The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest Palestinian coalition that leads the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, calls for escalating campaigning against fossil fuel giant Chevron by engaging in consumer boycotts of Chevron, Texaco, and Caltex gas/petrol stations, in addition to ongoing campaigns to divest from Chevron.
Chevron has been the main international actor extracting fossil gas claimed by Israel in the Eastern Mediterranean since it acquired Noble Energy in 2020. With its extracting activities, Chevron is implicated in Israel’s policy and practice of depriving the Palestinian people of their right to sovereignty over their natural resources. Chevron’s extraction activities generate billions of dollars in revenue for apartheid Israel and its war chest, helping to fund the ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, as well as its regime of settler-colonialism, apartheid and military occupation. Chevron fuels apartheid and environmental devastation.
The BDS Movement issued a call to boycott both Siemens and Chevron in 2022, with campaigning around Chevron previously focused on divestment. Now, we are calling on supporters of Palestinian rights and climate justice to escalate pressure on Chevron also by boycotting Chevron gas stations and gas stations owned by Chevron, including Texaco and Caltex. There are thousands of Chevron, Texaco, and Caltex gas and petrol stations worldwide.
During the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, a movement to boycott Shell oil for its complicity in apartheid gained worldwide momentum, with supporters taking part in gas/petrol station pickets and major divestment campaigns from the fossil fuel company. Inspired by the South African liberation struggle, the Palestinian-led BDS movement aims to build pressure on Chevron until it no longer conducts business that gravely violates our human rights and benefits Israel’s genocidal apartheid regime.
We reiterate our call upon supporters of Palestinian rights worldwide to build and strengthen intersectional #BoycottChevron partnerships with the climate justice movement and the many communities and Indigenous peoples around the world who are exposing and resisting the colonial violence of Chevron’s extractivism, environmental destruction and grave human rights violations.
We have already seen organizations taking action to escalate pressure on Chevron, including by activists in Houston who protested Chevron’s sponsorship of the Houston marathon, and climate activists in California, who led a protest at Chevron’s Richmond refinery. They also disrupted two Chevron executives’ private events leading up to the protest. Sign their pledge to boycott Chevron, and look out for more information and resources to assist campaigning in the coming weeks and months.
In solidarity,
The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC)
The nonviolent BDS movement for freedom, justice and equality is supported by the absolute majority in Palestinian society. BDS rejects all forms of racism and racial discrimination.
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