Historic sentence of the Supreme Court against the boycott of Israel

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  • The Supreme Court rules ilegal public institutions adherence to the BDS campaign and the public promotion of discriminatory boycott initiatives against Israel. The sentence creates jurisprudence, so the BDS antisemitic harassment campaign and its initiatives to create “ELAI” (“Israeli Apartheid Free Zones”) spaces where Israelis and Jews were discriminated against in Spain have been outlawed. By implication, also the public funding of such campaigns.
  • The Supreme Court speaks of DAMAGE OF FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS and DISCRIMINATION of the BDS campaigns, pointing out that the BDS regulations “are liable to control by the contentious administrative jurisdiction, attending to their nature, content, and effects” and that “they involve discrimination against third parties, that is, damage of fundamental rights”.
  • ACOM sees affirmed its legal initiative against the BDS-ELAI discriminatory campaigns, promoted by extreme leftist NGOs and, unfortunately, in many cases supported by the socialist party PSOE.
  • In a worldwide pioneering decision, the highest jurisdictional court has confirmed the body of prior sentences, both of Spanish High Courts of Justice and Courts of First Instance, which annulled BDS regulations after the legal initiative of ACOM.
  • The sentence reminds us that financing groups that promote this antisemitic discrimination is incompatible with the rule of law. All these extreme leftist and separatist groups have benefitted for years from multimillion Euro grants to promote their hatred.
  • From ACOM we remind them that we will act with renewed determination, both in civil and criminal courts, with the strength that this sentence gives us, against any public institution that, ignoring this sentence, adopts similar resolutions or finances this type of groups and activities.

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The association Interpueblos made an appeal to the Supreme Court against sentence 209/2020, of 19 June, 2020, of the Contentious Administrative Court of the High Court of Justice of Cantabria, which accepted the appeal No 37/2020, made by the association Acción y Comunicación sobre Oriente Medio against the sentence of 28 November, 2019, given by the Contentious Administrative Court No 3 of Santander in the abbreviated procedure 4/2019.

Finally, the Supreme Court, in a final sentence that establishes as annulment jurisprudence, pushes to the margins the boycott campaigns against Israel, placing them outside the law.

Literal excerpts of the law:

“The agreements of the City Hall plenary session object of the contestation in the instance are liable to control by the contentious administrative jurisdiction, attending to their nature, content, and effects. Precisely that nature, content, and effects give place to the viability or invalidity of the different sections:

“Declaring the council of Reinosa ‘Israeli Apartheid Free Zones’‘ and broadcasting it among the citizenship, inserting the seal ‘Israeli Apartheid Free Zones’ in the municipal web page.” This third section involves discrimination against third parties, that is, damage of fundamental rights, so it must receive the same annulment treatment as sections four and six of the agreement of 7 July, 2016:

Adopting the relevant legal measures for the processes of hiring and purchase to include the provisions that prevent from hiring services or purchasing products from companies that are accomplices of violations of international law or of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Not reaching any agreement with public institutions, companies, and organizations that participate, collaborate, or obtain economic benefit from the violation of international law or of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Promoting the cooperation with the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) articulated at the state level by the Red Solidaria contra la Ocupación de Palestina (Solidary Network against the Occupation of Palestine), and at the regional and local level by the Comité de Solidaridad con la Causa Árabe (Committee of Solidarity with the Arab Cause).

But it is necessary to remember that, beyond this definitive legal blow against the discriminators, the Spanish courts of law had already repeatedly pronounced themselves against the unconstitutional nature of the BDS campaign.

ACOM, the main denouncer of the discourse of hatred and/or discrimination for ethnic and national reasons that this movement promotes, has caused 85 agreements of support for BDS to be annulled by court sentence, both in courts of first instance and in high courts of justice, or by the city halls themselves faced with the knowledge of the illegality of said agreements. All the judicial responses have insisted on the illegality of these excluding measures that violate the common framework of coexistence.

In its commitment to the defence of democracy, ACOM will continue to unmask in all areas, from the legal to the media, all the actions carried out by the antisemites who, with their false solidarity with the Palestinian people, intend to curtail the freedoms of Jews in Spain, in their desire to constantly harass the only Jewish state in the world and the only democracy in the Middle East.