New sentence in Spain condemning the boycott against Israel

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Another legal blow in Cantabria against the anti-Semite campaign of several towns against the Jewish state.

Thanks to the legal initiative of ACOM, 55 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 Santa Cruz de Bezana 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 Santa Cruz de Bezana contains discriminatory restrictions and that “exceeds its local competency” and “affects the right to equality reflected in Article 14 of the Spanish Constitution”.

The motion was presented by Izquierda Unida – Podemos (communists) in the plenary session celebrated on 11 August 2017, being approved with the votes of the councillors of PSOE (socialists), the Regional Party of Cantabria and Izquierda Unida and the abstention of Partido Popular (conservatives). Only Ciudadanos (centre) voted against the initiative. With this adherence the city hall declared Santa Cruz de Bezana space ELAI and adhered to the campaign of boycott against Israel.

It is worth mentioning that with this new term in office a new municipal corporation was established in which the municipal group VOX, which had no representation in the previous term, presented a motion warning of the illegality of an agreement «with an ideological positioning so extreme it verges on anti-Semitism» requesting the annulment of the agreement. The annulment of an agreement that diminishes the image of Santa Cruz de Bezana did not prosper through political channels, but now thanks to the courts the town in Cantabria is out of the list of places that boycott Jews.

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 this disgusting 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 publiclife intend to impose their ideology by coercion, and to recover the dignity for our Jewish minority threatened by those same intolerants who intend to break the Constitutional framework that protects us all.