On the 77th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba (1947-1949), the ethnic cleansing and expulsion of most of the Indigenous people of Palestine and the destruction of hundreds of our towns and villages to create Israel as a settler colony premised on Jewish supremacy and apartheid, the BDS movement shares these 7 facts and 7 demands for meaningful solidarity.
Fact #1: Israel, like almost all settler-colonies in history from Turtle Island to Australia, has consistently sought as its central goal to eliminate the Indigenous people of Palestine in order to replace us with settlers and, crucially, to become a “normal” state. The Zionist settler-colonial project has so far failed to achieve this goal; Palestinians today, again, represent a majority in historic Palestine, even without counting half the Palestinian people living in forced exile.
Today, however, Israel views the rise to power of its natural allies, fascist forces in the US and across the colonial West, as providing the most opportune moment for implementing what Israeli leaders overtly call, the “Gaza Nakba”: the elimination of the remaining Indigenous Palestinians through mass extermination and/or radical acceleration of its ongoing ethnic cleansing policy. Israel is a rogue state that is farther from normalcy than ever.
Fact #2: Armed, funded and otherwise enabled mainly by the colonial West led by the US, Israel is perpetrating a genocide, exterminating, maiming, and forcibly displacing 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and destroying the illegally occupied and besieged Gaza Strip and its 4,000-year-old civilization. Simultaneously, Israel is escalating its brutal aggression in the occupied West Bank, destroying refugee camps and ethnically cleansing tens of thousands.
The fact that this is the world’s first livestreamed genocide indicates an unprecedented level of impunity and international complicity and manifests the accelerated obliteration of the foundations of international law by Israel, the US and almost the entire West.
This complicity encompasses not only States but also corporations and institutions – including universities as well as sports and cultural forums – that have parrotted Israel’s propaganda or maintained business-as-usual with it or with corporations and institutions that are deeply implicated in its genocide and regime of apartheid. Many media and social media corporations should stand trial for their own role in inciting and justifying genocide.
Fact #3: Israel’s economy is facing a “spiral of collapse,” according to 130 top Israeli economists. The most telling signs are the unprecedented “brain drain;” the tanking tech industry and high unemployment rate in the sector; the drying international investment; and the credit rating that is near “junk” levels, according to Moody’s. Increasingly seen by investors as a #ShutDownNation, Israel has ranked last among 50 countries in the recently released Nations Brand Index. Even in the economic domain, the Chairman of the Israel Export Institute has admitted, “BDS and boycotts have changed Israel’s global trade landscape.”
Despite the immense investments by Israel and its influential lobby groups in North America and Europe, and despite all its greenwashing, pinkwashing and all other forms of whitewashing, Israel has lost its propagandistic “liberal” mask. Israel’s most famous exports today are technologies and tools of genocide, war crimes, mass surveillance, violent repression, spyware, and election-rigging.
Fact #4: Despite all the obvious flaws and colonial limitations of international law mechanisms, it is crucial to recognize that the determinations of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court in 2024 have triggered like never before the legal obligation of States, corporations and institutions worldwide to end all direct and direct complicity in Israel’s regime of apartheid and illegal military occupation. As former senior UN human rights official Craig Mokhiber has put it, the ICJ ruling of July 2024 that Israel is practicing apartheid and that its entire presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is illegal makes BDS “not only a moral imperative and constitutional and human right, but also an international legal obligation.”
Fact #5: After more than a year and a half of this US-Israeli genocide, feelings of despair and disempowerment are growing in many corners. This is by design. From Jabotinsky to Netanyahu and from Ben-Gurion to Ben-Gvir, the Zionist movement with its powerful anti-Palestinian racist partners, has always sought to colonize the minds of Indigenous Palestinians, and by extension the global solidarity movement, with hopelessness.
While we can never predict when the tipping point in our incremental struggle for liberation will be reached, we can surely tell that we are getting nearer than ever, despite the unspeakable horror our people are experiencing and resisting. Giving up hope is never an option. We march on, with principles and strategic radicalism, no matter what.
Fact #6: The skyrocketing international support for Palestinian liberation and solidarity with our intersectional struggle, particularly in the form of BDS, have also been unprecedented. Gaza has become today the epicenter of the global struggle against the “might-makes-right” era that Israel, the US and Europe are bringing about. Justice for Palestinians is more than ever intersectionality connected to struggles for racial, Indigenous, economic, social, gender and climate justice, and younger generations are raising the slogan: “Palestine frees us all.”
Palestine today has become what South Africa was in the 1980s–not just a struggle for liberation but an embodiment of the very meaning of being human, moral and just. International solidarity is inspiring and empowering Palestinians to continue our legendary sumud, resilience and resistance to colonial oppression against enormous odds.
Fact #7: The immense growth of people power has propelled the impact of the BDS movement worldwide to new heights to the extent that it has started affecting policy change in many quarters. In academia, culture, sports, politics, international law, and many other fields, BDS has changed how millions worldwide view Israel and, crucially, deal with it.
Having planted many seeds and prepared the ground with large intersectional coalitions and a very effective “toolbox” of strategies and tactics for ending complicity at all levels, the BDS movement with its numerous partners has mobilized a truly unprecedented global wave of effective, strategic solidarity. Mushrooming Apartheid-Free Zones; mass protests; courageous peaceful disruptions of complicit businesses, particularly military-related ones; coordinated campaigns against maritime military and fuel transfers; student-led encampments and the immense growth of support for academic boycott and divestment on campuses; hundreds of cultural spaces and tens of thousands of artists and writers joining the ranks of the cultural boycott, etc. all attest to this resilient wave.
7 URGENT Demands
When burning, massacring, maiming, starving, thirsting, and repeatedly forcibly displacing 2.3 million Palestinian children, men and women fails to move the world into action to stop this genocide, Gaza becomes not only a “graveyard for children” and for international law, but also for the fundamental principles upon which our humanity is premised.
To end the US-Israeli genocide and help us dismantle Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid, the BDS movement calls on supporters of Palestinian freedom, justice, equality and dignity and all decent humans, grassroots justice movements, trade unions and civil society entities worldwide to join the growing number of apartheid-free zones, and to intensify pressure like never before on:
- The UN and international organizations: to expel Israel from the UN General Assembly and from international sporting events (Olympics, FIFA, UEFA, etc.); reactivate the UN Special Committee Against Apartheid; and end UN contracts with complicit companies (including tech giants Microsoft, Google, and Amazon) that are implicated in Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid or genocide.
- States: to “cancel or suspend economic relationships, trade agreements and academic relations with Israel that may contribute to its unlawful presence and apartheid regime,” and “impose a full arms embargo on Israel, halting all arms agreements, imports, exports and transfers, including of dual-use items that could be used against the Palestinian population under occupation,” as called for by leading UN human rights experts #MilitaryEmbargo #EnergyEmbargo. Third State obligations also include investigating and, where sufficient evidence exists, prosecuting potential Israeli and other “perpetrators who may have committed crimes as members of the Israeli army or settler movements,” as called for by Amnesty International.
- Regional & Local Governments (including city councils): to immediately end collaboration with Israel and all its complicit institutions and city councils, pressure, divest from and exclude from contracts complicit corporations, and adopt Ethical Procurement Policies as well as, where applicable, Ethical Investment Policies that exclude contracts with corporations that are complicit in grave human rights violations and atrocity crimes anywhere. They must also prevent the transit of military and dual-use items to Israel.
- Trade Unions and Professional Associations: to translate solidarity into serious pressure on governments, corporations, and institutions, including through divestment and peaceful disruption, to ensure that the workers they represent are not involved in actions that constitute complicity in genocide, apartheid, and Israel's illegal occupation.
- Academic & Cultural Institutions: to cut all ties with apartheid Israel and its complicit institutions; divest from complicit corporations; and adopt ethical guidelines governing professional and corporate relations.
- Complicit Corporations: to end their complicity in Israel’s genocide, apartheid and illegal occupation by, in addition to the institutional demands above, intensifying grassroots boycotts of the BDS movement’s priority targets.
- Legal & Human Rights Organizations: to investigate and, if warranted, mobilize pressure on the relevant authorities to hold corporations accountable and to prosecute all Israelis, dual-nationals, and international individuals and decision-makers who are reasonably suspected of involvement or incitement to international crimes against Palestinians.