Back in 2009, I wrote that our South Africa moment was nearing. Despite the US-Israeli livestreamed genocide against over two million Palestinians in the illegally occupied and besieged Gaza Strip, I now think this moment is nearer than ever because the BDS movement is beginning to affect policy change towards isolating Israel’s 77-year-old regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid like never before.
A few weeks ago, Israeli PM Netanyahu, wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, shockingly called for Israel to become a “super Sparta,” admitting for the first time Israel’s unprecedented global isolation. Even US President Trump in his recent speech before the Israeli parliament warned Israel of its worldwide isolation saying, “It was getting to be a little nasty out there in the world. And ultimately the world wins. You can’t beat the world …” This world is us, all of us who have collectively, persistently and strategically campaigned to end Israel’s genocide. The BDS movement has been the main engine behind this isolation, so there is no doubt that every boycott, every divestment, every pressure for real lawful sanctions is already contributing to our struggle for freedom, justice and equality.
But what about the ceasefire, one may ask? As many have said, to Israel a ceasefire means: “you cease, we fire.” We realize that even a real ceasefire would only be the most important first step to end the genocide in the illegally occupied and besieged Gaza Strip. Without massive pressure, this will constitute a continuation of a less visible form of genocide that Israel and the US hope will provoke less regional and global outrage, boycotts and sanctions. The famine, the repercussions of the annihilation of Gaza will not end. Neither will Israel’s illegal military occupation, apartheid, and denial of our refugees’ rights. Only serious accountability and lawful sanctions will force the US-Israeli genocidal axis to respect the ceasefire and eventually end the siege and occupation.
Blaming the patent depravity and unspeakable criminality of Israel’s genocide on Netanyahu and his fascist government alone would betray either selective amnesia or a prejudiced reading of the current reality. According to a recent Israeli public opinion poll, 82% of Jewish Israelis support the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, and 56% support even the forced expulsion of Palestinian citizens of present-day Israel. About 50% support the full extermination of Palestinians in Gaza. According to Orly Noy, the chair of B’Tselem, Israel’s largest human rights organization, “Israel is unleashing a holocaust in Gaza, and it cannot be dismissed as the will of the country’s current fascist leaders alone.” Noy calls for a “denazification process” in Israeli society.
Apartheid Israel, enabled and emboldened by the shameless, boundless military, financial, political, and media complicity of the US, the UK, and the European Union with almost all its member states, is trying to normalize the fundamentally abnormal and to numb our consciences with its relentless savagery. Israel has for decades committed what Israeli historian Ilan Pappe calls “incremental genocide,” but it has viewed the rise to power of its natural allies, far-right, fascist and authoritarian forces in the West, India, and elsewhere, as providing the long coveted opportunity to finally exterminate the Indigenous Palestinian survivors of its ongoing Nakba. Eliminating the natives, after all, is a feature not a bug in settler colonial history, as the history of settler-colonies from the Americas to Australia teaches us.
A growing international human rights consensus now recognizes Israel’s unspeakable crimes in Gaza as genocide, with the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry and the International Association of Genocide Scholars being the latest. Aside from murdering tens of thousands of Palestinians and reducing Gaza’s 4,000-year-old heritage to ashes, Israel is simultaneously reducing the very tenets of international law “to tatters,” as President Higgins has put it, and bringing the world much closer to a might-makes-right era.
At the core of Israel’s “total impunity” lies the complicity of states, corporations and institutions with Israel’s regime of oppression, and it is precisely this complicity that the global Palestine solidarity movement, led by the BDS movement, seeks to disrupt and sever.
As dozens of UN human rights experts have affirmed, in order for states to comply with their legal obligations triggered by the International Court of Justice’s rulings, they must impose a comprehensive military embargo as well as “cancel or suspend economic relationships, trade agreements and academic relations with Israel that may contribute to its unlawful presence and apartheid regime in the occupied Palestinian territory.” Some states are complying with their duties. Colombia, Turkey, and other global south states are imposing energy, trade, or military embargoes on Israel. In the West, Spain, Slovenia, Scotland, among others now support sweeping sanctions. Where is the Irish government in all this? Serving us warmer rhetoric while still shamefully maintaining its cold complicity with genocidal Israel.
The global majority today realizes that Israel’s regime of oppression is a model for much of the world’s authoritarian rulers. It is a partner of fascist parties in the West, most of whom are antisemitic to the core, and of far-right regimes and dictatorships globally. It sells its military-security technologies and colonial doctrines as “battle-tested,” of course on the bodies of Palestinians, Lebanese, Yemenis, Syrians and other Arabs. Aside from the widespread bribing, bullying, and extortion of elected officials, Israel has extensively deployed the export of its weaponized spyware, as well as its disinformation and election-rigging services as diplomacy tools to gain influence in dozens of countries, south and north.
Facing Israel’s western-enabled genocide, and exercising our moral agency, we in the BDS movement have persistently channeled our grief and rage into principled and strategic energy to end the genocide, dismantle the underlying regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid, and hold the perpetrators and their accomplices to account. Palestinians have no illusions, though, that justice will shine on us from the ICJ or the UN. We have international law and the ethical high ground on our side, as an Indigenous people resisting a depraved, genocidal system of oppression to achieve our rights. Ethics and the law are necessary in any liberation struggle, but they are never sufficient. To resist and dismantle a system of oppression, the oppressed invariably need power as well: people power, effective solidarity power, grassroots power, intersectional coalition power, media power, cultural power, among other forms.
When the Palestinian consensus calls for BDS worldwide, including against Israel’s complicit academic, cultural and sports institutions and against the colonial Histadrut, we are not begging the world for charity; we are calling for meaningful solidarity. But before both, we are demanding an end to complicity, to do no harm. As the struggle that abolished apartheid in South Africa has shown, ending state, corporate and institutional complicity in Israel’s system of oppression, especially through the nonviolent tactics of BDS, is the most effective form of solidarity.
Launched in 2005, the nonviolent BDS movement is led by the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society. It is inspired by the South African anti-apartheid struggle and the US Civil Rights movement, and it is rooted in a century of Palestinian popular resistance. It aims at ending Israel’s regime of occupation and apartheid and upholding the right of Palestinian refugees to return and receive reparations. Anchored in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the BDS movement categorically opposes all forms of racism, including anti-Palestinian racism, anti-Muslim racism, and anti-Jewish racism. It targets complicity, not identity. There is nothing Jewish about Israel’s illegal occupation, ethnic cleansing, settler-colonialism, apartheid or genocide, therefore there is nothing anti-Jewish about striving to end these structures of oppression.
Over the last two decades, the BDS movement has built a massive network, supported by trade unions, farmers’ coalitions, as well as racial, social, gender and climate justice movements, together representing tens of millions worldwide. The movement’s impact is growing exponentially.
BDS has played a significant role in the divestment of giant sovereign funds in Norway, Luxembourg, the Netherlands,New Zealand, and elsewhere from complicit companies and banks. Norway’s pension fund, the world’s largest sovereign fund, has divested its entire $500m worth of Israel Bonds, as have the US-based United Methodist Church and Presbyterian Church USA.
BDS has made large multinationals such as Veolia, Orange, G4S, CRH, PUMA, and Pillsbury end complicity in Israel’s crimes. Co-op in the UK and in parts of Italy have joined the boycott of Israeli products, and tens of city councils have adopted ethical procurement and/or investment guidelines to exclude companies implicated in Israel’s crimes.
In the last year or so alone, there have been deeply inspiring BDS measures taken by trade unions globally. Trade unions in Italy and later in the Spanish state have led national strikes against the genocide and complicity in it, setting a historic precedent. Dockworkers and transport unions from France and Belgium to Morocco, and from Turkey and Greece to Spain, among others, are translating their solidarity into inspiring mobilizations to disrupt the military supply to Israel.
Tens of universities, in Europe, Latin America and South Africa, have cut academic ties with Israel’s deeply complicity academic institutions, and universities in the US have divested from companies enabling Israel’s crimes.
Apartheid Israel, enabled and emboldened by the shameless, boundless military, financial, political, and media complicity of the US, the UK, and the European Union with almost all its member states, is trying to normalize the fundamentally abnormal and to numb our consciences with its relentless savagery. Israel has for decades committed what Israeli historian Ilan Pappe calls “incremental genocide,” but it has viewed the rise to power of its natural allies, far-right, fascist and authoritarian forces in the West, India, and elsewhere, as providing the long coveted opportunity to finally exterminate the Indigenous Palestinian survivors of its ongoing Nakba. Eliminating the natives, after all, is a feature not a bug in settler colonial history, as the history of settler-colonies from the Americas to Australia teaches us.
A growing international human rights consensus now recognizes Israel’s unspeakable crimes in Gaza as genocide, with the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry and the International Association of Genocide Scholars being the latest. Aside from murdering tens of thousands of Palestinians and reducing Gaza’s 4,000-year-old heritage to ashes, Israel is simultaneously reducing the very tenets of international law “to tatters,” as President Higgins has put it, and bringing the world much closer to a might-makes-right era.
At the core of Israel’s “total impunity” lies the complicity of states, corporations and institutions with Israel’s regime of oppression, and it is precisely this complicity that the global Palestine solidarity movement, led by the BDS movement, seeks to disrupt and sever.
As dozens of UN human rights experts have affirmed, in order for states to comply with their legal obligations triggered by the International Court of Justice’s rulings, they must impose a comprehensive military embargo as well as “cancel or suspend economic relationships, trade agreements and academic relations with Israel that may contribute to its unlawful presence and apartheid regime in the occupied Palestinian territory.” Some states are complying with their duties. Colombia, Turkey, and other global south states are imposing energy, trade, or military embargoes on Israel. In the West, Spain, Slovenia, Scotland, among others now support sweeping sanctions. Where is the Irish government in all this? Serving us warmer rhetoric while still shamefully maintaining
In the cultural domain, five European broadcasters are now endorsing the exclusion of Israel from Eurovision. over 700 Dutch and Belgian cultural institutions, including the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam—the largest in the world—have most recently endorsed the cultural boycott of Israel. More than 5,000 film workers, mostly from Hollywood, have signed a historic pledge to boycott Israel’s complicit film industry. Over 7,000 publishers and writers, including Sally Rooney, have endorsed the cultural boycott, as have tens of thousands of cultural figures including musicians, visual artists, and a rapidly growing number of arts organizations, unions and associations.
Under pressure from artists and human rights defenders, many major music, literary and arts festivals around the world are dropping corporate sponsors complicit in Israel’s crimes against Palestinians and/or ended partnerships with Israel, its lobby groups and complicit institutions.
The Football Association of Ireland has voted by a huge margin to bring a motion to UEFA calling to exclude genocidal Israel from world football, while mass mobilizations have forced Israel’s cycling team to drop Israel’s representation.
Ireland remains one of Israel’s largest trade partners worldwide—mainly thanks to the US tech giants, like Intel, using your country as a tax haven while unduly influencing its policy and trade, including with Israel. But relying on Israel’s economy is akin to insisting to stay on the Titanic even after the iceberg had become plainly in sight. Divesting from apartheid Israel and from companies that enable its genocide and apartheid against Palestinians is not just an ethical and legal obligation, but also an expression of financial and fiduciary responsibility. Israel’s economy, after all, is experiencing what 130 of its top economists describe as a “spiral of collapse,” with an almost unprecedented “brain drain,” a nosediving tech industry, and a credit rating that is near “junk” levels, according to Moody’s. Intel has frozen a planned $25 billion investment in Israel in 2024. Increasingly seen by investors as what the BDS movement calls, a #ShutDownNation, Israel has ranked dead last among 50 countries in the recently released Nations Brand Index. The Chairman of the Israel Export Institute admits, “BDS and boycotts have changed Israel’s global trade landscape.”
But wouldn’t respecting BDS guidelines cost us jobs, a few trade unionists have asked?
The BDS movement has been around for over two decades; where on earth have you heard of any self-respecting trade union blaming BDS, not neoliberal austerity, climate calamity, and corporate criminality, for losing jobs? One British trade union leader has actually raised this concern in private, not publicly. So allow me to cite what I said at the British Trades Union Congress conference in response:
“Across the West, including the UK, the economy, academia, society are significantly dominated by militarization and securitization. When the Labour Party had an actually progressive, pro labor leadership, not a racist, authoritarian and neoliberal one, it had a revolutionary and well-thought-out plan to transition the economy and society to be more peaceful, more democratic, more ethical, more respectful of people and the planet, and more beneficial for working people. What ever happened to that vision? But why is this our business as Palestinians? Because your weapons are burning and cutting our children, women and men to pieces, so excuse our audacity in demanding justice and accountability. We have the absolute right to ask you to end this complicity—end the arms trade with Israel, fully and immediately, no ifs or buts. This is a matter of duty, not discretion, legal and ethical duty, that is.”
Solidarity is more needed now than ever, and it begins with ending complicity and pushing for serious accountability. All major Palestinian trade unions and almost the entirety of the rest of Palestinian civil society have appealed to international trade unions and the solidarity movement saying:
“As a matter of life-or-death urgency, we call for forming broad coalitions and building towards powerful mass disruptions, where feasible, that are context-sensitive, peaceful and strategic, targeting complicit entities and calling for ending complicity and imposing lawful sanctions, particularly comprehensive military and energy embargoes ….”
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions at its Biennial Delegate Conference in July in Belfast adopted by an overwhelming majority a BDS motion for coordinating “workplace-based and community actions up to and including widespread work stoppages” and “demanding an immediate end to Irish, UK and EU complicity in the genocide.” [Emphasis added] Enacting this policy to challenge complicity would be the most effective form of meaningful solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle at this critical juncture in our history.
The recent truly inspiring landslide election of the consistently and unapologetically progressive Catherine Connolly as President of Ireland, despite the fierce opposition from the ruling parties, shows beyond doubt the direction of the Irish people’s moral compass, including on Palestine.
BDS is fundamentally calling on all people of conscience and their institutions to fulfill their profound moral obligation to desist from complicity in Israel’s system of oppression against the Palestinian people. Trade unions are no exception.
So what the priority demands of Palestinian civil society, including trade unions
Peacefully disrupting business-as-usual with Israel at the state, corporate and institutional levels.
Enacting consumer, academic, cultural and sports boycotts of Israel and its complicit institutions as a legal, not just ethical obligation.
Pressuring city councils, trade unions, universities, churches, and other institutions to divest from Israel Bonds and from companies that are complicit in Israel’s grave human rights violations, and excluding complicit companies from tenders and contracts.
Declaring schools, trade unions, community centers, churches, businesses, neighborhoods, etc. Apartheid Free Zones.
Pressuring unions, institutions and investment/pension funds to adopt Ethical Procurement Policies and Ethical Investment Policies that exclude companies implicated in grave human rights violations anywhere.
Pressuring governments to end their shameful complicity, starting with imposing a comprehensive military embargo on Israel, and to impose lawful, targeted financial, economic, academic, and diplomatic sanctions, including expelling Israel from the UN, the Olympics, FIFA, Eurovision, etc.
Supporting legal and human rights groups’ initiatives for investigating and prosecuting Israelis and others who have been involved in international crimes against Palestinians.
“But some of us are having genocide fatigue and see no hope,” some may say.
Well, Palestinians do not have the luxury of genocide fatigue or of giving up hope, not to mention that, as I’ve said on other occasions, giving up hope is so un-Irish! For a century, the Palestinian people has resisted colonial oppression, without ever giving up. We insist on our full menu of rights, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu once put it. Never give in to despair, never give up hope. We are counting on your solidarity and unwavering support for our pursuit of our South Africa moment.
This Sunday Read was first delivered at the SIPTU Biennial Delegate Conference in November by Omar Barghouti. Omar is the co-founder of the BDS movement and recipient of the 2017 Gandhi Peace Award.