BDS - Blog Posts

🇵🇸 From BDS:

This year’s Israeli Apartheid Week will be the most important since IAW was launched 20 years ago! With the ongoing Nakba at its height, Israel is carrying out the world’s first ever live-streamed genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza while it continues to entrench its 75-year-old settler-colonial apartheid regime against all Indigenous Palestinians. Over the past few months, people around the world have carried out inspiring actions building people power to end state, corporate and institutional complicity in Israel’s #GazaGenocide and contribute to the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice, and equality. With the failure of the international system, under US and Western hegemony, on full display, we will organize IAW throughout the month of March to bring justice from below. Save the date - March 1st - March 30th; an entire month of action and BDS mobilizations to end complicity in genocide, build grassroots power towards liberation and the dismantling of Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid regime. Let’s make this year’s IAW our most impactful ever!

In anticipation of the upcoming Israeli Apartheid Week, BDS has called for an escalation of our boycott campaigns.

To find out how you can join a specific BDS campaign, or how you can contribute towards IAW, you can use the search function on their website to find a BDS-affiliated organization in your country.

If you and your organization have an event planned for Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), you can register them with BDS here.

🇵🇸 For individuals unaffiliated with an org, you can still support and participate in IAW by:

Boycotting all products from Israel and from companies profiting off the occupation of Palestine. Here are the official BDS targets. For a more extensive list of products, check in with one of the BDS affiliated organizations in your country (they might tell you, for instance, what processed food items at your local grocery store should be avoided).

Share information about BDS on social media, with friends and family, and with your local community.

For BDS targeted brands, refrain from making or sharing any content that helps that company's outreach and branding. No more memes mentioning the brand, no pictures showing their logo, no more free advertising. Boycotting here isn't just about the loss you as a costumer can inflict on the company by not purchasing their product, it's also about damaging the brand's reputation, and limiting their customer outreach.

I highly encourage you to join a BDS-affiliated org, but if for whatever reason you can't, then these are concrete and actionable steps you can take.

Again, for more information about BDS and Israeli Apartheid Week, you check in with the official BDS website.

BDS has called for an official boycott of Eurovision2024

Everyone...you know what to do

[ID 1: text on a black background reading: "Boycott Eurovision: Artwashing Israel's #GazaGenocide". The Eurovision logo is edited such that red barbed wire appears over the heart in the center.

ID 2: a tweet from "PACBI - BDS movement" @/PACBI reading:

We call for the boycott of #Eurovision2024". We urge all participating broadcasters, national competitors, finalists, production crews, and viewers to boycott the contest following the refusal of the organizers @/EBU_HQ to ban genocidal Israel. #BoycottEurovision2024

End ID.]

In light of Charles becoming the new brand ambassador for Puma, I want to remind everyone that Puma is one of THE main brands on the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) targets list.

Do not fall for this shit, I don't care if you like anything they come out with. People are purposefully obtuse about why Puma is on the Boycott list and ITS NOT BECAUSE THEY DRESS THE ISRAELI NATIONAL TEAM! Puma is the title sponsor of the Israel Football Association which sponsors teams that operate on illegal settlements on Palestinian land, these settlements are regarded as war crimes under international law. From the official BDS list:

In December of 2023, Puma announced that they would not renew their sponsorship with the Israel Football Association (after the death of 30,000 Palestinians at the time). However they remain on the Boycott list until 2025, when they actually commit to divesting from Israel because they have engaged in misinformation in the past when coming under sustained pressure. In 2021, Puma claimed to stop supporting Israeli teams on illegal settlements but an investigation by BDS found that they had lied and it was simply PR crisis management: (1) they lied about not supporting teams on illegal settlements, (2) they lied about having Israeli distributors who have branches operated on stolen land and (3) they lied that one of their main licencees does not operate on stolen land.

So until Puma officially abides by that divestment, BDS have kept them on the Boycott list because they have a history of lying.

+ reminder Puma also sponsor Ferrari and Mercedes.

Unless their cheap, ugly shit is worth more to you than Palestinian lives, you can wait until they officially divest from paying for illegal settlements, so that colonisers can play on stolen land.