JERUSALEM, Israel – The United Kingdom plans to outlaw the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement “in the following months,” a lawmaker from Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s conservative party said on Tuesday.
According to The Jerusalem Post, British MP Robert Jenrick made the comments while speaking at the Leadership Dialogue Institute’s (LDI) 2021 online conference on the pandemic, anti-Semitism, and Israeli technology.
Jenrick said during a conversation titled “Why Do So Many People Hate Jews?” that “in the following months, we will be working to outlaw BDS in the UK.”
“I do think BDS is being beaten back here,” Jenrick added. “There is no political party in the UK that would support BDS today and [supporting BDS] is becoming much more of a fringe activity.”
According to the movement’s website, BDS says it intends to rally international support against “Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law” through economic means. Critics say the BDS movement is anti-Semitic and based on the false claim that Israel is an apartheid state.
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This is not the first time the UK has considered going after the BDS Movement.
In 2019, conservative MP Eric Pickles said the British parliament would pass a law making it illegal for public institutions to join or support the BDS movement against Israel in any way.
Johnson criticized the BDS movement in 2015, telling the BBC he could “not think of anything more foolish than to say that you want to have any kind of divestment or sanctions or boycott against a country that, when all is said and done, is the only democracy in the region.”
Several American states have also banned BDS and have divested from companies that support the movement.
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