ISRAELI APARTHEID WEEK

Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) began in Toronto, Canada, in February 2005. Organized by the Arab Students’ Collective at the University of Toronto, it was a great success, with capacity-filled events that attracted media attention around the world. IAW spread to other Canadian cities in 2006, and by 2013, it had grown to more than 200 cities worldwide.

Initially just taking place on university campuses, IAW events are now organized globally by racial, Indigenous, social, economic, and gender justice movements, faith communities, trade unions, and solidarity networks, among others. IAW is a key part of the international BDS movement for Palestinian rights.

Israeli Apartheid Week has two main goals:

• Raising awareness about Israel’s ongoing regime of occupation, settler colonialism, and apartheid over the Palestinian people. Israel’s regime meets the definition of apartheid under international law, as now recognized by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, and UN experts, not to mention Palestinian human rights organizations, among others. The BDS movement has always recognized apartheid as an integral manifestation and tool of Israeli settler colonialism, highlighting the role of Zionism at the core of this regime. IAW uses this framework to make historical and concrete connections with other struggles against racism, discrimination, colonialism, and oppression. There are more resources about this framework in Section F.

• Building support for the Palestinian-led BDS movement.
  19 years since its launch, the BDS movement is now widely recognized by Palestinians, the solidarity movement, and even by Israel and its anti-Palestinian lobby as a key form of pressure to hold Israel to account and end international state, corporate, and institutional complicity with its regime of apartheid and settler-colonialism.

To be listed on the global calendar, all IAW activities must conform to the BDS movement’s anti-racist principles and respect its affiliation guidelines. To register your events for IAW 2025, please fill out this form!

NOTE: Registering through the form does not automatically list your event/activity on the website; it will be vetted according to the BDS guidelines above.

• Listing your events at ​bdsmovement.net/iaw
  One of our essential shared resources is the IAW webpage, where events worldwide are listed. Once you have registered, your event will be vetted by the IAW International Coordinating Committee (IAW ICC) and then uploaded to the global calendar forthcoming on the website. This means people in your local community will be able to find your event easily.

• Share your events and actions online! #IsraeliApartheidWeek
  Please share your organizing with the wider movement worldwide. Take photos and videos, write short reports, and share them all using the hashtags #IsraeliApartheidWeek, #DismantleApartheid, #GazaGenocide and #UnitedAgainstRacism. We’ll be sharing on social media on the accounts:

  • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IsraeliApartheidWeek.IAW

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/apartheidweek

  • Instagram: https://instagram.com/israeli_apartheid_week 

This year’s Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) marks a pivotal moment in the struggle for Palestinian liberation and global decolonization. IAW 2025 coincides with the 20th anniversary of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, #BDS@20 - two decades of steadfast popular resistance, intersectional solidarity, and fighting state, corporate and institutional complicity in Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid regime.

IAW will launch on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on March 21st and will include Palestinian Land Day on March 30th going into April 2025. This year’s theme will be “People Power Makes Apartheid History”

Decolonizing Palestine Is Decolonizing the World

The struggle against Israeli apartheid is deeply interconnected with broader struggles for justice, freedom, equality and dignity worldwide. Israel’s genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip has revealed to the world the brutality of settler-colonialism, militarized capitalism, and Western complicity in systemic oppression. From Rabat to Cairo, Jakarta to London, and Cape Town to Bogotá, global solidarity movements have recognized that the fight to free Palestine is also a fight to free themselves from all forms of colonial domination, racism, and imperial violence.

As Palestinians, we remain resolute in our struggle, and we take strength from the millions worldwide who have risen up, organized mass demonstrations, disrupted arms shipments, occupied universities and institutions complicit in genocide, forcing many to end ties, and built Apartheid-Free Zones (AFZs) across the globe. The Palestinian struggle, rooted in over a century of resisting settler-colonial oppression, continues to inspire movements against racial, Indigenous, climate, gender, and economic injustice.

Reimagining Palestine After Apartheid

Reimagining life beyond oppression is a revolutionary act. It allows us to sustain hope, renew our determination, and chart a future of justice and liberation. IAW 2025 will amplify Palestinian artistic, literary, and creative visions of a post-apartheid Palestine, drawing connections between our struggle and all movements resisting oppression.

If Palestinian resilience and revival have inspired global struggles for justice, our reimagination of a liberated Palestine will further expand the intersections of solidarity worldwide.

This IAW, we take collective action towards dismantling Israel’s apartheid regime and nurture the hope that any structure of oppression can be defeated. Together, we are bringing the dawn of Palestinian liberation closer than ever. Resist. Rise. Decolonize. Palestine Frees Us All.

Amid Israel’s unfolding genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, let’s not just educate about apartheid, let’s also take meaningful steps toward supporting the ongoing Palestinian struggle to end Israel’s #GazaGenocide and dismantle its regime of settler colonial apartheid. 

This year’s IAW will be the most important since IAW was launched 19 years ago.

• Let’s peacefully and responsibly disrupt* the system of military relations, funding, propaganda, diplomatic shielding, repression, and whitewashing that enables Israel to continue exterminating Palestinians and wiping our cities, villages, and refugee camps off the map. 

- People with precarious residency status should be encouraged not to participate.

Below are some concrete examples of targets that your group could organize its peaceful disruption (sit-ins, occupations, etc.) against:

1. Highways, airports, train stations, iconic sites, etc. 

2. Factories, outlets, or branches of companies complicit with Israeli apartheid, especially those arming its genocide or otherwise complicit in its regime of apartheid. 

3. Parliaments, government buildings, universities, and other complicit institutions.

4. Ports where ships involved in arming and enabling Israeli apartheid and genocide dock.

5. Media corporations that amplify anti-Palestinian racism and dehumanizing propaganda.

Some points to consider when planning your peaceful disruptive actions: 

1. Choose the most complicit targets against which such action may be effective in your context.

2. Set points of unity and clear, strategic objectives that your action can help achieve. 

3. Carry out a risk assessment prior to your action and ensure activists are well prepared for every likely scenario. Consulting movement lawyers beforehand is always advised!

4. Create a safe space for people joining your actions. Share the information with trusted people only. 

5. Make sure your demands and messages are clearly formulated and designed to reach the widest audience possible:  a creative communication strategy that includes both social media and traditional media is a must. 

6. Stay principled and strategic: know when to stop the action and be clear about the lines you don’t want to cross collectively.

7. Build connections with other justice movements, especially trade unions.
    

• Let’s build campaign milestones and mobilize for new BDS campaigns. 

The BDS movement uses the historically successful method of targeted boycotts inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the US Civil Rights movement, and the Indian anti-colonial struggle, among others worldwide. 

We must strategically focus on a relatively smaller number of carefully selected companies and products for maximum impact. 

Below are concrete goals your group can organize for:

1. Start a new BDS campaign. Please consult the list of the BDS-targeted companies profiting from the genocide of the Palestinian people and Israeli apartheid, or select new targets that make sense in your context and meet the BDS movement’s selection criteria for new campaigns. 

2. Raise awareness around you about Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid and work with your community/center/workplace/trade union/organization to declare themselves an Apartheid Free Zone (AFZ) or an Apartheid Free Community (US) during this month of March. A toolkit and a checklist are available. 

3. If not done yet, convince your city council/trade union/cultural or academic institution to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and lifting the siege and cut existing complicit ties with apartheid Israel during this month of March! 

Here are the blank templates for graphics (flier/poster and social media graphics) to be used for your IAW 2024 organizing.

You can also check out the following:

• Infographics: Visualizing Palestine has a wide range of infographics about Palestine and Israeli apartheid, such as this one.
  Contact VP to order printed or high-resolution copies to print yourself.

• Posters and Flyers: USCPR has many posters and flyers as part of its toolkit to stop the Gaza Genocide.

• Factsheets & Videos

  • Israeli Apartheid: Tool of Zionist Settler Colonialism: Info-sheet by al Haq (11/22)

  • Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity (Video) by Amnesty International (2/22)

  • Israeli Apartheid Fact Sheet by War On Want (08/21)

  • The Wall by Stop the Wall

  • South African Apartheid and Israeli Apartheid (Video) by the Daily Vox (08/17)

  • Understanding the Cultural Boycott of Israel by the BDS Movement

  • Israel: An Apartheid State (Video) by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Makan (02/21)

  • Inside Israeli Apartheid (Video) by Mondoweiss
     

General:

• https://antiapartheidmovement.net/en The new website provides a comprehensive updated resources package with documents, reports and analysis.

• Al-Haq: Israeli Apartheid: Tool of Zionist Settler Colonialism 

• Birzeit University: Institute of Law & Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem: "Guidelines: Advocating for Palestinian Rights in conformity with International Law” (2014). English, Arabic, Spanish, and German. 

• Amnesty International: Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity.

• Human Rights Watch: A Threshold Crossed - Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.

• B’Tselem: A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid.

For Beginners: 

• Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC): Colonialism and Apartheid

• Ben White: Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide, second edition (2014), Pluto Press (you can watch a short presentation video ​here​) 

• Omar Barghouti: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights ​(2011), Haymarket Books. 

More Advanced Reading: 

• Diakonia: “ICJ Order on Provisional Measures in South Africa V. Israel: Legal Consequences for Third States” (2024).

• ARDD statement: “Statement on the Responsibility of Third States in Light of the International Court of Justice’s Interim Order” (2024).

• Opinio Juris: “At World’s End: Palestine, the ICJ, and a New Dawn in International Law (2024).

• South Africa application instituting proceedings and request for the indication of provisional measures at the ICJ (2023).

• Al Shabaka, Nadia Hijab & Ingrid Jaradat: “Talking Palestine: What Frame of Analysis? Which Goals and Messages?” (2017). 

• Al Shabaka, Yara Hawari: “Apartheid from Within? The Palestinian Citizens of Israel” (2017). 

• ECCP & Mundubat Fact Sheet: “Will Europe address Israeli Colonialism and Apartheid? The Case of Palestinian Jerusalem” (2017).

• Russell Tribunal on Palestine: A People’s Court, Cape Town Session (2011), summary of findings. 

• John Dugard, John Reynolds: “Apartheid, International Law, and the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, in; European Journal of International Law (EJIL), 2013.