BLM’s Association with Terrorist-Linked BDS Groups (part II)

ACDemocracy

Organizations and activists participating in the delegitimization campaign against Israel, support the boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, and expressly support US-designated Palestinian terror organizations, have strategically entrenched themselves in partnerships with Black Lives Matter (BLM) since the establishment of the movement in 2013.(1)

By successfully creating coalitions with BLM, the delegitimization network has infiltrated and influenced the BLM agenda to openly support BDS and other anti-Israel causes. These include an explicit call for the divestment from Israel, which was featured prominently in the 2016 BLM platform, sending BLM delegations to the West Bank to protest the Israeli military and meeting with BDS leaders and convicted Palestinian terrorists. Several BLM founders and prominent leaders are connected to delegitimization organizations. These same leaders have gone beyond the call to divest from Israel or to oppose the United States (US) military-aid to Israel and have advocated for Palestinian terrorists and terror groups.

BLM Anti-Israel Policy Platforms

In 2016, BLM released a series of policy platforms, listing their political objectives. One of the platforms, “A Cut in US Military Expenditures and A Reallocation of those Funds to Invest in Domestic Infrastructure and Community Wellbeing,” cites the delegitimization (DLG) organizations Adalah, The US Campaign to End the Occupation, and Dream Defenders as organizations “currently working on policy.”(2) According to the platform:

“The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people … Israel is an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people … Everyday, Palestinians are forced to walk through military checkpoints along the US funded apartheid wall.”(3)

The BLM platform calls on the federal government to “Build investestment campaigns that ends US Aid to Israel’s military industrial complex and any government with human rights violations,” citing the Palestinian BDS National Committee website BDSmovemenet.net.(4) In October 2015, several months prior to the release of the BLM platform, the BNC initiated a campaign “Links that Kill: International military cooperation with Israel,” which featured statements and action points calling for the end of military aid to Israel echoed in the BLM platform.(5)