What is the BDS Movement & What Does It Mean that the U.S Legislating Against It?

Recorded March 18, 2022

Listen to this conversation as a podcast

This webinar is Part 6 of an 8-part series of webinars. For more information regarding this series, and links to the other sessions, please click here.

Featuring Omar Barghouti (Palestinian human rights defender & co-founder of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement), Brian Hauss (ACLU) and Olivia Katbi (North America Coordinator for the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement).

In this session we explored issues surrounding growing grassroots protest of Israeli policies, including via support of boycotts, divestment campaigns, and calls for sanctions (BDS) — and the parallel rise in efforts, including in Congress, to delegitimize and legislate against such protests. 

 

Resources shared during the webinar

Omar Barghouti

Brian Hauss

Olivia Katbi

Other links

Resources from Palestine Legal:

Resources (data tables) from the Foundation for Middle East Peace:

FMEP’s Lara Friedman:

General:

 

Bios

Omar Barghouti is a Palestinian human rights defender. He is a co-founder of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and a co-recipient of the 2017 Gandhi Peace Award. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University, NY, and is pursuing a PhD in Philosophy (ethics) at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of, BDS: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights (Haymarket: 2011). His commentaries and views have appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, AP, the Nation, and on MSNBC, CNN, BBC, among others.

Brian Hauss is a staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. Brian was previously a staff attorney with the ACLU Center for Liberty, where he focused on combating religious refusals to comply with anti-discrimination laws. He also spent two years as the ACLU’s William J. Brennan First Amendment Fellow. Brian is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. He served as a law clerk to the Hon. Marsha S. Berzon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Olivia Katbi is the North America Coordinator for the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement. She also organizes with the Democratic Socialists of America, where she served as co-chair of the Portland, Oregon DSA chapter from 2017-2021, and founded the organization’s National BDS and Palestine Solidarity Working Group.