WEST BANK (Dispatches) – The founder of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), Omar Al-Barghouti, has sent a letter to the world encouraging the world to use the same measures that toppled Apartheid South African against the Zionist regime.
The letter stated that “Enforcement of international punitive measures against the Israeli colonial, settler, military, occupying and apartheid regime, like the measures that were enforced against the apartheid regime in South Africa, became an urgent need.”
Al-Barghouti said, “In 1994, I participated with millions around the world in celebrations of ending the apartheid regime in South Africa. Any one of us who was engaged in the international boycott of South Africa, even a little, saw how Nelson Mandela, with teary eyes, became the President of free South Africa. We are still proud that we were a part of this glorious history.”
He continued, “Now, after 27 years, an international solidarity movement gives us hope of dismantling the Israeli colonial, settler, military, occupying and apartheid regime. All this is to obtain, as Palestinians, freedom, justice and equality. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement, which I contributed towards, at its foundation in 2005, proved that it is the most influential among the world solidarity means to our liberation movement.”
Meanwhile, students at London’s City University overwhelmingly voted to implement a boycott of the Zionist regime and its occupation, signaling another victory for the global Boycott, BDS movement.
As part of the University’s “Decolonize City” campaign, it is now set to abide by the demands of the BDS movement after the student members’ meeting approved and voted in favor of the policy at the beginning of this month.
In that meeting, a staggering 93 percent of the attendees voted in favor of the motion, while 6 percent voted against and 1 percent abstained. It came after City University’s ‘Friends of Palestine Society’ called on the University and its union to recognize and implement BDS measures to limit the institution’s ties with Israel and its occupation.
In a statement by City’s Friends of Palestine society, it hailed the vote as “a victory for the Palestinian cause and for the BDS movement,” and said that it will be working with the University and its union “to initiate investigations into its involvement with companies complicit in Israel’s illegal actions within international law.”