressure to divest from Israeli and international companies and banks that are complicit in Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Calling for the boycott without having the gumption to carry out such policies (for oftentimes logical reasons) merely makes a mockery of the plight of Palestinians and provides ammunition for those who claim that supporters of the cause are insincere.

What this means is that those MPs who signed this letter would be judged on their fidelity to the Palestinian cause by how they carried out this agenda in Parliament, but more importantly, how they advocated redefining international and local partnerships based on the agenda of ending Israel’s apartheid policies.

Of course, since the letter was signed anonymously, we will never know if these political operatives have the courage of their convictions.

According to Communications and Digital Minister Fahmi Fadzil, there have been complaints by netizens that TikTok is censoring “Palestinian” content but Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim recently boasted that he secured a proposed investment by TikTok, which was “…. quite big”.

So on the one hand, a big tech company is accused of censoring Palestinian content but on the other, it is welcomed into the Malaysian economic landscape with open arms.

Grab and McDonald’s had to make donations to the Palestinian cause to demonstrate that they were not pro-Israel in what sounds more like extortion and not a humanitarian concern.

We see all these political operatives donning the Palestinian keffiyeh and shouting about the plight of the Palestinians but the reality is that the political class understands how boycotts would affect the majority polity, which is why they are too pusillanimous to call for boycotts when they are steering the good ship Malaysia.

Read it all here....