The anti-Issrael BDS movement is working to thwart a conference on medicinal plants and herbs that is scheduled to take place in Poriya, near Tiberias, next month.

The boycott movement began to put pressure on event invitees to cancel their participation at the conference. Following the pressure, two lecturers who were scheduled to speak at the conference announced that they were canceling their planned arrival.

Bettina Thurbal, one of the conference organizers, said that the conference was supposed to have 11 lecturers and that the conference organizers wanted to sell 50 guest tickets to cover the expenses. But then BDS activists began to put heavy pressure on participants to cancel their part of the conference.

BDS activist Shabina Lafleur-Gangji took credit for tha campaign against the conference, writing on Facebook: "There are no Palestinian or Muslim speakers scheduled to speak at the conference. We decided we must do something and we turned to the conference participants, who decided to withdraw their support for the event out of identification with the people living under the brutal occupation of Israeli apartheid."

The two professors who announced that they would be eliminating the conference are from Ireland and the US, both considered to be leading herbalists.

Sarah Hannah Silverstein, who is scheduled to take part in the conference next month, came out against the pressure exerted by BDS activists on the conference attendees. "We can't let this go quietly, because then it will happen to physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists and more. What if we wanted to convene a conference on children with Down syndrome in Israel? We can't let BDS stop this conference. It's wrong." Silverstein wrote.