Ilan Pappe explodes the myth of Palestinian origins of BDS

David Collier uncovered a gem of a video:

Many people have long surmised that external activists told several groups of Palestinians what they needed [to pretend to be in the forefront of calling to boycott Israel.] Then civil groups, some only made up of a couple of members, effectively sided with Hamas. They signed on the dotted line and BDS was born. The tail effectively wagging the dog. Whilst this has long been assumed, the evidence did not exist. Now it does. Watch the video. Bookmark it.

Having seen [Ilan] Pappe on many occasions, I know he holds the Palestinian ability to self-lead in total disdain. A typical self-righteous elitist. There is never a speech when he does not let his ego run away with him as he criticises them. As can be seen from the snippet in the video, he ‘begs’ them to lead. When Salah makes the comment about the Palestinian call for BDS, Pappe cannot resist. The exchange is stunning.

Pappe the activist, who at every single opportunity promotes BDS by suggesting that BDS began as a call from within civil society, now claims that is not true. He also seems to acknowledge that for ‘historical records’, it is important that people think this is the case. This conflict exists because if you remove the ethical underpinning of that boycott, the entire movement collapses. How can a humanitarian organisation side with a boycott that is put together by a few radical extremists and actually hurts the weaker members of civil society?

Illan Pappe would have been there at the time BDS was put together. So when we have Pappe clearly indicating a problem with the historical record we have to sit up and take note. What Pappe seems to be suggesting is that the Palestinians did not call for boycott, but rather were told to call for boycott. We can also see from the reaction by Salah, that the bog standard academic Palestinian activist is unaware of this deception. So whenever you see the suggestion that “The Palestinians called for Boycott”, you know now that is not true. Even on the edge of the far left, in the halls of the liberal humanitarian organisations, the very pillar of BDS has just fallen apart.

And let’s not forget, the head of a department of a UK university seems to have just suggested, it is okay to distort the historical truth if it suits your agenda.

It doesn't take long to see that the calls to boycott Israel predated the official, supposedly Palestinian-led BDS movement by years.

The BDS campaign is a product of the NGO Forum held in parallel to the UN World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa, in August and September 2001. The NGO Forum was marked by repeated expressions of naked anti-Semitism by non-governmental organization (NGO) activists and condemned as such by United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson who chaired the Conference.

The Forum’s final declaration described Israel as a “racist, apartheid state” that was guilty of “racist crimes including war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing.” The declaration established an action plan – the “Durban Strategy” – promoting “a policy of complete and total isolation of Israel as an apartheid state…the imposition of mandatory and comprehensive sanctions and embargoes, the full cessation of all links (diplomatic, economic, social, aid, military cooperation and training) between all states and Israel” (para. 424).

The use of the apartheid accusation, which is the foundation of the BDS movement, is deliberate – drawing a false parallel to Apartheid South Africa. According to BDS proponents, if Apartheid South Africa was worthy of a boycott and sanctions campaigns that eventually led to the downfall of that despicable system, “Apartheid Israel should be subject to the same kind of attack, leading to the same kind of result.”

I found an anti-Israel book written in 2003 - two years before the BDS movement - that listed the boycott and divestment initiatives at that time:

Collier gives more o a background on the radical elements involved in telling "Palestinian civil society" to pretend to lead the boycott campaign that they had started but that had not gained any traction.

And Pappe was undoubtedly involved in these discussions.

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