BDS renews calls to boycott Arab-Israeli vlogger Nas Daily

The movement’s Jordan and Kuwait accounts published the same image in what seemed to be a coordinated campaign against the vlogger.

The image shows a harrowing scene from the 1948 Nakba, where dozens of Palestinian corpses are thrown across the floor. Doctored into the picture is Nas Daily, whose real name is Nuseir Yassin, with a speech bubble asking: “what conflict?”.

“If you do not consider the Palestinian Nakba a struggle, then the struggle is within you,” a caption accompanying the image read.

Yassin gained popularity after creating over 1,000 1-minute videos posted on his Facebook page every day, garnering more than 17 million followers along the journey.

In September, the BDS movement urged a boycott of training offered by by Yassin, claiming the program aims to encourage normalisation with Israel.

The Next Nas Daily training program, offered through the famous vlogger's "Nass Academy" aims to train 80 Arab content creators who receive wages to produce videos for six months.

In a statement released on Monday, BDS said the program, which includes Israelis among the supervising and training staff, is funded by the UAE New Media Academy recently founded by Dubai ruler Mohammed bin Rashed.

"This support by the authoritarian Emirati regime constitutes an explicit complicity in the Israeli efforts to invade the minds of our people," the BDS wrote, claiming the academy aims to "whitewash the crimes of occupation and apartheid.”

The academy was also accused of encouraging Arab youth to normalise with Israel and embrace the so-called UAE-Israel "peace deal" that has angered Palestinians.

The BDS has accused him of producing videos that "broadcasts soft, normalised content”.

"Nas Daily, through its content, tries to portray the conflict with the Israeli enemy as if it is a struggle between two parties of equal force, deliberately ignoring the rights of the Palestinian people, chiefly the right of return," the BDS wrote.

Read also: Palestine-BDS: Tuesday's White House photo-op won't lead to peace or justice

The group alleged that Israel was allocating money to promote normalisation under the cover of non-political media content.

The call to boycott drew virtual crowds of BDS supporters to Nas Daily's Arabic page on Facebook, leaving comments about the group's decision under his videos and pledging their commitment.

"The least I could do for the Palestinian cause is to withdraw from this page. Palestine will remain my cause until it is liberated! What the people of Gaza are going through is sufficient to know the nature of the Zionist entity," one person commented on a video.

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