South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), at its 53rd National Conference, reaffirmed a resolution supporting the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel campaign.

Two South African human rights organizations, BDS South Africa and the Palestine Solidarity Alliance, have thrown their weight behind the consumer boycott of a South African company, Karsten Farms, which is complicit in the Israeli Occupation of Palestine.

At a small ceremony on 7 June in Marrickville, a Sydney suburb, local mayor Fiona Byrne was presented with a letter of support from the South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

“I want to pay my respects to you and your fellow councillors in Marrickville for taking a stand to isolate the Israeli state,” Tutu wrote. “We in South Africa, who both suffered apartheid and defeated it, have the moral right and responsibility to name and shame institutionalized separation, exclusion and domination by one ethnic group over others.

Usually in mainstream Israeli political discourse, BDS is the “love” that dare not speak its name.  If the Knesset is seeking to pass a law to criminalize references to the Nakba, all the more so references to the terrible act of ‘delegitimization’ (what an ugly, ungainly word) that is BDS.  It’s simplytreif in polite political discourse.