The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel was launched in Ramallah in April 2004 by a group of Palestinian academics and intellectuals to join the growing international boycott movement.
On July 9 2005 Palestinian civil society issued a call for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with international law.
The decision comes after examination by the Churchís Ethical Investment Advisory Group of whether the shares held in Caterpillar were consistent with the Churchís ethical investment policy, which prohibits investment in arms companies or companies making weapons platforms such as naval vessels or tanks.
This London-based dance magazine, with a circulation of 17,500, joins the cultural boycott. “We are opposed to the occupation,” says advertising director Naresh Kaul. Dance Europe screens its ads: “If any company in Israel cooperates with us by adding a disclaimer saying it is opposed to the occupation, settlements and everything else, we will cooperate with them.” The magazine prints Israeli ads if the advertiser includes a statement saying the firm disapproves of the occupation.
Britain’s largest faculty association voted to urge its 67,000 members to consider the appropriateness of a boycott of Israeli faculty who fail to ’publicly dissociate themselves’ from Israel’s apartheid policies, including construction of the exclusion wall and discriminatory educational practices. They asked British college teachers to consider their own responsibility for ensuring equity and nondiscrimination in contacts with Israeli educational institutions or individuals.
U2U does not wish to tie itself with Israeli products, the firm’s manager told his Israeli suitor, citing "the devastating and inhumane war crimes Israel perpetrated in Lebanon" and "the apartheid regime" it inflicts on Palestine. The Israeli hi-tech representative said he countered that "Israel is a technological hub and that many of the Microsoft products which [you use] are developed here in Haifa."
Tram drivers refused to allow the Dublin tram system (“Luas”) to be used to train Israeli drivers and engineers for a new light-rail system in East Jerusalem that will serve illegal settlements. In response, the local Irish authority cancelled its training plan with Connex, the French firm that will operate the Israeli system (and that also operates Dublin trams). “When you do business with Israel, you invariably do business with the Occupation,” said a representative of the Irish Palestinian Solidarity Committee, congratulating the tram drivers on their stand. “We must cut ties with Israel in order to force it to end its Occupation.”
Ken Loach: "I support the call by Palestinian filmmakers, artists and others to boycott state-sponsored Israeli cultural institutions and urge others to do join their campaign. Palestinians are driven to call for this boycott after 40 years of the occupation of their land, destruction of their homes and the kidnapping and murder of their civilians. They have no immediate hope that this oppression will end."
The annual conference, meeting in Geneva, called on the UN and its member states "To encourage and impose sanctions, in the form of ending the murderous arms trade with Israel, and to end sanctions that have been imposed against the elected Palestinian Authority and the collective punishment of the Palestinian people." The group decided to expand its global campaign of Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions, adopted in 2005, and to mark the 40th anniversary of the Occupation with a global Day of Action on June 9, 2007, under the slogan "The World Says No to Israeli Occupation." The Conference’s follow-up work is carried out by ICNP, the International Coordinating Committee on Palestine.
In a pioneering move, the South African trade union congress representing 1.8 million workers passed a resolution endorsing BDS
The Bank once refused to deal with companies that were linked in any way with apartheid South Africa.
In a letter published in The Guardian, the 94 cultural icons call on their colleagues not to visit, exhibit or perform in Israel.
Nearly 100 artists, including Brian Eno, Sophie Fiennes, and Arundhati Roy had signed a boycott letter written by noted author John Berger, stating "the day to day brutality of the Israeli army in Gaza and the West Bank continues. Ten Palestinians are killed for every Israeli death… UN resolutions are flouted, human rights violated as Palestinian land is stolen, houses demolished and crops destroyed. For Archbishop Desmond Tutu... the situation of the Palestinians is worse than that of black South Africans under apartheid. Meantime, Western governments refer to Israel’s ’legitimate right’ of self-defense, and continue to supply weaponry. The challenge of apartheid was fought better. The non-violent international response was boycott, divestment, and finally UN sanctions that enabled the regime to change without terrible bloodshed."
A motion, brought to the weekly Union General Meeting of more than 400 LSE students by the LSESU Palestine Society, resolved to lobby the LSE and NUS to divest from companies that provide military support for the Israeli occupation, facilitate the maintenance of the illegal "annexation" wall or operate on illegally occupied land or within Jewish only settlements. With a six to one margin, the Union voted to support the aim of targeted divestment until companies cease such practices or until Israel ends its discriminatory oppression and colonisation of Palestinian communities.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) — representing trade unions and trades councils from the whole island of Ireland — passed a motion to commitment to “actively and vigorously” promote a policy of boycott and of divestment.
"We encourage a boycott of Israeli goods in order to hasten a more just civil order in the Holy Land. The U.S. Arms Export Control Act Prohibits the use of US-made machinery or weapons against a civilian population. Because Caterpillar (CAT) bulldozers are used as weapons of war in the Occupied Territories in violation not only of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act, but also of international law and the corporation's own code of conduct, we call for divestment from Caterpillar, municipal boycotts of CAT machinery, and a consumer boycott of other CAT products."
Oxfam clarifies that it does not receive money from Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev following letter from campaign group Adalah-NY
The decision by the Stockholm City Council was taken following a lengthy campaign by Swedish civil society organisations
Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) votes to endorse BDS and recognize Israel as an Apartheid state
As reported by Reuters, a source close to his office, which declined public comment, cited political pressure for his reason to cancel the visit.
UNICEF decided to review its relationship with Leviev after a campaign by Adalah-NY and found "at least a reasonable grounds for suspecting" that Leviev companies were building settlements in Palestinian territory, a UNICEF official said.
When asked about their policy on investing in Veolia and Alstom, the bank replied it does not and will not invest in the companies.
Decision follows after loss of hundreds of contracts, including ones with Scottish councils.
Food and soap manufacturing multinational Unilever announced it would sell its 51 percent stake in the Beigel & Beigel factory in Ariel settlement, illegally built on land confiscated from Palestinians.
The Catalan Workers’ Union in Spain, known as the Intersindical Alternativa de Catallunya (IAC), passed a resolution calling for broad boycotts against Israel
FreedomCall, a British telecom firm, informed Israel’s MobileMax, provider of international service for cellular phones, that "we will no longer be in a position to consider doing business with you or any other Israeli company...as a result of the Israeli government action" during the assault on Gaza.
Pashmina, a British firm, began a boycott of Israel following Israel’s massive assault on the Gaza Strip in December 2008 and January 2009
Klein: "It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa."
The motion, passed while Israel bombed Gaza relentlessly, called on the New Zealand government to cut diplomatic ties with Israel, end military cooperation and boycott Israeli goods.
olivian President Evo Morales said his country cut diplomatic ties with Israel over the offensive in the Gaza Strip that has killed hundreds of Palestinians. "Bolivia had diplomatic relations with Israel," Morales said in a speech before diplomats in the government palace. "Considering these grave attacks against ... humanity, Bolivia will stop having diplomatic relations with Israel."
Israel’s Organization of Fruit Growers reported that fruit was rotting in warehouses. A spokesman said: "It’s getting worse, and more voices can be heard calling to boycott Israeli merchandise."
Stockholm community council in Sweden announced that the French company Veolia, which has been the operator of the subway’s in Stockholm County for the past ten years lost the contract to the MTR-cooperation. The contracts for the next eight years were worth 3,5 Billion Euro and had been the biggest ongoing public contract procurement process in Europe.
SATAWU announced its decision not to offload Israeli cargo to arrive on 8 February 2009 in the port of Durban in protest of Israel's assault on Gaza. This decision inspired similar actions around the world.
Danny McGregor, speaking on behalf of the protesters, said: "We are happy with what we have achieved. We were in there for 24 hours and we feel we made a lot of progress. "What we've managed to get so far is fantastic, but it's just the start. We couldn't get what we wanted with BAE, but there's a massive movement among the students against their presence here, and we're going to take this forward to the Students' Representative Council."
South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) announced they would not offload a ship from Israel scheduled to dock in Durban
Hampshire College in Amherst, MA became the first of any college or university in the U.S. to divest from companies on the grounds of their involvement in the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Cardiff University has given students written confirmation that they have divested from the arms trade and have instructed fund managers not to reinvest.
Contract for waste collection and recycling contract with Sandwell Council worth £1 billion pounds over a 25-years period.
"Boycott from Within" founded with a statement from conscientious Israeli citizens pledging support for the Palestinian BDS call
AP7, which manages pension savings worth around 90 billion kronor ($15 billion), listed in its annual report for 2008 the companies it has to exclude from investment for ethical reasons. Alstom is pointed out as a company AP7 would have liked to invest in. However, the report said Alstom’s involvement in reported human rights abuses regarding the company’s participation in a railway project in Jerusalem made it not suitable for AP7’s investments.
In February 2009, a similar motion was adopted by the Sligo County Council (Ireland)
Scottish Trade Union Congress, representing every Scottish trade union, voted overwhelmingly to commit to boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
Greater Bordeaux local government announced that the contract for the biggest urban network in France was awarded to Veolia’s competitor. The contract was worth €1billion
The decision came after Scottish Director Ken Loach called for a boycott of the festival given the tainted nature of the money involved.
Britain slapped a partial arms embargo on Israel, refusing to supply replacement parts and other equipment for Sa’ar 4.5 gunships because they were used in Israel’s 2008-2009 winter attack on Gaza.
he move comes after a nearly two-year long global boycott campaign of Leviev’s businesses that developed in response to the billionaire’s construction activities in at least four Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank, all of which violate international law, and his abusive labor practices in the diamond industry in Angola and Namibia.
The musician refused to heed appeals from his fans to cancel the concert and chose instead to whitewash his presence with a charity fundraiser which Amnesty refused to collaborate with.
Acclaimed Canadian film maker John Greyson decided to withdraw his new film "Covered" from the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) because of the festival’s decision to make Tel Aviv a focus of its programming this year. In his letter, to the festival, Greyson cited “the devastating Gaza massacre of eight months ago, resulting in over 1000 civilian deaths; the election of a Prime Minister accused of war crimes; the aggressive extension of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands; the accelerated destruction of Palestinian homes and orchards; the viral growth of the totalitarian security wall, and the further enshrining of the check-point system” as reasons for his decision.
They issued the Toronto Declaration, which garnered a lot of media attention, stating that "we object to the use of such an important international festival in staging a propaganda campaign on behalf of what South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and UN General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann have all characterized as an apartheid regime."
Norway's Finance Ministry excluded Israel's Elbit Systems Ltd. from the country's vast global pension-fund portfolio because of ethical concerns. The ministry said that the pension fund's council on ethics has found that investment in Elbit Systems "constitutes an unacceptable risk of contribution to serious violations of fundamental ethical norms as a result of the company's integral involvement in Israel's construction of a separation barrier on occupied territory" in the West Bank.
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