Favour to Apartheid: How the UK anti-BDS bill is ’tailor made’ for Israel

Today, even as protests grow in Britain and the world demanding freedom for the Palestinians in the wake of the war on Gaza, the UK government is pushing ahead with a bill which will stop public bodies that want to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians from taking effective action to do so. The bill, officially named the “Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill”, and commonly known as the “Anti-boycott Bill”, is being tabled at a time when 37 US states have already passed bills designed to penalize boycotts of Israel and European governments are coming under increasing pressure to introduce anti-boycott legislation. The New Arab’s short documentary Favour to Apartheid through an overview of the debates surrounding the bill and interviews with key figures in the Right to Boycott coalition, activists, as well as legal experts, examines the legality of the bill, the coherence of the grounds it is predicated upon, and its dire implications for freedoms in the UK that could put the country on the wrong side of history once again when it comes to the moral arc in Palestine. Interviewees include BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti; Director of Palestine Solidarity Campaign UK Ben Jamal; Jewish activist and writer Emily Hilton; and Amnesty UK’s Programme Director for Economic Affairs Peter Frankental. Favour to Apartheid was produced and edited by Reem Khabbazy