STATEMENT: on antisemitic resolution in Barcelona

The Ombudsman of Barcelona, a municipal single-person authority, has issued a resolution full of falsehoods about the State of Israel. The resolution responds to a complaint from a representative of the entities Coalició Prou Complicitat amb Israel (“Enough Complicity with Israel Coalition”, the name says it all) and Lafede.cat. Siding with the promoters of the complaint, the municipal authority of Barcelona recommends the City Hall to revoke the Agreement of Friendship and Cooperation between Barcelona, Gaza, and Tel Aviv.

Here are some of the members of the first entity we have named: Lluita Internacionalista (presents itself as “a Marxist, revolutionary, and Trotskyist political organisation”), Col.lectiu Intifada (“of disinformation and solidarity with Palestine”), Brigadas Huriya (“we organise brigades of solidarity”, they say), International Brigades Unadikum, Rumbo a Gaza (is part of the International Coalition of the Flotilla for Freedom), BDS Catalunya (“represents the global movement for a campaign of Boycott, Divestments, and Sanctions against Israel”).

When basing its resolution, the municipal authority insists that the circumstances have changed since the twinning with Tel Aviv, as it was signed in the context of the Oslo Agreements. It is difficult to find a worse argument. The Oslo Agreements were seen with euphoria by the majority of Israeli society, which interpreted them as the arrival of the much-sought reconciliation. By contrast, terrorism on the Palestinian side increased. While Yasser Arafat sold to the world a narrative of peace, his speeches to the Arabs where unequivocal: the agreements were part of a process that would only finish by erasing Israel from the map. Thus he told a delegation of Arab diplomats in Stockholm: “The PLO plans to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a pure Palestinian State. We will make life unbearable for the Jews by means of psychological warfare and the explosion of the population”.

In the resolution of Barcelona the infamy of the “crime of apartheid” is simply taken for granted, being enough for it the invoking of reports from Amnesty International. Another example of the multiple and lasting damage of the great lie invented and spread by what once was a respectable institution. The truth is that the only place in the world where the Arabs live in democracy is in Israel: they are free citizens and their rights are respected; they form part of the Army, they vote and are voted for in free elections, etc.

Palestinians who live in Egypt or Jordan are refused citizenship. Their status is inferior in Syria and Lebanon. After the Gulf War, half a million Palestinians where expelled from Kuwait… The only apartheid against the Palestinians is the one applied by the Arab countries. However, for the Ombudsman of Barcelona to maintain the twinning with Tel Aviv would be complicity with a crime against humanity. Nothing new under the sun: it is the age-old Jew hatred disguised as solidarity. The institutions in Catalonia commit time and time again the most obscene antisemitism. And each time from ACOM we will denounce them to the public opinion and to the justice system.