Photo from Wikimedia Commons. A Spanish court struck a blow against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement with a recent ruling declaring that it is illegal for city councils in the country to boycott Israel.
According to a press release from The Lawfare Project, which spearheaded legal action against BDS in this case, The High Court of Justice in Astrurias, located in the northwest region of Spain, nullified a resolution passed by the City Council of Catrillion that boycotted “Israel, Israeli businesses and companies doing business with Israel in August last year.”
“The successes we’re achieving are setting legal precedents that not only offer protection to Jewish communities but to every other minority,” Lawfare Project Executive Director Brooke Goldstein said in a statement. “We’ve been working in Spain for almost two years. We’ve seen that however the vicious, anti-Israel BDS campaign disguises itself, time and again it is hitting the rocks of the rock solid constitutional guarantees and legal standards of the Spanish courts.”
Lawfare Project Spanish Counsel Ignacio Wenley Palacios said in a statement, “After our string of court victories, the boycott campaign doesn’t dare use its name in Spain but hides behind motions passed in city, provincial, and regional councils that use loaded, discriminatory language. Or they run new sub-campaigns such as the ‘Space Free of Israeli Apartheid,’ or petitions for an arms embargo of Israel. In due course, these, too, will be rejected by the courts, which uphold solid legal traditions of fair play, individual freedoms, and strict accountability of government offices.”
This is the latest in a string of recent victories for The Lawfare Project against BDS in Spain, as there have been 28 BDS resolutions nullified by the courts in Spain since June 2017.
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