BDS activists urge chefs to ‘take apartheid off the menu’

Activists from the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign are urging a group of international chefs to cancel their participation in an Israeli culinary show they say is a “whitewash exercise”.

BDS campaigners will be conducting a twitterstorm today, calling on chefs to pull out of the event using the hashtag #ApartheidRoundTables.

Next month, head chefs of 13 famous restaurants from cities around the world “will spend a week cooking in Tel Aviv as part of a PR initiative to bring international prestige to Israel’s culinary scene.”

According to campaigners, “the Round Tables culinary show is sponsored by Israeli government ministries, the Tel Aviv Municipality and businesses operating in illegal Israeli settlements.”

So far, appeals by civil society groups in the respective countries to the chefs to withdraw from the event have fallen on deaf ears.

The BDS campaign describes the initiative as “even more tasteless as Israeli settlers ramp up attacks against Palestinian families gathering for the annual olive harvest and the Israeli army continues to impose a cruel siege on Gaza, pushing unemployment to 47 per cent – the highest rate in the world.”