The anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Movement has condemned the leader of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas for meeting with the Moroccan Prime Minister after the Arab country signed a normalization agreement with Israel last year.
The BDS Movement has been angered by growing diplomatic and commercial ties between Israel and the Arab states that began during former U.S. President Donald Trump’s tenure. Morocco established diplomatic relations with the Jewish State in December 2020 as part of the Abraham Accords framework created by President Trump.
Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh visited the Muslim-majority North African country earlier this month in an effort to mobilize support for his jihadist group after its last month’s terrorist offensive against Israel. Hamas and allied Palestinian terrorist groups fired around 4,500 rockets aimed at Israeli towns and cities during the 11-day terror campaign.
The BDS Movement, which has established a foothold in the left-dominated U.S. and Western college campuses, is known to have ties with Palestinian terrorist organizations, including Gaza-based Islamist Hamas.
The English language Arabic news website Al Monitor reported the BDS Movement’s statement:
The boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is upset at a Hamas leader for meeting with the Moroccan prime minister due to Morocco having relations with Israel.BDS released an Arabic-language statement on Tuesday to “denounce” Hamas’ political head, Ismail Haniyeh, for meeting with Moroccan Prime Minister Saadeddine Othmani. The meeting took place last week during Haniyeh’s trip to Morocco, during which he also met with Islamist and opposition parties.“We strongly condemn Haniyeh’s meeting with the Moroccan prime minister, which betrays our people and furthers normalization with the occupation and its continuing crimes,” BDS said in the statement. (…)Morocco normalized its relations with Israel in December as part of the Abraham Accords, which were brokered by the former Donald Trump administration. The countries previously had informal relations in the 1990s. Morocco once had a sizable Jewish community, but a mass exodus to Israel began following anti-Jewish riots in 1948.
The BDS Movement has great sway over Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations. Several convicted terrorists are on the payrolls of foreign-funded NGOs and charities linked to the BDS campaign.
According to a 2019 study published by Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, the BDS campaign has deep operational and ideological ties with the Palestinian terrorist groups, such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
“Terrorist organizations and the BDS campaign have united in their goal of dismantling the Jewish State, with the former viewing boycotts as an additional tactic to their armed attacks against Israel,” the then-Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs, Gilad Erdan, explained.
Many European governments have condemned the BDS Movement for its blatant Antisemitism. In May 2019, German parliament passed a resolution denouncing the BDS as antisemitic, comparing it to the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses of the 1930s.
The Trump administration took a tough stance against the anti-Israel BDS campaign. In November 2019, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the State Department to “identify organizations that engage in hateful BDS conduct, and withdraw US government support for such groups.”
“The BDS Movement’s links to Palestinian terror”
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