BDS Successes against Corporations: A response to Anshel Pfeffer

On February 22nd Anshel Pfeffer, writing about Corporate Watch’s recent book Targeting Israeli Apartheid in Ha’aretz, claimed that “while the movement has managed to mobilize thousands of supporters around the world to send online entreaties that convince performers, many of whom see themselves as human-rights activists, to avoid Israel, the corporations and some of the more famous performers who are less exposed to Facebook campaigns, have been impervious.” We feel that this is gross misjudgement of the BDS movement.

To say that the BDS movement has been confined to online activism is to ignore the hundreds of thousands who demonstrated in European cities during the massacre in Gaza and the great many acts of direct action against companies profiting from Israeli apartheid, militarism and occupation. To give just one example, during the 2009 attack on Gaza six British activists broke into the EDO/ITT weapons factory (now a part of ITT Exelys) and caused $300,000 worth of damage, disabling the production line and preventing the manufacture of weapons components bound for Israel. In 2010 a British jury found the activists not guilty on the basis that they had acted to prevent war crimes.

Tory Backlash against Smash EDO Summer of Resistance

Smash EDO, the campaign to shut down the EDO MBM arms factory in Brighton, is planning three months of action, dubbed the ‘Summer of Resistance’ in May, June and July 2012. However, they are facing opposition from Tory council members.

Targeting Israeli Apartheid – Guerilla Guide to the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Campaign

this article was originally written for Red Pepper

Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaigns allow ordinary people to take action in their communities and workplaces and be a part of the popular struggle for freedom in Palestine. The following BDS actions are amongst those recommended in Corporate Watch’s new handbook for the BDS movement, Targeting Israeli Apartheid.