Alwaght-The resistance against the Israeli regime is bearing fruits internationally as the global anti-Israel protest campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement gains momentum. In reaction, the Israeli regime has launched a major bid against the movement and its threat of economic sanctions targeting Israel.
Israeli opposition leaders recently joined the regime’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in waging diplomatic and economic war against the BDS, a growing coalition of Palestinian and international institutions and groups that Tel Aviv claims is “inherently anti-Semitic” and bent on its termination, the US-based Defense News reported Friday.
Recently Netanyahu held an advisory meeting on "addressing the [anti-Israel] boycott movement.
Israeli regime’s Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan, who is in charge of the regime’s response to BDS initiatives, is due in the next few weeks to provide the cabinet with an official plan to combat BDS, which has been allotted a budget of $25.9 million.
Despite efforts by the Israeli regime, BDS has already claimed credit for prompting Barclays Bank and Norway’s pension fund to divest from Elbit stocks as wells as cancelling a small research satellite project with an Elbit subsidiary in Brazil and for causing disruptions at three Elbit factories or subsidiary facilities in Europe.
To mark the anniversary of last summer’s Israeli military onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip, the movement is calling for a mass protest rally on July 6 at UAV Engines, an Elbit subsidiary near the British city of Birmingham.
A recent report by the Financial Times, the Israeli regime put the cost of the BDS movement at $1.2bn a year in lost business.
Initiated as a grassroots movement in 2005, BDS aims to use economic sanctions to end Israel’s occupation of disputed territories captured in 1967, dismantle the separation barrier raised around the West Bank including East al-Quds (Jerusalem) and promote the right of return for Palestinian refugees forced out from their native land by Israeli forces in 1948 as part of efforts to establish Israel. A truly global movement against Israeli Apartheid is rapidly emerging in response to this call.
