Afterword

by Omar Barghouti, palestinian activist and co-founder
of the BDS movement

Twenty years of BDS: the ethical and legal imperative to end complicity with the oppressor

In the current perverse and horrific phase of the U.S./Israeli led genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza  –  a situation Jewish Voice for Peace has chillingly called Israel's "final solution" –  we commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the BDS movement. Today, more than ever, we assert our collective power to isolate the Israeli regime, which for 77 years has systematically imposed colonial apartheid on the Indigenous Palestinian people.

Twenty years ago, we were told that a Palestinian rights movement advocating for targeted boycotts, divestments, and sanctions against Israel's oppressive regime was impossible to launch. Yet, as the Palestinian National BDS Committee (BNC), the broadest Palestinian coalition leading the global BDS movement, declared, July 9, 2005, "will be remembered in history as the starting point of an unflinching, strategic, and creative process that has, from both grassroots and institutional levels, isolated the decades-old Israeli regime, deeply rooted in colonial settlement, apartheid, and military occupation."

Oppressors and their propaganda machine ceaselessly claim that freedom, justice, and equality are unattainable; yet, through the sheer force of people, our principled collective commitment, creativity, and strategic vision, we can make the impossible possible.

Inducing despair is a strategy as old as Zionist colonialism in Palestine. As early as 1923, Zionist leader Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote with stark honesty: 

"Any native population in the world resists settlers as long as it has even the slightest hope of being able to get rid of the danger of being colonized. [...] Zionist colonization must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. This means that it can only advance and develop under the protection of a power independent of the native population, defended by an iron wall that the latter cannot break."

Beyond the concrete and high-tech walls that hem in Palestinian ghettos  – particularly Gaza  –  Israel has relentlessly sought to erect an "iron wall" in our minds, aiming to reduce us to "human animals" and isolate us from our natural Arab environment, the rest of the Arab world and the interntional community. Through unspeakable and protracted colonial violence, it has desperately tried to engrain in our consciousness the imperative of submission, as if its power were an inevitable destiny. Born in 2005, inspired by the struggles that politically ended South African apartheid and Jim Crow laws in the United States, BDS has evolved into a formidable, hope-infused antidote to this induced resignation. It has become a beacon of resilience, resistance, and regeneration.

As revealed by a recent investigative report from The Nation, Israel and its lobby groups have poured approximately $900 million into the U.S. over recent years to combat the BDS movement. Since 2014, Israel, a nuclear power -- armed to the teeth by the U.S., Germany, Italy and other colonial powers  –  designated the nonviolent BDS movement first as a "strategic threat," then as an "existential threat" to its oppressive regime. Despite mobilizing colossal financial, intelligence, judicial, propaganda, and diplomatic resources in its war against BDS, Israel has failed miserably to impede our movement's growth. This success is solely thanks to the unwavering resilience, creativity, and strategic radicalism of millions of BDS supporters and promoters worldwide. 

Sanctioned and sustained by the boundless complicity of extreme right, fascist and authoritarian forces across the colonial West, Israel attempts to numb our consciences with relentless ferocity, intent on exterminating the Indigenous Palestinians who have survived the Nakba, now unfolding anew -- not gradually, as it has been for decades, but in one swift, brutal blow. The elimination of natives, after all, is not an anomaly, but a fundamental aspect of settler colonialism.

In the darkest hours, BDS has helped decolonize our minds from the powerlessness and despair that Israel and its allies relentlessly seek to impose. Despite the well-oiled propaganda of Israel and the Zionist movement, despite all their intimidation, subjugation, and profound influence over corrupt politicians, corporations, and media, BDS has achieved an undeniable impact.

 For example, several universities worldwide  –  particularly in Europe, North America, Latin America, and Africa  –  have severed their academic and/or financial ties with Israel and its complicit institutions.

 Norway’s sovereign wealth fund  –  the world's largest  –  and major religious communities in the United States have divested from Israeli bonds and other complicit investments.

 Tens of thousands of cultural workers and, recently, over seven thousand writers and publishers, have endorsed the cultural boycott of Israel. 

Several Global South governments, including Colombia, have enacted trade sanctions and energy and/or military embargoes. 

BDS also played a pivotal role in Intel's decision to forgo a $25 billion investment in Israel, accelerating what we term #ShutDownNation. Even the president of the Israeli Export Institute admitted that BDS has "altered the Israeli business landscape." Port and transport workers’ unions in Belgium, California, Catalonia, France, Greece, India, Italy, South Africa, and Turkey have taken action against military shipments to Israel.

With an immense global network supported by trade unions, farmers' coalitions, and racial, social, gender, and climate justice movements  – collectively representing tens of millions of people  –  BDS has become one of the most effective and impactful justice movements active today.

BDS opposes all forms of racism: anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, and anti-Jewish. Today more than ever, it is absolutely crucial to reiterate that there is nothing Jewish about Israel's military occupation, its settler colonialism, apartheid, the Nazi-like starvation of millions, the coercion of hundreds of thousands into "concentration camps," or its genocide. Therefore, supporting BDS in its battle against Israel's colonial regime and its complicit corporations and institutions is not anti-Jewish.

 

Angela Davis recently declared that today "Palestine is truly at the center of the world." When millions of activists, everywhere, chant "Palestine will liberate us all," they participate in an emancipatory rebellion that dares to speak truth to political and economic power. This is "strategic radicalism," an approach that the Palestine solidarity movement, with BDS at its core, has inspired across many global justice struggles, echoing the anti-apartheid movement in 1980s South Africa.

 

Palestinians do not beg for charity; we demand effective solidarity. From historical Palestine or from exile, the absolute majority of Palestinian society  –  represented by the Palestinian National BDS Committee  –  has conveyed two simple demands to conscientious people and the global solidarity movement alike:

1. Uphold all rights of the Palestinian people under international law, especially the right of refugees to return and receive reparations.

 

2. End all forms of complicity with Israel's egregious crimes and human rights violations.

 

Today more than ever, these demands are recognized not only as ethical imperatives but as irrefutable legal obligations. On January 26, 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel is plausibly committing genocide in Gaza, triggering the legal responsibility of all States and entities to prevent it and cease all direct or indirect complicity. Compounding this legal responsibility, in July 2024, the ICJ decreed Israel guilty of apartheid, declaring its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, illegal and demanding its immediate cessation.

As dozens of UN human rights experts have highlighted, for all States to comply with the obligations arising from the International Court of Justice's advisory opinion, they must "cancel or suspend economic relations, commercial agreements, and academic ties with Israel that may contribute to its illegitimate occupation and the apartheid regime imposed on Palestinian territories." Furthermore, they urged States to "impose a total arms embargo on Israel, suspending all import, export, and transfer agreements, including dual-use technologies that could be employed against the occupied Palestinian population."

Beyond mere solidarity, two paramount factors should compel people of conscience to oppose Israeli apartheid and genocidal strategies.

Firstly, the Palestinian liberation struggle is inextricably intertwined, intersectionally, with global struggles for racial, Indigenous, economic, social, gender, and climate justice.

Israel today represents a danger to all humanity. It has not only exterminated tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza; within weeks, it massacred thousands in Lebanon and seized further territory in Syria, bulldozing the very principles of international law. Much of the Global South today regards Israel not merely as a rogue state, but  –  with U.S. and European backing  –  as a primary architect in dismantling the foundations of international law.

The oppressive Israeli regime serves as a grim model for authoritarian powers everywhere. It inflicts harm not only on Palestinians but on millions globally. Today, Israel allies with fascist parties in the West, many deeply antisemitic, and with far-right regimes worldwide. It exports its military security technologies and colonial doctrines, "field-tested" on the bodies of Palestinians, Lebanese, and other Arab peoples.

 From military spyware exports to disinformation and electoral manipulation services used as diplomatic tools, Israel has, for years, been responsible not only for illegal surveillance and influence in the West but also for war crimes perpetrated by dictatorships worldwide.

 Secondly, the deepest ethical duty, especially in times of extreme oppression, is to do no harm, and to halt and remedy the damage already inflicted.

 Palestinians do not beg for charity; we demand effective solidarity. We demand an end to complicity. Foremost: do no harm. Ending complicity in grave human rights violations is a duty, not a discretionary choice  – especially when one can intervene without suffering harm.

 In light of Israel's ongoing genocide, the ICJ's reiterated rulings, and UN resolutions, what are the BDS movement’s immediate priorities?

1. Challenge "business-as-usual" with Israel through peaceful disruption within trade unions, cultural spaces, universities, and beyond.

 

2. Champion academic, cultural, and sports boycotts against Israel and its complicit institutions.

 

3. Force the divestment of municipal and institutional funds from companies complicit in Israel's grave human rights violations, excluding them from tenders and bids.

 

4. Orchestrate strategic, intersectional campaigns to pressure investment and pension funds to adopt "ethical procurement and investment policies." This means explicitly excluding companies involved in grave human rights violations worldwide, and applying these guidelines to any enterprise linked to Israeli genocide, apartheid, military occupation, or colonialism.

 

5. Support campaigns demanding governments enact meaningful sanctions, particularly a comprehensive military embargo against Israel, upholding resolutions from the UN General Assembly (UNGA) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

We must and can end Israel's genocide; we must and can dismantle its colonial settlement and apartheid regime. To achieve this, we must inoculate our minds against despair. Let BDS pressure swell everywhere, transforming complicity into accountability. Together, we can and will prevail.