UK Parliament Passes Anti-BDS Amendment

The British parliament passed an amendment on February 22 combating the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The Jewish Chronicle (JC) and i24News reported that the amendment bars local councils from going toward businesses that boycott Israel. Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Rob Jenrick, who introduced the amendment, said on the floor of the House Commons, “For too long we have seen public pension schemes pursue pseudo foreign policies and all too often the foreign policy of these public pension schemes is I’m afraid, exclusively focused on rewriting the UK’s relationship with the world’s only Jewish state, Israel.” 

He proceeded to call BDS a fringe campaign. “You don’t have to look very hard to find a pattern of antisemitic behavior in connection with campaigns promoting a boycott of Israel,” Jenrick said. “Successive studies have shown the single best statistical predictor of anti-Jewish hostility is the amount of BDS activity.”

David Siegel, President of Friends of the European Leadership Network (ELNET), said in a statement to the Journal, “ELNET praises steps taken in the U.K. Parliament to pass this measure, which would prevent BDS activists from targeting the Jewish state through public pension fund divestments. Anti-Israel actors politicizing the management of public pension funds is not in the interests of U.K. citizens and does not advance peace.” 

Various Labour MPs had voiced opposition to the amendment; The JC quoted one MP, Zarah Sultana, as saying that the amendment would have a “chilling effect” on “human rights campaigns.”

Back in December, Jenrick had said he was “confident” that BDS would be outlawed by the spring of 2022, Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) reported. “There is no political party in the U.K. that would support BDS today and [supporting BDS] is becoming much more of a fringe activity,” he said.