Israel boycott has parallels with South Africa anti-apartheid movement

This year’s divestment push in Cambridge follows in the tracks of a movement in the 1970s and ’80s to divest from companies that were doing business with South Africa’s apartheid government. That movement in the United States was born in 1970 when a pair of Black workers at Polaroid’s Cambridge headquarters discovered the company’s cameras were being used in the manufacture of passbook IDs Black South Africans were required by the apartheid government to carry.

The Black employees objections to Polaroid’s role in South Africa snowballed into a movement that led Polaroid and other U.S. companies such as Coca Cola and IBM to withdraw from the apartheid nation.

Those corporate withdrawals from South Africa followed grassroots boycott campaigns aimed at U.S. and South African corporations. Kruggerands, South African gold coins favored by U.S. investors, became a focal point of protest, along with South African diamonds and oranges. With South African exports, the results were mixed. Israel often bought South African oranges and diamonds and re-sold them as Israeli products. With Kruggerands, activists had more success.

Former Rep. Byron Rushing came across a store selling Kruggerands at Logan International Airport, then complained to the Massachusetts Port Authority.

“MassPort threw them out,” he recalled.

The pressure campaigns worked even more effectively on the U.S. corporations. By the mid 1980s, many had pulled back from South Africa.

“Eventually companies started to voluntarily leave,” Rushing said. “They just didn’t want the bad publicity.”

In the 1980s, the Cambridge City Council took several votes to boycott and divest from businesses active in South Africa.

On the other side of the river, Boston activists were active in the boycott movement in the ’70s. The late Sen. Bill Owens and his wife Lillian were arrested in 1977, along with comedian and social critic Dick Gregory for protesting in front of the South African embassy in Washington, DC.

In 1983, the late Rep. Mel King helped shepherd a bill through the Legislature barring the state from investing its pension funds in companies doing business in South Africa, overriding a veto from the late Gov. Ed King. Former Councilor Charles Yancey spearheaded a similar ordinance through the Boston City Council a year later. Then-Mayor Raymond Flynn made a public appeal to mayors across the country to take a similar stand.

The U.S. Congress followed suit in 1986, overriding a veto from the late President Ronald Reagan.

Faced with political and economic isolation, the South African government in 1990 capitulated to demands that the country end its policy of apartheid. Nelson Mandela was elected the nation’s first Black president in 1994.

Those pushing for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement on behalf of Palestinians have seen early victories similar to those in the movement against South African Apartheid, with Cambridge, Easthampton voting to divest, and voters in Somerville supporting a nonbinding referendum to do the same, although it was blocked by Somerville Mayor Jake Wilson.

In Medford, the City Council passed an ordinance that, without mentioning Israel specifically, would bar the city from investing in any company that “directly, knowingly and over time contributing to severe violations of human rights and international humanitarian law as determined by international legal and humanitarian bodies and conventions.”

Two Medford residents, backed by the Gevura Fund and the National Jewish Advocacy Center, have sued to block the ordinance.

Activists pushing for divestment now may face stiffer resistance from pro-Israeli activists and politicians than those who fought apartheid in the ’70s and ’80s. That was apparent in the Cambridge City Council hearings Oct. 19 and 20 when pro-Zionist activists from Cambridge, Newton, Arlington and as far away as Dayton Ohio testified against the proposed divestment measure.

While there were many Black South Africans living in Boston in the ’70s and ’80s, there was no similar anti-divestment movement among white South Africans here.

But David Herbawi, with the Palestinian Youth Movement, said the reaction to divestment proposals in Cambridge and elsewhere is encouraging.

“The disproportionate reaction to the smallest boycott effort is proof of its effectiveness,” he said.

Local and national elected officials have been reluctant to support divestment from Israel. In 30 U.S. states, legislatures and governors have passed laws barring residents from engaging in boycotts of Israel. In Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu in 2024 ordered the arrest of Emerson College students who set up an encampment in a public pedestrian way in protest of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Colleges and universities across the country have taken similarly hardline stances against calls for divestment from pro-Palestinian demonstrators, students and faculty alike.

But a majority of those polled in the U.S. are against Israel’s war on Gaza and half of voters here believe Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza.

“Americans are now overwhelmingly against Israel,” Herbawi said. “We’ve had three years of atrocities broadcast to our phones. No amount of whinging about antisemitism can change that.”