The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a founding member of the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest coalition in Palestinian society that leads the global BDS movement, calls upon Palestinian and Arab delegates, as well as international delegates standing in solidarity with Palestinian rights, to pressure the World Economic Forum (WEF) to exclude Israel from its upcoming annual meeting in Davos, to be held from 20-24 January 2025, and from its associated Global Shapers events.
Should WEF and Global Shapers fail to exclude Israel, we call for boycotting all their events and activities in which Israel’s delegates participate.
At a time when Israel, supported by the colonial West, is perpetrating the world’s first live-streamed genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip, and in line with international law, Israel should be isolated and expelled from international fora. The International Court of Justice’s July 2024 determinationthat Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is entirely illegal and that it is violating the prohibition against apartheid makes cutting all links with Israel – including with its complicit institutions – that aid or assist in maintaining its occupation and apartheid regime a legal, not just a moral, duty.
Just as apartheid South Africa was excluded from many international fora, so should Israel’s 76-year-old regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid. This is particularly urgent given Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
The WEF program includes a focus on the “integration of AI,” which is dehumanizing and racist given Israel’s military use of AI, for the first time in history, that enables its “mass assassination factory” and other unspeakable genocidal acts against Palestinians in Gaza. To speak of “integration of AI” at such a time, while including Israeli delegates, not only whitewashes Israel’s crimes, but places WEF’s program to be genocide-enabling.
The Global Shapers Davos50 component of WEF constitutes normalization.
Normalization refers to participation in initiatives that bring together Palestinians and/or Arabs and Israelis without:
The Israeli side publicly recognizing the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as affirmed by the United Nations and outlined in the 2005 BDS Call.
The joint activity constituting a form of co-resistance against Israel's regime of occupation, settler-colonialism, and apartheid.
The Global Shapers acceptance letter explicitly characterizes the Shapers participating in Davos50 as a “delegation,” while the organization’s website clearly states that delegates must “participate in all Shaper-specific events and sessions” and “conduct yourself as a representative for the entire community.” It presents Arab delegates as being part of one “community” with the Israeli delegate, attempting to normalize Israel as a natural part of the region, not a regime of settler-colonialism, apartheid and genocide against the Indigenous Palestinian people.
Such normalizing engagements help to perpetuate the oppressive status quo and to create a false premise of symmetry/parity between the oppressors and the oppressed. They undermine the struggle for Palestinian liberation and self-determination as well as the international solidarity movement’s inspiring efforts to cut the links of state, corporate and institutional complicity in Israel’s regime of colonial oppression.
Moreover, available public information indicates that the Israeli participant in the Global Shapers delegation has served in the Israeli army between 2016 and 2018 and has publicly endorsed Israel’s crimes, including statements by fugitive war criminal former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Galant, wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. She is therefore reasonably suspected of involvement in Israel’s war crimes and/or crimes against humanity.
Individuals reasonably suspected of aiding, assisting, conspiring, or directly and publicly inciting to commit genocide, crimes against humanity, and/or war crimes should be investigated and, if warranted, prosecuted by all states.
PACBI calls for investigating Israeli delegates participating in international events, including the World Economic Forum, if they fall under any of the categories of reasonable suspicion for involvement in war crimes.
We call on all of the MENA Global Shapers and all conscientious Shapers worldwide to pressure their organization to exclude Israel and to boycott the organization entirely should it fail to do so. We also call for boycotting the upcoming Global Shapers delegation of the 2025 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos event unless Israel is excluded from it.
Update, January 8, 2025: This call has been updated to distinguish between the various components of the WEF Annual Meeting in Davos.