Anti-BDS Measures Across the World Clamp Down on Pro-Palestinian Activism

FEATURING SAREE MAKDISI – Activists around the world have targeted the Israeli occupation of Palestine through a non-violent approach called BDS which stands for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, loosely based on the anti-apartheid boycott movement against South Africa. But, in what may be a measure of the success of BDS, institutions around the world are now making it illegal to use the tactic. Anti-BDS laws and measures are popping all over including in California where the state legislature is now considering a bill.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, where this program is produced, a coalition of more than 50 pro-Israel organizations just wrapped up a conference whose entire focus was to strategize against the BDS movement.

Read Saree’s LA Times op-ed HERE.

Saree Makdisi, Professor of English at UCLA, author of several books including Making England Western: Occidentalism, Race, and Imperial Culture, and Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation. He recently published an op-ed in the LA Times entitled, Wrongfully treating academic debate as anti-Semitism. He happens to be the nephew of the late Edward Said.