by Shimon Samuels
Paris, 27 March 2025
A document, drafted by a Committee promoting BDS (the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign exclusively targeting Israel and the Jews) and “Israeli Apartheid Week” (IAW) has appeared, apparently addressed to students, calling to “dismantle the Israeli regime of settler-colonialism, genocide, and apartheid towards Palestinian liberation.” It stressed the need of “amplifying Palestinian voices...”
The Committees Secretariat calls on “supporters to Resist. Rise. Decolonize... Disrupt the institutions complicit in Israel’s genocide. Organize strikes, walkouts, and sit-ins... Expanding Apartheid-Free Zones [whatever that means, is a mystery] Demand your university, workplace, union, or city cut ties with apartheid Israel and respect the BDS guidelines... targeted sanctions on Israel, including a comprehensive military embargo... Demanding Israel’s immediate suspension from the UN, FIFA, the Olympics, and all international institutions... Showcase Palestinian culture, resistance, and visions of liberation through film screenings, art exhibitions, teach-ins, and public discussions.”
The BDS National Committee announces that this year is the 20th anniversary of the BDS movement, adding that it represents “two decades of steadfast popular resistance, intersectional solidarity, and fighting state, corporate and institutional complicity in Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid regime... and show how people power makes apartheid history.”
The Israel Apartheid Week started on 21 March, will go through so-called “Palestinian Land Day” on 30 March, and is supposed to extend into the month of April 2025. [in their distortion of time and reality, also a week is longer than the conventional 7 days!]
This year their themes and slogans are “People Power Makes Apartheid History” and “Decolonizing Palestine Is Decolonizing the World.”
The Committee ignores that, as a historical fact, the decolonization from the Arab-Muslim, then the Ottoman, then the British empires, happened when the Jewish diaspora finally joined their brethren in their ancestral homeland and created a sovereign and democratic State, something that other autochthonous peoples – for example, the Kurds, the Toubou or the Kabyles – are trying to achieve in other parts of the MENA region!
According to the group, “The struggle against Israeli apartheid is deeply interconnected with broader struggles for justice, freedom, equality and dignity worldwide... Western complicity in systemic oppression... from Rabat to Cairo, Jakarta to London, and Cape Town to Bogotá...” [this makes no sense!]
The “systemic oppression” part reeks of so-called “wokism”, that simplifies the worldview, separating between oppressors and oppressed, ignoring context, history and real social interaction, de facto applying prejudicial discrimination.
This is followed by their adulation of “IAW activities in Ireland, Scotland and South Africa.”
Furthermore, by stating that “The Palestinian struggle [is] rooted in over a century of resisting settler-colonial oppression”, the Committee admits long-lasting Arab violence against the Jews in Palestine, even prior to establishing the State of Israel.
IAW and BDS are integral parts of a cycle of antisemitic violence, that has visibly increased since October 7, 2023. A telling example is what has been happening in France: although Jews represent less than 1% of the citizens, they have endured 62% of all racial or religious-triggered acts of violence.
The danger of the BDS movement is thus clearer than ever in universities and among youth groups, where it provides justification in singling out, bullying and murdering Jews, as in 1938 Berlin or in 1941 Baghdad. The BDS and IAW causes seek to banalize and perpetuate antisemitism.
Dr Shimon Samuels
Emeritus Director for International Relations of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre
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For further information, contact stsamuels018@gmail.com