In the eastern reaches of the Mediterranean Sea lie vast reserves of natural gas. For more than a decade, Israel has generated billions of dollars in revenue for state coffers by plundering the depths of the Tamar gas field; in 2019, fossil fuel companies also began producing gas at the larger, nearby Leviathan field. But it is a United States-based company that operates the bulk of Israel’s extraction activities: Chevron.
This January, the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) — the largest Palestinian-led coalition at the helm of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement — renewed calls for a global boycott of the fossil fuel company. “Chevron’s extraction activities generate billions of dollars in revenue for apartheid Israel and its war chest, helping to fund the ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza,” the BNC wrote in a statement.
The BDS movement had called for divestment from Chevron before, after the company took over as the primary owner and operator of Israel’s largest natural gas fields in 2020. Now, those efforts have expanded to include a consumer boycott of Chevron gas stations and its affiliates, including Texaco and Caltex.
The push to boycott Chevron is an excellent case study of how the BNC strategizes and organizes to achieve global BDS wins.
Not every company that is complicit in Israeli apartheid is an official BDS target, because, as the BNC explains on its site, “that would make it impossible to achieve concrete results.” For a company to be added to the BDS list, the BNC looks at a set of criteria, including measuring the potential target’s “level of complicity” and “the potential for forming a broad, cross-movement coalition against the target.” As the BNC explains, they’re looking to target companies where they will have a higher likelihood of success.
The result is a tightly curated list of companies whose ties are woven deep into Israel’s apartheid regime. This is why, for instance, Starbucks and McDonald’s are not on the official BDS list, though they are currently wildly popular targets of consumer boycotts. The BNC has nevertheless expressed its support for the organic grassroots movements........