The boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is an anti-Israel campaign that aims to gain international support in their condemnation of Israel and also to end, what the campaign calls, “Israeli apartheid.”
The Palestinian call for BDS against Israel officially began in 2005 when more than 170 Palestinian organizations joined together to sign an agreement to protect Palestinians who were exiled, discriminated against, and under occupation on the West Bank and Gaza Strip,
according to the BDS National Committee’s website.
Some of current members of the BDS movement include the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine, the General Union of Palestinian Women, the Union of Palestinian Farmers, and the Union of Youth Activity Centers – Palestine Refugee Camps.
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Supporters of Hamas, a Palestinian Islamic terrorist group, have also endorsed the BDS movement, which has crossed national borders. During Israel’s 50-day war last summer, pro-Hamas protestors took to the streets of New York City to protest Israel and advocate for its destruction. The demonstrators hung a flag from the Manhattan Bridge sporting “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions,”
The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs reported.
Anti-Israel demonstrators have also held BDS protests in European and African countries.
The BDS movement has come to the forefront of American politics recently as President Barack Obama signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which included a clause containing anti-BDS provisions meant to discourage the European Union from promoting BDS.
Although the bill passed, many pro-Israel organizations say the provision does not combat the anti-Israel BDS movement.
J Street issued a statement on the bill saying that it was “not simply unhelpful to the effort to combat Global BDS, but contrary to longstanding US policy opposing settlement of the territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.”
Much of the bill’s opposition stems from State Department spokesman, John Kirby’s statement,
according to The Times of Israel.
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“Every US administration since 1967 – Democrat and Republican alike – has opposed Israeli settlement activity beyond the 1967 lines. This administration is no different. The US government has never defended or supported Israeli settlements and activity associated with them and, by extension, does not pursue policies or activities that would legitimize them,” he said.
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