Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) is a Palestinian-led movement for freedom, justice and equality. BDS upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.
Israel is occupying and colonising Palestinian land, discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel and denying Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes. Inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the BDS call urges action to pressure Israel to comply with international law.
Major impact? It’s impact so far is limited to some artists and authors who boycott Israel and then is celebrated as a success.
The reality is: 1) international investment into Israel is continuing to grow massively every year, with large multinational corporations and other firms investing tens of billions into Israel. If you wanna celebrate an author selling a few ten thousand books boycotting Israel while Intel pours in 12 billion, your choice, but odd to think it’s a success story. 2) international trade is also continuing to grow 3) international relations is generally improving with western countries and the Arab world itself. Even the most pro-Palestinian western countries, such as Sweden, are looking to improve its relations with Israel. Meanwhile, basically all important western countries supported Israel in May. 4) the public knowledge of it is quite limited. In a recent survey, 4% of American population noted to be very familiar with BDS, a majority of whom also considers it to be antisemitic.
Even if you consider BDS to be a good cause, it is failing massively as a movement in terms of actually imposing large pressure on Israel. The fundamental issue of BDS is that it demands a total boycott, divestment and sanctions on all of Israel. Even something like Ben & Jerry’s is not BDS-compliant, since they are happy to sell in Tel Aviv. Very very few nations and companies are actually willing to boycott Israel entirely, with the little action there is generally focusing specifically on settlements and basically nothing more.
And that’s the essential issue of BDS: basically nobody is looking to boycott Israel entirely. Simple reason: Israel has strategic and economic value to offer to other countries. And that value is often far more important than the Palestinians. And then we’re back in the situation that leaves the Palestinian without significant international leverage
*more important than the Palestinians in those countries.
Case in point. Egypt strongly dislikes Iranian influence on Hamas and loves having a stable border with Israel where they can focus on internal problems (terrorism in Sinai) and occasionally get Israeli help with this.
This is far more important to them for their stability than anything related to the Palestinians. They are not going to BDS Israel because it would make no sense at all given the specific context of Egyptian regional problems
"And that value is often far more important than the Palestinians."
Everyone knows that Zios despise human rights and that explains why the country of Israel was created through atrocities against its Palestinian NATIVE population.
The fact that Western countries turn a blind eye on such thing doesn't make it less criminal. Israel is a criminal state.
Lmao I think you’ll need to face reality that countries and companies are going to weigh the importance of different things.
If having peace and good relations with Israel helps more in their strategic goals than fighting with Israel, you can bet on it they’ll prefer the first one.
Zionists stole the land and properties of the Palestinian population through terror campaigns, which resulted in the creation of a human rights crisis that's victimizing 8.7 million Palestinian refugees.
2/3 of Palestinians are refugees today, they didn't get even a rightful conpensation for being expelled for their land or losing it because of the discriminatory Israeli property laws.
"Oh, but mega cirporations want to make make good deals with Israel blah blah blah"
Since when big businesses care about himan rights. Capitalism is immoral.
Yes and I know it's anti-Semitic and an offshoot of Hamas At least my Hatton Garden Hasidics have told me that much and my own place esearch has confirmed as much
Classic democrats, never happier than playing hide the sausage with terrorist organizations from Boko Haram to Al Qaeda
i hadn't heard of this particular group but as my fellow supermod suggested down the page, this is more to do with virtue signalling western celebs getting a pat on the back and ofcourse also makes people think its all ok now when really it isn't. much like greenwashing makes oil companies look like the good guys. the palestinians basically need more than the occassional protest rally. they need direct help but with many western nations economically tied to isreal we have to be realistic
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"they need direct help but with many western nations economically tied to isreal we have to be realistic"
Would you be happy if Western nations were tied to South Africa during the Apartheid Era?
off on a tangent eh? you seem to be confusing individuals with governments here so maybe you need to realize that in these dying days of democracy we are in no better a position in the west than they are in the disputed territories... as for the south africa question... im old enough to remember it and our governments did nothing as they were too involved in mining gold and diamonds... it was brought down from within sth africa and not a few england cricketers who refused to play
Too bad the palestinian leaders don't condem their own terrorists, but encourage them instead. Look it up, Israel never initiated a fight/war. (unless you consider 1948 to be initiated by Israel/jews, which might be legitimate, but I'll highly doubt your reasoning unless you provide very good evidence of that).
I don't blame you... You might have some bills to pay, and the Likud party wants to pay some useful *d*ots to spread pro-Israeli propaganda. It's logical that you accept such role.
One simple omission. There have been Jews in that area for 5000 years.
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Jews left that area follwing their defeat in the Bar Kokhba revolt when the Roman Empire handed their asses to them 1890 years ago. They return through illegal immigration during the 1900s.
Your bad. Zionists in your Western countries are in favor of unrestricted mass immigration, feminism, BLM, LGBT or then self-defeating, individualistic capitalism.
Your feeling: "Boo hoo, we can't call a state created on the ethnic cleansing of a people which till this days enables discriminatory policies against them an Apartheid state, it's aNTi sEMiTiC 😭"
Nope, it isn't, arabs have the same political rights as jews. As long as, you know, they are citizens of Israel.
Which is why it's anti-semitic to call an apartheid state, it's a blood libel aimed a jews for the purpose of spreading anti-semitism.
It's non citizens of Israel that don't get the same rights, and it's not relevant if they are jews. That's not an apartheid state, that's just a state. Palestine is actually not a state with full civil rights, it's a religious and sexual apartheid state. And it's still more humane than hamas, which is just full blown nazi.
Home > Society & Politics > Questions > Have you ever heard of the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) in defense of the Palestinian human rights?
