The newly released platform of a group claiming association with the Black Lives Matter movement declares that Israel is an "apartheid state" that "practices systematic discrimination," including "genocide … against the Palestinian people."
The platform makes the accusations against only the Jewish state.
The document, posted online Monday, includes an extensive foreign policy section titled "Invest-Divest." Substantial parts of the section are devoted to Israel and to what the group believes is a joint U.S.-Israeli campaign of global terror, militarization, and war.
"The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinians," the document says. The United States, the group says, "is an empire that uses war to expand territory and power. American wars are unjust, destructive to Black communities globally and do not keep Black people safe locally."
The platform document promotes the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement, which seeks to cripple Israel economically. The document lists as "resources" for readers the names of several leading BDS groups and calls on its members to fight against anti-BDS bills under consideration in several state legislatures. As a policy recommendation, the platform calls for an end of U.S. aid to Israel.
Black Lives Matter is also opposed to a security fence that Israel built in the early 2000s to stop Palestinian suicide bombers. During that period—commonly called the Second Intifada—Palestinian terrorists murdered approximately a thousand Israeli civilians in attacks. After the fence was constructed, attacks dropped precipitously. The Black Lives Matter document denounces the security fence as an "apartheid wall."
Another Black Lives Matter grievance is the 2006 creation of AFRICOM, a regional U.S. military command that promotes closer ties between African governments, the African Union, and the U.S. military. "In reality, this effort was designed to expand western colonial control over the region, its people and their resources. AFRICOM is a major example of U.S. empire and is a direct threat to global Black liberation," the platform states.
The platform calls for redirecting 50 percent of the US defense budget to providing reparations both domestically and abroad. American military spending, the activists say, are "resources and funds needed for reparations and for building a just and equitable society domestically," yet they "are instead used to wage war against a majority of the world's communities." Reparations, the group says, should be provided "to countries and communities devastated by American war-making, such as Somalia, Iraq, Libya and Honduras."