PALESTINE campaigners have made a last-ditch appeal to supporters to press their MPs to oppose anti-boycott legislation which gets its second reading in the House of Commons today.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) said that if such legislation had been in place during the apartheid era in South Africa it would have shackled anti-apartheid activists whose worldwide boycott and divestment campaigns helped bring down the racist state, leading to the election of Nelson Mandela.

PSC said it is working with an alliance of nearly 70 civil society organisations including Liberty, Human Rights Watch, Friends of the Earth, Unite the Union, Amnesty International and War on Want “to fight this dangerous Bill” — but that MPs said “there needs to be more pressure coming from constituents.”

Urging supporters to ensure that MPs’ email inboxes were full of messages on Monday morning, PSC said: “The Israeli government is doubling down on its expansionist policies, and giving cover to armed settler gangs to attack Palestinian villages.

“More than ever, boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) are a vital path of resistance.

“In the face of ongoing illegal settlement expansion, dispossession, and what leading human rights organisations consistently agree meets the legal criteria of apartheid — Palestinians have directly asked us to demand our public bodies are not complicit in their suffering.”

PSC said the legislation would “uniquely give special protection to shield Israel by name from accountability,” and have a “devastating impact on BDS as a tactic.”

“If this legislation were in place in the 1980s, then it would’ve banned local authorities, universities, and any other public body, from even speaking about supporting the global boycott of apartheid South Africa.”

Labour MPs have been whipped to abstain on the government Bill.