A Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) protest against Israel in Melbourne, Australia, on June 5, 2010. Photo: Mohamed Ouda via Wikimedia Commons.

New York-area Muslim activist Rami Kawas, in an incendiary sermon given Aug. 8, demanded American Muslims support a boycott of major multinational corporations over what he said was their support for Israel and Zionism, media watchdog MEMRI reported Thursday.

“It is, my brothers and sisters, our obligation to do whatever we can to help take away any money that goes to Zionist fundings,” thundered Kawas, apparently a youth director at a the Brooklyn and Staten Island chapter of the The Muslim American Society.

Kawas’ call is part of a loosely-affiliated international movement calling for boycotts, sanctions and corporate divestment from Israel, known by its initials, BDS.

In a related move, some thirty members of the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) on Wednesday demanded that Jewish federations take an open stance against the security blockade of the Gaza Strip and Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in a visit to the UJA-Federation of New York offices, the JNS News Service reported Wednesday.

“You can talk about hundreds of different companies. There are so many of them, from Coco-Cola, to Nestle, to Danone… It is our responsibility, as Muslims living in America in ease and comfort and bliss, that our Jihad – one of our Jihads – is that we don’t buy Israeli products,” Kawas urged his audience.

“We will fight every corrupt leader and every corrupt government until the lands of the world are free,” Kawas said.

“As Muslim Americans, it is our job, it is our responsibility, to put a big dam, a wedge, between the illegal, terrorist Zionist movement and the free people of our country,” he charged.

Yitzhak Santis, chief programs officer at Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, wrote in an op-ed published Wednesday by JNS that JVP “is part of the international NGO ‘soft power’ war, whose unrelenting attacks on Israel’s right to self-defense ultimately aid Hamas.”

“This global political warfare strategy includes sustained delegitimization campaigns, BDS (boycotts, divestment, and sanctions), and promoting a ‘right of return’ for Palestinians, which means dismantling Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,” wrote Santis. “It partners with a wide coterie of radical leftist, Islamist, and Arab ultra-nationalist groups to promote its program. When asked, JVP states that they are ‘agnostic’ about a two-state solution. But that is a smokescreen. The group’s actions demonstrate a clear anti-Israel agenda.”

Watch Kawas’s rant below: