Black Lives Matter co-founder called for end of Israel's project in 2015

Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors called for the end of Israel in a 2015 panel at the Harvard Law School.

In an April 2015 panel hosted by the Human Rights Program at Harvard, entitled 'Globalizing Ferguson: Radicalized Policing and International Resistance,' Cullors shared her experience visiting the West Bank and Gaza with a delegation of other leftists.

 

She said she saw 'violence' and 'terror' being committed by 'Israelis and Zionists' at the expense of Palestinians.

 

'Palestine is our generation's South Africa,' she told the students. 'If we don't step up boldly and courageously to end the imperialist project that's called Israel, we're doomed.'
 

She also said: 'Nothing would've prepared me for the militarization and terror' that she saw while she visited the area, and told the students 'We're complicit in that' due to the United States' alliance with Israel.

 

She encouraged supporters to join the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement, which seeks to put financial pressure on Israel to change its policies toward Palestine by boycotting and divesting from Israeli businesses.

 

Every year, the United States and Israel trade close to $50 billion in goods and services, according to the State Department. Additionally, the United States supports Israel's security financially, providing $3.3 billion to Foreign Military Financing and $500 million for cooperative programs for missile defense every year under the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries. 

 

The United States was the first country to recognize Israel as a state in 1948, and the Trump administration became the first to recognize Al-Quds (Jerusalem) as the capital of Israel in 2017.