The drift against Israel and the Jews in Barcelona and Madrid

With the approval by the Presidency Commission of the Barcelona City Council of an aggressive declaration against Israel, accompanied by a propagandist text full of slander, falsehoods and clichés, that city council has joined the ominous list of cities where the most rancid anti-Semitism and extremist intolerance have triumphed. The ratification of this motion shows a sickly fixation against the Jewish State, precisely the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. And all of this while its neighbouring countries are suffering real massacres backed by jihadism and Arabic regimes.

At least the vote has allowed the masks to fall and to show where everybody stands in the fight between civilization and barbarity: the proposal against Western values had the votes of all the groups on the left and the Catalonian pro-independence parties. The Spanish centre-right, PP and Ciudadanos, voted against it.

The agreement of the Presidency Commission decides to explore ways in which to demand from public contractors and suppliers declarations of non-relationship with Israel under the pretext that Israel does not respect International Law. The proposers know that the introduction of such demands is both unconstitutional, because it is discriminatory, and illegal, because it infringes the principles of public contracting legislation, and in all probability it will be repealed by the Courts and its application immediately suspended. Especially disgusting is the appeal to European Law.

The European Commission, by means of its current Vice-President Federica Mogherini, expressed again a few months ago its complete rejection of the boycott campaign against Israel and its direct opposition against any type of isolation of the Israeli state. The European Union defends the right of people or organizations to express their opinion. But in no case to exclude, threaten or harass, which are the usual methods of the boycott movement against Israel. Also, it does not condone expressions of hate, the glorification of terrorism or the calling to anti-Semite persecution that anti-Israelis permanently do.

The Spanish legal system states clearly that, while the elected public representatives can express their opinion, such opinion cannot result in administrative decisions that discriminate for reasons of national origin, ethnicity, religion or convictions, or any other circumstances, or when they make the administrative bodies lose their neutrality that the Constitution and the laws require for the management of the public interest.

ACOM will study which legal action to take while it denounces the harassment that the citizens who dissent against the criminalization of Israel suffer because of these decisions, and especially the attempt of the local public authorities to marginalize and coerce the Jewish community, who naturally feels particular sympathy and affinity for the Jewish state.

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Meanwhile, in Madrid last 17 April, the City Council hosted an event of glorification of jihadist terrorism. The biased event, included in the anti-Semite campaign of delegitimization and harassment against the state of Israel promoted by radical organizations, took place in the premises of the Town Hall itself.

In this act of support for the murderers of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade and the PFLP participated not only the same old publicly subsidised anti-Semite groups, but also a series of self-confessed terrorists who have been in Israel’s prisons for serious crimes and terrorist acts. All of them boasted about their bloody «achievements», grotesquely transforming the victims into killers, while the most elementary right of reply was denied, as no representative of the Jewish state was invited.

Among them was prominently announced Mussa’ab Bassir, a terrorist of the PFLP.

Mussa’ab Bassir, who presents himself as a «journalist» (he works producing libels for the Iranian television Hispan Tv, which also pays salaries to members of the third most important political party in Spain, Podemos), is really an activist who collaborates with terrorist groups. His partner is Isabel Pérez, who uses the same cover, being paid by media such as El Mundo, Diario.es, or the already mentioned Hispan Tv, to disseminate violent ideology and anti-Semite propaganda. The two have been on a «tour» for some months subsidised by Spain in which they have visited various city councils, institutions and universities like the University of Malaga, the Universidad San Jorge or the Association of Journalists of Aragón, among others.

It is extremely serious that the Madrid City Council and one of its Deputy Mayors host this homage to ruthless terrorists. That same Deputy Mayor who had the gall of participating in the act in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, in which representatives of the Jewish communities reminded him of his active collaboration in the anti-Semite discrimination, which unfortunately occurs today in Spain.

Because of all of this, and because the collaboration with armed groups (the PFLP is a terrorist group according to the EU) is a crime reflected in the Spanish penal code, we do not understand how the Ministry of Interior allows the entry and permanence of terrorists in our country. And in the face of the evident defence of terrorism that took place in this shameful event, we demand the immediate dismissal of the Deputy Mayor of Madrid, Mauricio Valiente.

ACOM is studying taking legal action against the City Council, its representatives and the groups and individuals who participated in that disgraceful spectacle.