Join the #BDS Movement
What is BDS?
BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions. It’s an international campaign started by Palestinian workers, scholars, and activists to nonviolently resist illegal Israeli occupation and draw attention to the apartheid conditions under which Israel forces them to live. The movement takes its inspiration from the international campaign that helped end South African apartheid. Adalah’s Discriminatory Laws Database compiles over 65 Israeli laws that form the legal backbone of anti-Palestinian apartheid.
Isn’t badmouthing Israel antisemitic?
No more than the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa was “anti-white.” Much of the leading stateside criticism of Israel in fact comes from Jewish groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now.
The U.S. and NATO exploit Zionism, the political ideology which claims that Jewish people are entitled to an ethnostate on Palestinian land, to maintain a client state in the Middle East. A fourth of Israel’s military budget comes from U.S. aid, clocking in at over $38 billion in the past decade. About $10.5 million a day went to funding Israel’s military apparatus despite the fact that Israel has broken international law multiple times, one example being the West Bank containment wall which was condemned by the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Much stateside support for Zionism comes from wealthy Evangelical Christians, who provide the bulk of funding for lobbying groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
All this severely undermines the narrative that Zionism is somehow central to Jewish identity. As legendary Black activist James Baldwin wrote, the West supports Israel “to protect the vital interests of the Western world, and I don’t mean to be sardonic or cynical, but I would be lying to you and lying by my own experience if I said to you that the Europeans—the English, the Dutch, the Germans, the French—impressed me as having any vivid concern for Jews.” More recently, 240 Jewish academics – including Israelis – signed a letter condemning Germany’s anti-BDS law, specifically citing “the false allegation that BDS as such equals anti-Semitism.”
What does BDS mean for me?
It depends on where you are and who you are. Israel systematically denies many Palestinian Americans the right to visit their families in Palestine because of their connections to the BDS movement, including many Palestinians from Minnesota who work alongside the Anti-War Committee. Minneapolis’ congresswoman Ilhan Omar has been the subject of intense national scorn for her principled exposure of AIPAC’s lobbying. Twenty-seven states have anti-BDS legislation, and U.S. lawmakers have been considering federal anti-BDS legislation. The geopolitical mainstream is quick to condemn groups like Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine as illegitimate because their means of struggle includes violence, but if non-violent boycotts and divestments are also unacceptable forms of political participation, one must wonder how Palestinians are “supposed” to engage in politics at all. According to an opinion piece by Israel’s UN ambassador recently published in the New York Times, there is no acceptable way: Palestinians are just supposed to surrender. We disagree and BDS is a way to defend Palestine!
I want to get involved in BDS – what can I do?
Boycott – The app Buycott lists BDS as one of its campaigns and catalogs all of the brands on the BDS boycott list. It even allows you to scan a barcode and see if a product is sold by one of these brands. For students and professors, there is a strong academic side of the BDS movement. Students for Justice for Palestine advocates for academic boycott of Israel on the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities campus, including encouraging student government members to #SkipTheTrip and not attend “fact-finding” missions which the Israeli government offers.
Divestment – Join us when we protest the MN State Board of Investments to pressure MN to divest from its investments in Israeli companies and from companies that are profiting from Trump’s racist border wall.
Sanctions – Join the Anti-War Committee in political pressure to end U.S. aid to Israel. We have been organizing for almost 20 years to stop American tax dollars from funding the genocide of Palestinians. In addition to Ilhan Omar, Saint Paul’s congresswoman Betty McCollum has been advocating for Palestinian rights for years at the legislative level. Please sign our petition: http://bit.ly/mndivestelbit
The Anti-War Committee welcomes new members to come and get involved with our BDS campaigns and more. We meet at 4200 Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis every Wednesday at 7pm.
