Boycott Divestment Sanctions

Boycott: Calling on consumers to stop buying or selling products made in Israel or by Israeli companies; encouraging individuals and academic institutions to end affiliations with Israeli cultural and academic institutions, and pressuring artists not to play or exhibit in Israel.

Divestment: Campus campaigns urging student governments to pressure university administrations and financial institutions to remove all investment or other connections with Israeli companies or businesses that affiliate with Israel.

Sanctions: Calling for international sanctions against the State of Israel, including pressuring governments to expel Israel from international forums such as the U.N. and FIFA.

The dominant organization within the BDS movement is the Boycott, Divestments, Sanctions Campaign National Committee (BNC), founded in 2007 by Barghouti, during the First Palestinian Conference for the Boycott of Israel.

The BNC is an umbrella organization composed of Palestinian NGOs that administers the web platform bdsmovement.net along with the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), founded by Barghouti in 2004.

The BNC is reportedly backed by Hamas and other terrorist organizations, and is committed to challenging “Israel’s legitimacy… as part of the international community.”

BDS founder Barghouti has stated repeatedly that the goal of the BDS movement is to end the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. At a 2013 “Networkers South-North” talk in Norway, Barghouti stated [00:05:53]: “Definitely, most definitely we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine.”

The BDS movement's website states one of its primary goals as being to force Israel into allowing "the right of return for all Palestinians," which is otherwise known as the "one-state solution."

By 2003, Barghouti had affirmed that the one-state solution meant “a unitary state, where, by definition, Jews will be a minority.”

On May 31, 2009, in an interview with the anti-Israel Electronic Intifada (EI) website, Barghouti clarified that the “right of return” for all Palestinians is “the big white elephant in the room” because it “would end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”

In 2009, during an Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) event in the University of Ottawa, Barghouti clarified [00:01:33] “If the refugees were to return, you would not have a two-state solution. Like one Palestinian commentator said, ‘You would have a Palestine next to a Palestine, rather than a Palestine next to Israel.’”

In 2016, Barghouti said [00:00:40] that “the need for the right of return of the refugees” was the “most important” of BDS’s stated goals.

The Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine/Palestinian National and Islamic Forces (PNIF) is a member of the BNC Secretariat “within the national and Islamic action committee.” PNIF is also BNC‘s top constituent group on the BNC list of supporting “Unions, Associations, Campaigns.”

The PNIF — the first signatory listed on the 2005 BDS call — is a coalition of organizations established by terrorists Marwan Barghouti and Yasser Arafat in 2000-2001, at the beginning of the second intifada, to coordinate terror attacks against Israel by Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) groups and Hamas.

The coalition also includes terrorist organizations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

On February 1, 2012, BDS proponent Noura Erakat published an article with Al-Shabaka - The Palestinian Policy Network, where she described the PNIF as the “coordinating body for the major political parties in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

On April 26, 2010, Erakat noted in an article she published with the Middle East Research and Information Project [MERIP] that it was the PNIF that “facilitated the acceptance of the BDS call by major sectors of Palestinian civil society within the Territories and beyond.”

On July 5, 2017, the official Hamas English Twitter account tweeted: “We salute and support the influential BDS Movement.”

The BNC claims that it “receives the vast majority of its funding from relatively small individual donations throughout the country.”

International BDS organizations reportedly receive extensive support from foreign governments and private foundations totaling hundreds of millions of dollars and euros. European governments, the EU, as well as Norway and Switzerland, provide an estimated €100 million annually.

In April 2016, Jonathan Schanzer, a former terror financing analyst with the U.S. Treasury, exposed the financing links between the Hamas-supporting American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and the BDS movement.

As Schanzer revealed in testimony before Congress, “AMP is arguably the most important sponsor and organizer for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which is the most visible arm of the BDS campaign on campuses in the United States.”

In addition to providing financial, public relations, and legal assistance to SJP, AMP has also been accused of having connections to Hamas. The AMP national board includes former members of both the Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP) and Holy Land Foundation (HLF), both of which were found liable for aiding and abetting Hamas.

USCPR is the fiscal sponsor of the BNC. Founded in 2001 by anti-Israel activists, including Josh Ruebner, USCPR is a Virginia-based nonprofit organization that serves as the American umbrella group of the BDS movement.

USCPR, officially called Education for Just Peace in the Middle East, the U.S. campaign coordinates 329 pro-BDS organizations in the US “working to advocate for Palestinian rights and a shift in US policy… bound by commonly shared principles on Palestine solidarity as well as our anti-racism principles.”

The BDS movement attributes its founding to the 2005 call for a Boycott by the Palestinian civil society.

However, in June of 2011, BDS founder Barghouti admitted [00:00:27] that the 2005 call “was not the beginning” of the BDS movement, but rather “a culmination of decades of Palestinian boycott initiatives” and “for more than a century Palestinians have used boycotts.”

In the 1920s, Arabs in Mandatory Palestine began to boycott the pre-state Jewish communities. In August 1922, the Fifth Palestine Arab Congress declared a boycott against Jews and called on all Arabs to refuse to sell them land and to boycott Jewish businesses.

In 1936, the Arab High Command, led by the Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, called for a boycott of Jewish products.

In 1945, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Jordan formed the Arab League and declared a boycott on Jewish businesses living in what would soon become Israel. The Arab League clarified that “Products of Palestinian Jews are to be considered undesirable in Arab countries.”

In 1948, the Arab League, comprised of 22 Middle East and African countries, broadened the boycott to include trade between Arab countries and Israel as well as with all companies that do business with Israel and their business partners, to isolate the Jewish state from the international community.

In 1976 and 1977, the U.S. Congress prohibited American companies from cooperating with the boycott.

In February 2001, renewed efforts to boycott Israel using the “Apartheid Strategy” were launched during Iran’s preparatory conference meeting prior to the Durban NGO Conference, happening alongside the United Nations’ “World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance” (WCAR).

The strategy made a direct analogy between Israeli policies and Apartheid South Africa, claiming that the “Zionist movement... is based on race superiority” and that Israel had carried out “ethnic cleansing of the Arab population of historic Palestine.”

The language formulated in the working document in Tehran became the basis for the Durban Declaration, which launched the BDS movement.

In September 2001, during the Durban NGO Conference, delegates from Egypt, Iraq and Syria, along with Pakistan and the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] pushed Tehran’s “Apartheid Strategy.”

The result of the NGO forum at Durban branded Israel “as the heir of Apartheid South Africa.” Israel was labelled a “racist apartheid state” guilty of “genocide” and called for an end to its “racist crimes” against Palestinians. This formed the core of the BDS, PACBI and USACBI boycott campaigns and rhetoric.

In July 2004, Barghouti founded the PACBI, and released a “call” for a boycott of Israel, narrowly focused on academic and cultural boycotts.

On July 9, 2005, Barghouti led Palestinian NGOs in releasing the boycott call (often referred to at the “final call”), declaring “Palestinian Civil Society Call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel until It Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights.”

PACBI was one of the main organizers of this new initiative.

In 2007, Barghouti co-founded the BNC to act as an umbrella organization for all BDS activity and to implement and promote BDS actions.

Omar Barghouti was a founder and steering committee member of PACBI in 2004 (PACBI helped promote the 2005 “Call” to boycott document). He was also a founder of the BNC in 2007.

Barghouti has expressed support for intifada, demonstrated support for terrorists, promoted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and blood libels. He opposes the Jewish right to self-determination and Israel’s existence, calling for its destruction as the Jewish state.

Barghouti has revealed that the BDS movement is a continuation of Arab boycotts against Jews from before Israel was established as the Jewish state. He has also claimed that to accuse BDS of anti-Semitism is anti-Semitic.

Barghouti was born in Qatar, grew up in Egypt and later moved to Acre, Israel, where he lived as of 2017. He holds two degrees in electrical engineering from Columbia University and a master’s degree in philosophy (ethics) from Tel Aviv University. He began studying for a doctorate there in 2009, but did not finish.

Over 184,000 people signed a petition in 2009, asking Tel Aviv University to expel him, but Tel Aviv University Rector Zvi Galil responded “A university campus should be a place that encourages and tolerates free speech, no matter how offensive the expressed opinions may be… The University cannot and will not expel this student based on his political views or actions.”

The BDS movement seeks to isolate Israel through a combination of cultural and academic boycotts, as well as through governments imposed sanctions on Israel.

Campuses: BDS campaigns on campus focus on calls for divestment and academic boycotts. BDS activity on campus is often aggressive and disruptive. It is documented that universities that pass BDS resolutions see a marked increase in anti-Semitism on campus.

On June 5, 2018, the Heidelberg University student council in Germany voted to classify the BDS campaign targeting Israel anti semitic and to bar the university from giving space and funds to advocates of BDS.

Economic Boycott: The BNC calls to boycott Israeli companies, products and companies that do business with Israel, as well as to divest from Israeli companies. Actions promoting boycotts include “direct action” protests and flash mobs targeting businesses with connections to Israel.

Israeli products are not heavily boycotted in the Palestinian territories and often make it into the larger Arab world through the Palestinians.

Cultural and Academic Boycotts: PACBI administers academic and cultural boycotts within the BDS movement. The boycott acts against all Israeli scholars and cultural and educational institutions, and artists that wish to perform in Israel.

The boycott specifies that it includes all joint Palestinian/Arab-Israeli “normalization” projects that foster co-existence.

In 2009, the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), endorsed by 800 American faculty, joined the boycott. In December 2013, the American Studies Association (ASA) joined the boycott of all Israeli academic institutions.

Lobbying Local and National Governments to Sanction: BDS calls for sanctions against Israel, “similar to the sanctions that were imposed against apartheid South Africa.”

The BNC coordinates lobbying efforts against Israel with local and national foreign governments and international bodies, calling for sanctions such as “a military embargo, an end to economic links and the cutting of diplomatic ties.”

Trade Unions: In 2011, Palestinian trade unions created the Palestinian Trade Union Coalition for BDS (PTUC-BDS), with the goal of promoting the BDS movement through international union networks.

Numerous trade unions in Europe have since joined the boycott, however in the United States only a few unions have chosen to join.

On November 12, 2014, BDS activist Lara Kiswani promoted a BDS resolution during a panel event hosted by the BDS caucus of United Auto Workers (UAW) 2865 union, representing the University of California graduate students.

During the event, Kiswani said [00:00:19] "Bringing down Israel really will benefit everyone in the world, and everyone in society."

Kiswani also helped organize the 2014 "Block the Boat" BDS initiative to stop an Israeli boat from docking in the San Francisco Bay. During the demonstration, protesters chanted [00:07:10] “Intifada! Intifada! We support the Intifada!”