Cllr Melisa Halpin, Dún Laoghaire People Before Profit, has announced that Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council (DLR) has voted to support the BDS Movement- an International call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions on Israel. The BDS Movement is led by Palestinian Civil Society and support for it has been growing steadily since it began in 2005.
The motion for DLR to support BDS was proposed by People Before Profit’s Cllr Melisa Halpin and independent councillor Hugh Lewis at the monthly Council meeting. The motion passed by 23 votes to 13 with three abstentions.
DLR is the 9th council in Ireland to support BDS.
Cllr Melisa Halpin said: “I am absolutely delighted that Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council has voted to support the international BDS Movement. The state of Israel is guilty of war crimes, consistently ignores UN motions over decades. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch consider it to be guilty of apartheid against Palestinians. Just like South Africa, it deserves to be boycotted and sanctioned. It was a combination of resistance within South Africa and the international boycott movement that finally brought an end to that rotten, racist state.
“Ireland should be proud of the role that Dunnes Stores strikers played in popularising and raising support for that movement. We need to do this again. Support for Palestine is becoming unstoppable. BDS is part of this. We need to boycott, to protest, to lobby, and shout our support for Palestine as loudly as we can until Palestine is Free.
“People Before Profit have been campaigning for Palestine for decades. The latest Israeli onslaught is only able to continue because of the support from its allies in the US, EU, and Britain. We in Ireland need to build the biggest protest movement possible to put pressure on our own government to withdraw support for Israel, this would mean expelling the Israeli ambassador, referring Netanyahu to the International Criminal Court, and ensuring that Shannon Airport is not being used to transport arms to Israel.
Cllr Hugh Lewis said: “The council fully endorsing the boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign against Israel is testament to the recognised barbarity of the ongoing onslaught in Gaza and the necessity for the appropriate political response.
“It is a recognition of an apartheid Israeli system that perpetuates violence and injustices against the Palestinian people. Let this support for BDS be part of the full alienation of this rotten regime and the growing support to expel its ambassador.”