A judge annuls the boycott against Israel agreed by the City Hall of Camargo

It is the first sentence in Cantabria against the anti-Semite campaign of several towns against the Jewish state.

Thanks to the legal initiative of ACOM, 54 BDS-ELAI institutional agreements have been judicially annulled or by the Local and/or Public Administrations themselves.

The Contentious Administrative Court number 1 of Santander has declared illegal the adherence of the City Hall of Camargo (30,000 inhabitants) to the ELAI discriminatory movement against companies linked with or located in the State of Israel. Also, it imposes legal costs, which will be paid by the citizens of the town.

The decision considers that the agreement adopted by the City Hall of Camargo is “a clear violation of the fundamental rights to equality” and “to transmit freely ideas and opinions, which are restricted by the threat of a certain damage derived from the hiring or institutional relationship of the city in relation with companies or products of Israeli origin”.

The motion was presented by Izquierda Unida (communists) in the plenary session celebrated on 25 April 2016, being approved with the votes of the councillors of the government team of PSOE (socialists) and Izquierda Unida and the abstention of Partido Popular (conservatives). With this adherence the city hall declared Camargo space ELAI and adhered to the campaign of boycott against Israel.

The court has considered that the motion is an appealable administrative act and in this sense the sentence underlines that the plenary agreement that makes the declaration directly promotes a boycott against consumption products sold by Israeli companies or by companies that maintain relations with the State of Israel, and thus must reject the character merely as a declaration of the agreement. As for the heart of the matter, the legal decision sustains that the motion violates fundamental rights because it prevents any commercial or institutional relation with the State of Israel, warning also of the lack of competency of the City Hall in matters of international relations.

The legal siege on a discriminatory campaign, thanks to our legal initiative, does not stop. ACOM will continue to expose these extremists that both in the institutions and in the public life intend to impose their ideology by coercion, and to recover the dignity for our Jewish minority threatened by those same intolerants.