By Kouthar Sambo

The co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, Omar Barghouti, has called for respective countries to put pressure on Israel by imposing embargoes and sanctions.

Speaking on VOC’s Drive Time show on Monday, Barghouti said Israel’s impunity is far greater than South Africa’s Apartheid regime.

“Since BDS was launched by the majority in Palestinian society, it was modeled after the South African anti-Apartheid movement, the US Civil Rights movement, and it is rooted in a very long heritage of Palestinian popular resistance against settlement colonialism and Apartheid,” explained Barghouti.

South Africa’s experience has been inspiring to us, added Barghouti, as several of the BDS members have direct connections with
leaders of the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa.

“While we are inspired by other movements, we develop our own movement, depending on our own particularities. Our enemy is by far much greater than what South Africa had faced, as most of the West is in bed with Israel’s 75-year regime of settler colonialism,” said Barghouti.

“The West has been defending Israel against accountability, academic relations, and cultural relations. The complicity of the West, especially in the US, in arming and maintaining Israel’s settler colonialism regime, is greater, which makes our struggle to dismantle Apartheid and settler colonialism more difficult,” elaborated Barghouti.

Photo: VOCfm