An anti-Israel group in Canada that is promoting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel has been found to be using Israeli software to circulate its message, B’nai Brith Canada said on Tuesday.
The group, Petition for Palestine, is pushing for negative coverage of Israel by sharing a petition. The website builder that the group used for the anti-Israel petition, however, is Wix, an Israeli tech company.
Israellycool, a pro-Israel website, blogged on January 3 about Petition for Palestine’s use of Wix.
“The so-called BDS movement is nonsensical,” said Michael Mostyn, Chief Executive Officer of B’nai Brith Canada. “The same people who focus on boycotting and demonizing Israel most likely use Israeli technology multiple times a day.”
“The BDS movement is incredibly successful at highlighting its own hypocrisy. Thankfully for Canadian Jews it is far less successful as a platform to promote hate," he added.
This is not the first time that promoters of BDS have been found to be using WIX to get their messages across.
In 2019, US congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who has endorsed BDS, was found to have been using Wix.
In 2015, the University of Denver’s branch of Students for Justice in Palestine was discovered to have used Wix to build its website meant to disseminate its call for a boycott of Israel.
Two years earlier, the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland (ZF) discovered that “pro-Palestinian” activists who promote the BDS movement against Israel had similarly used Wix to create their websites.