Tel Aviv – The U.S.-based Black Lives Matter movement has called Israel an “apartheid state” and said it is joining the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign over acts of “genocide against the Palestinian people”.

Black Lives Matter and The Movement for Black Lives – a coalition of more than 50 organizations representing African Americans – published a comprehensive platform last week, in which the movement addressed the systematic racism, violence, oppression and discrimination faced by black communities in the United States.

The policy platform has unambiguously declared its solidarity with the Palestinian people, as it called Israel an ‘apartheid state’ and endorsed Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) of the Israeli state.

“The U.S. justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people,” the platform says. “Israel is an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people,” it added.

The movement went on to say that the U.S. military aid to Israel “not only diverts much needed funding from domestic education and social programs, but it makes U.S. citizens complicit in the abuses committed by the Israeli government”.

The platform details how Israel is “an apartheid state” which keeps taking Palestinian land to make way for illegal Israeli settlements.

Meanwhile, Israeli authorities and Jewish leaders in the U.S. strongly condemned the movement’s recent announcement.

Sources in the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs said that Black Lives Matter had “[suspicious] relations with B.D.S. and had irrationally linked violence perpetrated by police officers against the black community in the U.S. and Israeli political strategies.

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