Appeal from Omar Barghouti Co-founder of the BDS movement; co-recipient of the 2017 Gandhi Peace Award
Posted: 23rd December 2024
In case you missed it last week: as a co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, I am asking you to support our key partner in the UK, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC).
Can you support BDS by making a donation to PSC?
The BDS movement, supported by the absolute majority of Palestinian unions, refugee networks, women’s organisations, and other Palestinian grassroots and civil society bodies, calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights. Inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement and the US Civil Rights movement, BDS calls for ending Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid regime and respecting the right of Palestinian refugees to return home.
With the support of millions around the world like you, the BDS movement is not just ethically and legally compelling. It is also very impactful. In September, for instance, the Chairman of the Israeli Export Institute stated: “BDS and boycotts have changed Israel’s global trade landscape” with Israel’s projected annual GDP growth rate for 2024 now at 0%, according to S&P.
PSC has been at the forefront of BDS campaigning in the UK, including in 2024. They have forced Pret to pull out from a multi-million-pound expansion into Israel, organised for 5,000 Barclays customers to close their accounts, and successfully defeated the Anti-Boycott Bill in Parliament, which would have prevented public bodies taking action to divest from complicit companies.
I urge you to donate to PSC so that they can continue this work.
Palestinians are asking for your solidarity. Not your charity. But real solidarity means taking action to end all UK complicity with Israel’s system of oppression.
You must work to end the complicity of your government, which is actively supplying Israel with the parts for F-35 jets being used to slaughter Palestinian children. You must work to end the complicity of your local councils and universities which have billions of pounds of investments in companies complicit in Israel’s genocide and apartheid. And you must end your own complicity by adhering to the boycott of companies against which we have launched strategic boycott campaigns.
Ending complicity in grave human rights violations is not heroic. It is not charitable. It is a fulfilment of a profound moral obligation to do no harm.
Will you do no harm by helping PSC end British complicity?
After 14 months of Israel’s livestreamed genocide with daily videos of new massacres filling our social media feeds, I know that many of you will be feeling despair. But Palestinians do not have the luxury of ‘genocide fatigue’, as Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues every day.
As British Pakistani writer Nadeem Aslam has said, “despair has to be earned. I personally have not done all I can to change things. I haven’t yet earned the right to despair”.
For a century the Palestinian people have been resisting oppression, massacres, ethnic cleansing, starvation, mass incarceration, humiliation, dehumanization, destruction of homes, farms and more. We have never given up. We insist on our full menu of rights. We insist on existing and thriving in our homeland, with justice, freedom, and dignity.
So as we enter 2025 we need your ongoing solidarity. We need you to support the work of PSC. It is the most strategic space in the UK for building people power to affect actual policy change.
Supporting PSC and joining its campaigns are the most effective way to end the shameless British complicity in Israel’s genocide and underlying apartheid.
In Solidarity
Omar Barghouti
Co-founder of the BDS movement; co-recipient of the 2017 Gandhi Peace Award