Join the Global Week of Action for Sanctions (20th to 29th Nov) to pressure states and the UN to impose lawful sanctions on Israel.

Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), October 31, 2024

In September, the UN General Assembly passed a historic resolution, calling for states and the UN to sanction Israel. This resolution affirmed that the July 2024 ruling by the ICJ triggers the legal obligation of all states to end complicity in Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid regime. 124 states across the globe committed to take the first steps to impose sanctions. The time to make this a reality is now! 

For over a year, we have been sharing the images, stories and ghastly statistics of the rising number of Palestinians killed, burned, starved, displaced, and fallen sick in Israel’s ever more devastating genocide against the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. We have been calling louder than ever for pressure on states and international institutions to fulfill the bare minimum of their legal obligation to end complicity by imposing lawful, targeted sanctions on Israel. 

It is the complicity of the “international community” with Israel’s 76-year-old regime of settler-colonialism, ethnic cleansing and apartheid that has given it what the UN Secretary General calls “total impunity,” emboldening it to perpetrate the world’s first livestreamed genocide against the Indigenous Palestinian people.

Faced with Israel’s ever worsening atrocities and crimes against humanity, a growing number of states have started to heed the Palestinian call to end Israel’s impunity, giving in to pressure of the mass movements across the globe.

Some states have ended or downgraded diplomatic ties with Israel. Many have been forced to at least proclaim that they stopped military exports and transfers to Israel, even though the policy statements are often still not followed up in reality. Courts have ruled against sending weapons to Israel. Corporations have ended expansion plans and ties with Israel. Ships carrying weapons bound for Israel are being denied docking permission by a growing number of states. Trade unions, students, civil society organizations, cultural and academic collectives along with tens of millions of people of conscience around the world have been relentlessly organizing and calling for sanctions, military embargoes, boycotts and divestments against Israel and complicit corporations.

Yet, apartheid Israel continues its genocide in Gaza along with intensifying its violence in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, its rolling massacres in Lebanon and escalating aggression against other states in the region. Even though it has attacked the UN relentlessly, including killing at least 228 of its staff members, destroying UN schools, targeting UN peacekeepers in Lebanon with white phosphorus, and now banning the UN Relief and Works Agency in areas under its control, Israel remains a member of the UN! 

As Israel’s shocking pulverization of international law threatens to push the entire world towards a colonial “might makes right” order, it is not sufficient to point the finger at Israel’s Western partners in the genocide. States across the world have to step forward and cut their own military, trade, diplomatic, academic, sports and cultural relations with apartheid Israel, as was done to isolate apartheid South Africa. 

Join us in a global week of action from 20th to 29th November, leading up to the UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, and pressure states and the UN to take concrete actions of accountability. Pressure your government to heed the unified Palestinian call for sanctions by:

• Calling for or supporting demands to suspend Israel at the UNGA and to exclude it from international fora.
• Imposing a mandatory and comprehensive two-way military embargo on Israel, including all military and dual use equipment and joint military and dual-use research and military-industry partnerships.
• Imposing lawful and targeted sanctions, including ending diplomatic relations with Israel, imposing banking and financial sanctions on it as well as suspending trade and other cooperation agreements with it. 
• Refraining from aiding, assisting or recognizing the unlawful situation created by Israel’s breaches of international law, including through a comprehensive ban on business deals involving Israel’s illegal presence in the occupied Palestinian territories. 
• Imposing targeted sanctions on complicit physical and legal persons, Israeli and international corporations and institutions involved in Israel’s breaches of international law and international crimes.

Here are some suggested actions for this week:

1. Peacefully disrupt the genocide enablers, the decision makers in your government and state institutions that keep up the ties of complicity. 
2. Organize a letter/email-action or other forms of mass mobilization to pressure your government, relevant ministries and/or parliament to heed context-sensitive demands, using accessible, local/regional languages. 
3. Organize advocacy meetings with MPs and ministers, briefing them on their obligations to end genocide and apartheid against Palestinians. You can find relevant materials for these briefings here. 

Channel your grief and anger towards meaningful collective action. Push your government to end complicity with genocidal Israel and hold it accountable for its crimes against Palestinians and against humanity at large. 

Never Again is Now!