Palestinians welcome the decision by the Obstacle Course Race (OCR) European Championships not to allow athletes to represent genocidal Israel. The OCR championship will be held in Irun in the Basque Country (Spanish state), running today through Sunday.
Israel has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians during its ongoing genocide in Gaza, including more than 1,000 athletes. Teams and athletes representing apartheid Israel have no place in sports.
We salute the local Basque Country OCR clubs and BDS groups who campaigned to create a more ethical sporting competition, refusing to allow Israel to sportswash its war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against millions of Palestinians.
While the OCR European Championships has decided to only allow Israeli athletes to participate as individuals, it must do more to ensure that this and future competitions are not complicit in Israel’s crimes against Palestinians. OCR clearly recognizes the moral and sporting liabilities associated with ties to the genocidal state of Israel.
We call on the OCR European Championships organizers and the European Obstacle Sports Federation (EOSF) to ensure that:
- No symbols of Israel are present at the competition, including flags and anthems;
- Due diligence is performed on participating adult athletes to guarantee there are none who have served since 7 October 2023 in the Israeli military or who are reasonably suspected of aiding, assisting, or conspiring in the commission of, or public incitement to, war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide;
- The “Obstacles Israel” body is excluded from EOSF until Israel respects the fundamental UN-stipulated rights of the Palestinian people.
Calls are growing across sports for Israel to be excluded from international competitions and sporting bodies.
Until it is, we continue to call on venues to refuse to host and on teams and athletes to refuse to compete against complicit Israeli teams until apartheid Israel is expelled, just as apartheid South Africa was.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions and Fórsa Trade Union become the first union bodies in Europe to pass Ethical Procurement Policies (EPP).
The BDS movement salutes the Irish trade union bodies and calls on all trade unions and governing bodies to follow this historic example of accountability and adopt EPPs.
Public money must not reward complicity in war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide.
Explore the intersectional resources developed by the BDS movement and @elsclegal on Ethical Procurement Policy: An Operational Guide and a Campaign Guide by following the link in our bio.
Link in bio: Across ports, cities, and communities around the world, workers, trade unionists, activists and allies are coming together to challenge the maritime supply chains enabling Israel’s genocide, apartheid and wars of aggression.
In the last few months alone, activists and dockworkers across more than 20 countries have helped to disrupt seven major military shipments, launched coordinated port actions across the Mediterranean and beyond, and pushed authorities to investigate shipments connected to Israel’s genocide.
Your contribution helps sustain this growing international movement. Donate to support the #BlockTheBoat campaign.
BDS WIN: The Danish-flagged vessel Danica Violet, carrying tonnes of military materiel for Israel’s largest arms producer, Elbit Systems, has been forced to re-route from Cape Verde, after reporting by The Ditch, news outlets in Cape Verde, and BDS mobilization.
The vessel has now been re-routed through Greece, and is scheduled to arrive at Kali Limenes port on 1 June.
The Palestinian-led BDS movement calls on solidarity groups, unions and wider civil society — in Denmark, Greece and Norway — to mobilize to stop it.
The BDS movement condemns the Irish government’s ongoing complicity in Israel’s genocide and apartheid against Palestinians and reminds it that states must act, not posture, to comply with their legal obligations under international law.
Words are not enough—neither for the Irish people nor for Palestinians.
The BDS movement calls on the Irish public and civil society groups worldwide to escalate BDS now.
From Brazil to Mauritius, from Ghana to France, and from Morocco to Senegal, organizers are joining the Global Week of Action from 18–24 May, escalating pressure ahead of Carrefour’s Annual General Meeting.
Around the world, activists, trade unions, grassroots groups and consumers are organizing protests, store actions, online mobilizations and public campaigns demanding that Carrefour end its complicity in Israel’s regime of settler colonialism, apartheid and genocide against Palestinians.
Join them now.
Even before its ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, Israel spent hundreds of millions of dollars fighting the global, grassroots BDS movement as a “strategic threat” to its decades-old regime of oppression. Now, it has desperately allocated hundreds of millions of dollars per year for its propaganda. It has also illegally interfered in elections, including in Europe, ramping up its bribery, bullying and manipulation to secure influence.
Israel has ranked last in the Nations Brand Index for the last two years running. Viewers of Eurovision, the world’s biggest live music event, were therefore shocked to see Israel take second place last Saturday. Keen observers and human rights campaigners, however, were not surprised at all. It is likely that it has interfered with the Eurovision voting well beyond what has already been reported even by the shamelessly biased New York Times.
This absurd situation–where a deeply unpopular, rogue, genocidal state can launder its reputation by manipulating the vote and supposedly place high among an audience that clearly rejects its very participation–has been enabled by every broadcaster, performer and participant who did not boycott the complicit and rigged contest. If any Eurovision supporter wants to save the contest from being another Israeli occupied territory, there is no choice left but to boycott it until organisers finally ban apartheid Israel.
A week earlier, at the world’s largest art exhibition, the Venice Biennale, 29 national pavilions fully or partially shut during a strike called in solidarity with Palestine and workers’ rights, the biggest in the Biennale’s history. Thousands of protesters effectively blocked the main entrance to a main venue. It followed a call from 239 participants demanding genocidal Israel’s exclusion.
In Hollywood too, Israel’s fabled influence is finally waning, leaving its fanatic, anti-Palestinian racist supporters to resort yet again to intimidation, threats, and smears. But the fast growing resistance to these McCarthyite tactics is unmistakable and seemingly unstoppable. Genocidal Israel's isolation in its previous Western cultural strongholds has never been so evident.
In just the first three months of 2026, BDS strategic campaigning contributed to at least 80 achievements across more than 15 different campaign areas.
You helped make all of this possible. Continue building pressure with us.
Donate today through the link in our bio.
Eurovision organisers have utterly tarnished the contest — simply to serve Israel while it commits its ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Palestinians welcome the Spanish, Dutch, Irish, Icelandic and Slovenian broadcasters, the millions of fans, and thousands of artists boycotting the contest.
As José Pablo López, President of the Spanish broadcaster recently said, “there is no music that can cover up this horror nor business that can justify it. The theatre is over.”
Boycott Eurovision.
Every Israeli company, until proven otherwise, is complicit in Israel’s occupation, apartheid and genocide against Palestinians — a 78-year-old settler-colonial regime. But some were complicit from the very beginning, before and during the Nakba – the forced expulsion of approximately 750,000 Indigenous Palestinians from their homes in 1948.
Today, as we remember the Nakba, we focus on some of these companies that remain in operation — and call on people worldwide to escalate BDS pressure against them.
Channel your rage, frustration, and grief into effective, strategic BDS pressure to support our struggle to end Israel’s ongoing Nakba, genocide and settler-colonial apartheid.
“Gravest crime against humanity” – is how the UNGA formally recognized chattel slavery, calling for reparatory justice.
The voting pattern on the resolution exposes the hypocrisy of the colonial West and testifies to the persistence of colonial-era power dynamics.
Their excuse? That calling slavery the "gravest" crime against humanity creates an “unjustified hierarchy” among atrocity crimes and “risks undermining the harm suffered by all victims of these crimes,” the EU claimed.
The BDS movement calls for implementation of historic UN General Assembly resolution on chattel slavery.
Speaking to tens of thousands of people at the Uno Maggio festival in Taranto (Italy), UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese calls BDS “the emblem of a nonviolent movement,” led by the Palestinian people, who “refuse to be reduced to victims” — and invites people around the world to join us in ending complicity with Israel’s occupation, apartheid and genocide.
“While having a dream is essential, it is necessary, today more than ever, to have a plan, to organize.”
