"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even tacitly take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop."
Mario Savio, Student Leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, 1964

More than four decades of Israeli military occupation have passed, eviscerating the dream of building a viable, sovereign Palestinian state. 500,000 Jewish settlers now live in segregated, heavily fortified colonies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in violation of international law. They control most of the territory’s best land and water resources—land and water stolen from Palestinians. In Gaza, 1.5 million Palestinians, most of them refugees and terribly poor, are trapped in the world’s largest “open-air prison.”

Closures, checkpoints and roadblocks, targeted assassinations and settler terrorism, home demolitions, military incursions and arbitrary detentions, an economic blockade and massive “Separation Wall,” razed farm land, olive groves and fruit orchards, poisoned wells and livestock, interminable delays in movement—these measures of collective punishment, colonization and ethnic-racial separation make normal life impossible for Palestinians in the occupied territories.

"The so-called ‘Palestinian autonomous areas’ are Bantustans. These are restricted entities within the power structure of the Israeli apartheid system. I have come to join you today to add our own voice to the universal call for Palestinian self-determination and statehood. We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."
Nelson Mandela, Former President of South Africa and Resistance Leader of the African National Congress, 1997

For all who cherish justice and liberty it is time to unite in the cause of freedom for the Palestinian people and send an unequivocal message of nonviolent resistance to the state of Israel, just as we did to South Africa’s Apartheid regime in the 1980s.

It is time to BOYCOTT Israel and all businesses, academic centers and cultural institutions that support, maintain or benefit from the occupation of the Palestinian territories.

"We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace."
Palestinian Civil Society: Calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, 2005

The Pledge:

I stand with Nelson Mandela, Palestinian civil society and people of conscience around the world in support of the international boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign (BDS) against corporations, business interests, and academic and cultural institutions that are complicit in or profit from Israeli apartheid and occupation of the Palestinian territories.

I pledge my support of the BDS campaign until Israel recognizes the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and complies with the precepts of international law by:

• Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands

• Dismantling the Separation Wall

• Recognizing the fundamental rights of all Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel to full equality

• Respecting, promoting and protecting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands as stipulated by the Geneva Conventions and U.N. Resolution 194.

Vermonters, see the Vermont BDS Pledge

For more information on BDS and other
Israeli products and institutions addressed
by the international campaign, visit:
www.whoprofits.org
www.vtjpbds.org
www.endtheoccupation.org
www.bdsmovement.net
www.stolenbeauty.org
www.usacbi.org

"Inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid and in the spirit of international solidarity, moral consistency and resistance to injustice and oppression..." - Read the full text of the Palestinian United Call for BDS Against Israel