BDS Global Week of Action September 18 - 21
Sid Shniad
#DisruptComplicity in Genocide
Occupied Palestine, 28 August 2025 – The UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) initiative has finally confirmed that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in northern Gaza are suffering from famine. The famine, directly resulting from the US-backed Israeli policy of weaponizing starvation, will affect many more in southern Gaza by the end of next month, the IPC states. No one can claim that they did not know. Even the complicit UN Secretary-General, who has typically expressed nothing but “concern” throughout more than 22 months of genocide, was compelled to finally mention Israel as the perpetrator of this induced famine.
As a matter of life-or-death urgency, we call for forming broad coalitions and building towards powerful mass disruptions, where feasible, that are context-sensitive, peaceful and strategic, targeting complicit entities and calling for ending complicity and imposing lawful sanctions, particularly comprehensive military and energy embargoes, on any day during the Disrupt Complicity Weekend, 18 - 21 September. Examples include¹:
- Blocking, occupying or otherwise disrupting strategic highways, bridges, ports, facilities of complicit weapons, tech, media, financial and other corporations;
- Mass protests and peaceful disruptive actions at government offices (ministries of trade, transport, or foreign affairs, for instance) or parliaments, demanding that they comply with their legal obligations under international law. As called for by dozens of UN human rights experts, these include:
- Imposing “a full arms embargo on Israel, halting all arms agreements, imports, exports and transfers, including of dual-use items.”
- Cancelling or suspending “economic relationships, trade agreements and academic relations with Israel that may contribute to its unlawful presence and apartheid regime in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
- Joining The Hague Group, the most promising inter-state initiative so far aimed at promoting concrete sanctions and meaningful, consequential accountability measures, and endorsing and implementing their Bogotá Declaration.
- Expelling apartheid Israel from the UN by withdrawing its accreditation to the UN General Assembly and push for lawful sanctions against it similar to those imposed on apartheid South Africa.
- Strikes², where feasible, and conscientious objection to complicity in genocide in institutions and workplaces, including universities, city councils, among others;
- Escalation of boycott campaigns against priority targets of the BDS movement — including peaceful disruption at stores and company offices, as well as social media actions;
- Launching broad intersectional campaigns to compel institutions — including city councils, universities, trade unions, hospitals, etc. — to adopt ethical procurement and investment policies, where applicable, that exclude companies knowingly and persistently involved in grave human rights violations, particularly war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
The UN General Assembly (UNGA) in September 2024 overwhelmingly voted for sanctions on Israel, for the first time in decades — upholding the International Court of Justice’s ruling in July 2024 that Israel’s entire presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is illegal, constitutes apartheid, and must be brought to an end. The UNGA also gave Israel an ultimatum until 18 September 2025 to end its illegal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
Israel has not only utterly failed to end the occupation, it has in fact escalated its depraved genocidal violence in Gaza, including against UN staff and facilities, and dramatically increased land theft, settlement expansion, and attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. Now more than ever, Israel poses a mortal threat not just to Palestinians but also to humanity at large. Already a year ago, UN Special Rapporteurs warned: “The world stands upon the edge of a knife: Either we travel collectively towards a future of just peace and lawfulness – or hurtle towards anarchy and dystopia, and a world where might makes right.”
Despite the Never Again slogan that followed the Holocaust, the world has failed to stop genocides from Rwanda and former Yugoslavia to Myanmar. Now, all states and inter-state bodies, as well as all institutions, have a legal, not just ethical, obligation to stop the the world’s first livestreamed genocide — the US-Israeli Nazi-like atrocity crimes against 2.3 million Palestinians in the illegally occupied Gaza Strip. Israel’s 77-year-old regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid is finally trying to “finish the job” of exterminating the survivors of its ongoing Nakba of dispossession and ethnic cleansing.
In this most horrific phase of the genocide, Palestinian civil society is united in reiterating the call on people of conscience worldwide to channel their immense grief and anger to cut the links of state, corporate and institutional complicity with this genocidal regime and with all the institutions and corporations that enable its crimes. The utmost moral obligation is first and foremost to do no harm, to end complicity.
We have never been as close as now to imposing a comprehensive and effective sanctions regime. Ever more states and municipalities are moving forward to impose partial sanctions and review ties and contracts. The global majority today stands clearly with Palestinian liberation, and even in states that are Israel’s partners in genocide, like the US, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, among others, majorities today view Israel negatively and support Palestinian rights. They are moving forward an informal, but not less impactful, isolation of Israel. We need to channel this potential energy into building a critical mass of people power that can compel complicit governments, corporations, and institutions to end their complicity.
Never again is truly now. Together, we can and must disrupt all complicity in Israel’s “final solution” for the Indigenous people of Palestine. Together we can support dismantling Israeli apartheid just as South African apartheid was dismantled.
- Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU - Gaza)
- Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine
- Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC)
- Global Palestine Right of Return Coalition
- General Union of Palestinian Workers
- Palestinian Federation of New Unions
- General Union of Palestinian Teachers (GUPT)
- Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE)
- General Union of Palestinian Women
- General Union of Palestinian Writers
- Engineers Association - Jerusalem Center
- Palestinian Bar Association
- General Union of Palestinian Peasants
- Palestinian Union of Postal, IT & Telecommunications Workers
- Union of Professional Associations
- Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO)
- Palestinian National Institute for NGOs
- Federation of Independent Trade Unions
- Veterinarians Syndicate - Jerusalem Center
- Occupied Palestine and Syrian Golan Heights Initiative (OPGAI)
- Union of Palestinian Farmers
- Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (STW)
- Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)
- Popular Struggle Coordination Committee (PSCC)
- Civic Coalition for the Defense of Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem
- Coalition for Jerusalem
- Union of Palestinian Communities’ Institutions and Activities in Europe (IGMAH)
- Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM)
- Palestine Community in Belgium and Luxembourg
- Palestinian Community of Catalonia
- Union of Palestinian Charitable Organizations
- Women's Campaign to Boycott Israeli Products
- Agricultural Cooperatives Union
- National Committee for Grassroots Resistance
- Southern Electricity Company Employees Union
- Association of Employees of The Financial Sector, Palestine
- Health Services Employees’ Association
- Union of Workers in Kindergartens and Private Schools
- Jawwal Employee Association
- Union of Workers' Unions in Local Authorities - Hebron
- Palestinian Electricians Union - Hebron
¹ To minimize legal risks, we always call for consulting with movement lawyers first.
² Where a strike could cause significant harm to workers, “call in sick” instead — sick of Israel’s genocide and weaponized starvation and sick of your institution’s complicity in both.