By: Kate Anderson, Daily Caller News Foundation
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is calling for a boycott of the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) due to its ties with Israel, according to an Instagram post.
The group is protesting the U.N. for allowing the annual conference in November to be held by “one of the world’s largest fossil fuel producers,” and argued that the move undermines the fight for “climate justice,” according to the post. BDS’ Arab account posted on Wednesday that it would be organizing a boycott against the summit because of the UAE’s “military-security alliance with the enemy,” the enemy being the state of Israel, the group claimed.
“Our call is in line with the call issued by boycott groups, parties, unions and civil associations in the Arab region, which calls for the boycott of the authoritarian Emirates region because of its military-security alliance with the enemy and its conspiracy on the Palestinian issue, the war crimes committed in Yemen and its violent suppression of freedoms in the UAE,” the post reads.
The group argued that protesting the “apartheid” state of Israel is in line with the fight for “climate justice,” according to the post.
“The struggle against the Israeli colonialist and apartheid system in Palestine is organically and intermittently related to the struggle for political and civil rights, social, economic and climate justice in the Arab world and around the world and against all systems of oppression and persecution.”
BDS Arabic’s website, translated from Arabic to English, further explained why the boycott was necessary, noting that the UAE is inviting Israel’s “extremist” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “racist” President Isaac Herzog to attend the summit. The group claimed that Israel seeks to benefit from the conference by promoting its “climate technology,” which the group said is an example of the country’s greenwashing by pretending to be climate conscious.
“During the summit, the Israeli wing organizes dozens of events to profit from climate, environmental, agricultural and other technologies developed by the Israeli enemy through the production of military and intelligence weapons and criminal technologies and testing them on the Palestinians, and later using them to suppress other peoples around the world,” the website reads.
Finally, the organization listed the ways that the Palestinians had suffered “ethnic cleansing” and a “genocidal siege of Gaza” caused by the Jewish state, according to the website. Making repeated mention of the “Israeli enemy,” the group accused Israel of purposely depriving Palestinians of basic human needs and stealing their land and “natural resources.”
“Our Palestinian people, deprived of their lands and natural resources, are also suffering from the climate crisis, in light of the Israeli enemy’s monopoly on resources and its systematic destruction of the environment, and high temperatures, which exacerbate desertification, water and land scarcity, and the entrenchment of climate apartheid.”
BDS, BDS Arabic and the U.N. did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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