The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest coalition in Palestinian society that is leading the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, firmly believes that ending the complicity of states, corporations, and institutions in Israel’s ongoing, live-streamed genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza is the most effective form of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle to end the genocide and dismantle Israel’s 76-year-old regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid.
Corporations that are implicated in the commission of international crimes connected to Israel’s unlawful occupation, racial segregation, and apartheid regime - within or beyond the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 - are all complicit and must be held accountable. The BDS movement’s Corporate Complicity Criteria are here. Direct complicity includes military, logistical, intelligence, financial, and infrastructure support. The corporations and their boards of directors and executives may face criminal liability for this complicity.
On 21 November 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) finally issued its long overdue arrest warrants against sitting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former war cabinet minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated in Gaza. In July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s entire occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is illegal and violates the prohibition against apartheid.
Targeted Boycotts vs. Non-Targeted Boycotts
People of conscience around the world are rightfully shattered, enraged, and sometimes feeling powerless about Israel’s Gaza genocide, armed, funded, and shielded from accountability by the colonial West, led by the US. Many feel compelled to boycott all products and services of companies tied in any way to Israel. The question is how to make boycotts most effective and impactful in holding corporations accountable for their complicity in the suffering of Palestinians.
The BDS movement uses the historically successful method of targeted boycotts, inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the US Civil Rights movement, and the Indian and Irish anti-colonial struggles, among others worldwide.
We must strategically focus on a relatively smaller number of carefully selected companies and products for maximum impact. We need to target companies that play a clear and direct role in Israel’s crimes against Palestinians, as well as in violating the rights of other peoples/communities, and where there is real potential for winning. This is how the BDS movement has successfully forced companies like G4S, Veolia, Orange, Puma, and Pillsbury, among others, to end their complicity in Israel’s grave human rights violations and crimes.
Compelling large complicit companies, through strategic and context-sensitive boycott and divestment campaigns as well as well-thought-out shareholder strategies, to end their complicity in Israeli apartheid and war crimes against Palestinians sends a compelling message to hundreds of other complicit companies that “your time will come, so get out before it’s too late!”
The fact that Israel’s economy has been in steady, at times drastic, decline also helps in showing that business with Israel is not only unethical and illegal but also financially irresponsible. Israel is quickly turning into what the BDS movement calls a #ShutDownNation, with the dramatic flight of capital, severe brain drain, drying foreign direct investments in high tech, and a generally unsafe, unstable, and “collapsing” economy. Ethics and international law aside, this should help us mobilize most shareholders to oppose any investment in Israel.
As an intersectional movement that connects Palestinian liberation with racial, indigenous, social, gender, and climate justice struggles, we also recommend prioritizing the boycott of companies that are targets of mobilizations in other struggles of the oppressed. We recommend, where applicable, adopting an ethical investment policy or a universal human rights-based investment screen to prevent investments in all companies complicit in human rights violations anywhere.
Targeted Boycotts vs. Non-Targeted Boycotts
BDS boycott target-selection criteria:
Level of complicity (based on accurate, convincing research that proves complicity)
Intersectionality (cross-movement relevance of the target)
Brand recognition and media appeal (helps reach a wider audience)
Potential for success
BDS operational principles:
Gradualness (incrementalism in building power to achieve the ultimate goals)
Sustainability (sustaining victories and building on them to move forward)
Context-sensitivity (adapting tactics to suit the political-cultural context optimally)
Israeli Corporations & Banks:
The BDS movement targets complicity, not identity. When it comes to Israeli companies, being non-complicit entails:
Not being implicated in Israel’s military occupation, apartheid, or settler colonialism; and
Publicly recognizing Palestinian rights under international law, primarily the right of refugees to return in accordance with UN resolution 194.
As far as we know, no Israeli company meets these two conditions. Accordingly, the BDS movement has called for boycotting and divesting from all Israeli companies unless they meet the above two conditions.
Our top priority Israeli targets are the leading ones in the military-security, technology, energy, financial, diamonds, and agriculture, water, and agribusiness sectors that operate internationally, making them relevant targets for boycotts.
The following are the BDS movement’s current top priority boycott and pressure international corporate targets. We have split these targets into three sections:
1. Consumer boycott priority targets - The BDS movement calls for a complete boycott of these brands carefully selected due to each company's proven record of complicity in Israeli apartheid.
2. Organic boycott targets - The BDS movement did not initiate these grassroots boycott campaigns but actively supports them due to these brands’ egregious complicity in Israel’s genocide and apartheid against Palestinians.
3. Pressure targets—The BDS movement actively calls for pressure campaigns against these targets. This includes boycotts when reasonable alternatives exist, lobbying, peaceful disruptions, social media pressure, strategic litigation, etc.
Divestment & Exclusion from Contracts:
In addition to boycott and pressure targets, divestment and exclusion targets (covered in a separate document) are indispensable in the BDS movement’s tools against complicit corporations. The BDS movement works to pressure governments, city councils, investment funds, institutions (including universities), trade unions, etc., to exclude from procurement contracts and investments as well as to divest from, as the case may be, as many complicit companies as practical, especially arms companies, tech companies, and financial institutions. In our divestment priority list below, we rely predominantly on the following authoritative sources and their research with a few of our unique, well-researched targets:
AFSC list of companies that implicated in arming Israel’s #GazaGenocide.
AFSC Investigate database of companies enabling the occupation.
UN database of businesses involved in Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise.
WhoProfits database of corporations profiting from the ongoing Israeli occupation.
Don’t Buy Into Occupation list of businesses involved in the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise in the OPT in which European financial institutions have investments.
1. Consumer boycott priority targets:
All the corporations whose business with Israel aids in its ongoing genocide, apartheid, or illegal occupation may be complicit in serious breaches of international law and, therefore, face liability for the company, its executives, and its board members. According to a legal expert opinion commissioned by Al Haq and SOMO, “A corporation or individual businessperson who knowingly assists a State in violating customary international law, including the prohibition of committing genocide, may be complicit in such a violation.” This is particularly true in light of the International Court of Justice’s determination that Israel is plausibly perpetrating genocide in Gaza, as well as its July 19 legally binding Advisory Opinion affirming Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid system.
US fossil fuel multinational Chevron is the main corporation extracting gas claimed by apartheid Israel in the East Mediterranean. Chevron generates billions in revenues, strengthening Israel’s war chest and apartheid system, exacerbating the climate crisis and Gaza siege, and is complicit in depriving the Palestinian people of their right to sovereignty over their natural resources. Chevron has thousands of retail gas stations around the world under the Chevron, Caltex, and Texaco brand names. Groups around the world have joined the campaign to #BoycottChevron. For more resources, visit boycottchevron.info.
In December 2023, amidst Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Intel announced that it will invest $25 billion in apartheid Israel. In June 2024, following prolonged BDS pressure, and in response mainly to the financial risk of investing in a #ShutDownNation, the tech giant dropped the project, according to Israeli financial media sources. For decades, Intel has been the largest international investor in apartheid Israel. Its plant at “Kiryat Gat” is built on land within the boundaries of the Palestinian village of Iraq al Manshiya, which was ethnically cleansed, razed to the ground, and then replaced by the current Israeli settlement. Intel remains deeply complicit in feeding Israel’s genocidal war chest, so the #BoycottIntel campaign continues.
Dell Technologies supplies the servers, maintains services and related equipment to the Israeli military as a part of a $150 million 2023 contract funded by US foreign aid. Dell is committed to Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians by establishing research and development activity in Israel’s National Cyber Park that attempts to strengthen illegal settlements in the Naqab, displacing Palestinian Bedouin communities. One month into Israel’s Gaza genocide, founder and CEO Michael Dell donated $350million worth of shares to Israel, further solidifying the genocidal partnership between Israel and Dell Technologies.
Siemens (Germany) is the main contractor for the Euro-Asia Interconnector, an Israel-EU submarine electricity cable that is planned to connect Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory to Europe. Siemens-branded electrical appliances are sold globally.
Hewlett Packard (HP), including Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and HP Inc., is a significant enabler of Israel's ongoing occupation. Through its partnerships with the Israeli government, military, prisons and police, HP provides critical technological and logistical support that facilitates war crimes and crimes against humanity, including illegal settlement construction and apartheid in the OPT. HPE supports Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority, a crucial pillar of its apartheid system, by providing technology for its databases and IT systems. HP Inc (US) provides services to the offices of genocide leaders, Israeli PM Netanyahu and Financial Minister Smotrich.
Microsoft is perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel’s illegal apartheid regime and ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. Microsoft’s complicity in Israel’s apartheid and genocide is well documented, exposing its strong ties to the Israeli military, its collaboration with Israeli government ministries, and its involvement in the Israeli prison system, which is notorious for systematic torture and abuse of Palestinians. Microsoft knowingly provides Israel with technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), that is deployed to facilitate grave human rights violations, war crimes, crimes against humanity (including apartheid), as well as genocide.
Microsoft provides the Israeli military with Azure cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) services that are crucial to empowering and accelerating Israel’s genocidal war on 2.3 million Palestinians in the illegally occupied Gaza Strip. Microsoft’s extensive ties with Israel’s military are revealed in investigations by The Guardian with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, demonstrating how the Israeli military turned to Microsoft to meet the technological demands of genocide. The BDS movement, in collaboration with allied Microsoft workers (No Azure for Apartheid) are calling for pressure on Microsoft wherever possible when reasonable alternatives exist, including boycotting Microsoft’s Xbox and gaming, cutting institutional contracts with Microsoft and divesting from the company.
The France-based multinational retailer is involved in war crimes committed by the Israeli regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid over the Palestinian people. It started with the French group announcing a franchise partnership with Electra Consumer Products (ECP) and its retail subsidiary, Yenot Bitan, both active in the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise. During Israel’s genocidal assault against Palestinians in Gaza, Carrefour-Israel has supported Israeli soldiers partaking in the unfolding genocide of Palestinians in Gaza with gifts of personal packages. Evidence also shows that there is at least one Carrefour-branded branch in an illegal settlement in the OPT.
Since its launch, Carrefour-Israel’s complicity has only become worse. Electra Retail Ltd., a subsidiary of Electra Consumer Products, has a partnership with Israeli bank Hapoalim, which is listed in the UN database for complicity in Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise. Carrefour has also received loans from four major complicit Israeli banks, and it has established a partnership with six complicit high-tech Israeli start-ups on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, among others.
Insurance giant AXA (France) holds $150.43 million – US$78.87 million in shares and US$71.56 million in bonds – in eleven companies that are arming Israel during its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, including Boeing and General Dynamics. Both companies’ weapons have been directly linked to Israeli attacks on Palestinians in Gaza, including mass killings, such as the bombing of the Tel al-Sultan refugee camp in Rafah on 26 May, and the 10 September bombing of Palestinians sheltering in al-Mawasi, which Israel had designated as a “safe zone.”
In early 2025, Reebok signed a sponsorship contract with the Israel Football Association (IFA), which includes in its official leagues teams in Israel’s illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land. The IFA actively advocates, together with the Israeli government, to maintain these teams. Palestinians are calling on Reebok to immediately withdraw from the contract, or face a global boycott campaign just as Adidas, PUMA, and Erreà faced before them.
Cancel or don’t sign up for Disney+ subscriptions! Disney and its subsidiary Marvel are complicit in glorifying Israel’s regime of genocide and apartheid against Indigenous Palestinians. Marvel’s Captain America: Brave New World and Disney’s Snow White star actors Shira Haas and Gal Gadot, respectively, that have consciously and irrefutably taken up roles as cultural ambassadors for Israel, directly representing genocidal Israel’s propaganda efforts. For Captain America, Marvel and Disney are reviving the racist character of Ruth Bat-Seraph, whose decades-old backstory includes working for Mossad. Disney+ is therefore clearly implicated in enabling Israel’s genocide by dehumanizing Palestinians.
SodaStream is an Israeli company that is actively complicit in Israel's policy of displacing the indigenous Bedouin-Palestinian citizens of present-day Israel in the Naqab (Negev) and has a long history of racial discrimination against Palestinian workers.
RE/MAX (US) markets and sells property in illegal Israeli settlements built on stolen Palestinian land, thus enabling Israel’s colonization of the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
Boycott produce from Israel in your supermarket and demand their removal from shelves. Beyond being part of a trade that fuels Israel’s apartheid economy, Israeli fruits, vegetables, and wines misleadingly labeled as “Product of Israel” often include products of illegal settlements on stolen Palestinian land, and most Israeli companies exporting these products are complicit in the illegal occupation and apartheid regime. Israeli companies do not distinguish between the two, and neither should consumers.
2. Grassroots organic boycott targets:
These are targeted in some countries by grassroots organic boycott campaigns, not initiated by the BDS movement. BDS supports these boycott campaigns because these companies, or their branches or franchisees in Israel, have openly supported apartheid Israel and/or provided generous in-kind donations to the Israeli military amid the current genocide:
McDonald’s
Coca Cola
Burger King
Papa John’s
Pizza Hut
Domino's Pizza
WIX
3. Pressure targets:
The BDS movement actively calls for pressure campaigns against these targets. This includes boycotts when reasonable alternatives exist, as well as lobbying, peaceful disruptions, social media pressure, strategic litigation, etc.
Project Nimbus, the joint $1.22 billion contract between Google and Amazon signed in 2021, provides cloud computing infrastructure, artificial intelligence and other technology services to the Israeli government and the Israeli military. Nimbus offers the platform for the Israeli military to run deadly AI programs such as Lavender and Gospel– crucial to the Gaza genocide.
In April 2024, months after the ICJ ruled Israel is plausibly committing genocide in Gaza, Google signed a new contract with the IDF, allowing military units to access Google’s automation technologies, data and AI services. By supporting Israeli apartheid with vital technologies, Amazon and Google are directly implicated in its entire system of oppression, including its regime of apartheid and its unfolding genocide in Gaza.
Use alternatives to Amazon when you can. Order products directly from companies instead of using Amazon. Boycott Amazon products such as Ring cameras, an Amazon subsidiary that partners with US police, using similar Amazon facial recognition technology used to surveil Palestinians.
All three travel services companies are listed in the UN database of businesses implicated in Israel’s illegal colonial settlement enterprise.
Airbnb (US), Booking Holdings (Netherlands) and Expedia (US) all offer rentals in illegal Israeli settlements built on stolen Palestinian land.
Teva is an Israeli pharmaceutical company and one of the world’s largest generic drug manufacturers. Teva has supported Israel’s unfolding genocide since October 2023, but it has also benefited for decades from Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands allowing the company to illegally exploit the captive Palestinian market. Alternative generic pharmaceuticals are now much more available than before in most countries.
