BDS Campaign Update (mid-June 2009 – September 2009)
French activists protest Paris air show
20 June 2009 - A group of French activists from the French BDS campaign held a non- violent protest against Israeli participation in the Paris - Le Bourget Air Show. Le Bourget Air Show is one of the largest weapons and aerospace technology fairs in the world. The protest took place outside the Israeli pavilion, where several Israeli arms companies had come to sell their military technologies to potential European buyers, while French president Nicolas Sarkozy was visiting the air show. Despite forced removals by police, the BDS activists were highly visible, and distributed several thousand informational leaflets to the public.
Toronto Palestine Solidarity Activists Protest Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit
June-July 2009 - The Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid and Women in Solidarity with Palestine conducted a campaign of protest against the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), for their exhibition of the looted Dead Sea Scrolls. For several weeks, BDS activists conducted successful protests and pickets to inform the public about the theft of the Dead Sea Scrolls following the refusal of the museum's directors to make public the documents it claimed proved the legality of the exhibit, as well as their refusal to seek a UNESCO opinion on the matter. The campaign called on the ROM to recognize the Scrolls are looted Palestinian artifacts and to dissociate itself from the Israeli Antiquities Authority, which has systematically looted millions of Palestinian artifacts.