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Two Spanish Courts Deliver Legal Blows to “Discriminatory” Israel Boycott Campaign

Courts in Madrid and Barcelona delivered legal blows to the foundations of the anti-Israel boycott campaign in Spain this past week.

In suits brought by ACOM, a pro-Israel organization that fights the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign, the two courts ruled to overturn discriminatory policies adopted by city councils in their jurisdictions, the Jerusalem Post reported.

The Madrid court ruled against the city council of Rivas Vaciamadrid, a town of 80,000 inhabitants that adopted a policy to boycott Israel in May 2016.

The town’s council passed a resolution to prohibit “any political, commercial, agricultural, educational, cultural, sporting or security agreement or contract with Israeli institutions, companies and organizations, nor with bodies, companies and organizations that are involved, collaborate or in any way capitalize on the violation of international law and human rights in the Palestinian territories or in the occupied Golan.”

The town also declared itself to be a “free space of Israeli apartheid.”

In response, Court No. 4 of Madrid issued an injunction against allowing the town to implement the boycott, finding that it didn’t have the authority to interfere in the Spanish government’s conduct of foreign policy. The court also determined that a section of the resolution was “discriminatory and without any substance in the field of international law.”

The court further noted that United Nations Security Council resolutions do not provide any legal foundation for boycotting Israeli institutions, companies, or groups. In a similar vein, Northwestern University law professor Eugene Kontorovich, an expert in international law, recently wrote that the Security Council “is neither a legislature nor a court,” and thus can’t “create international law,” but only “contribute to the formation of international legal opinion.”

A few days earlier, Court No. 4 of Barcelona annulled a boycott resolution passed by Sant Quirze del Vallès, a nearby town of some 20,000 inhabitants.

The Barcelona court’s ruling found that the boycott was “discriminatory and in violation of the principle of equality before the law, that a town hall would commit to abstain from making agreements or signing contracts with Israeli businesses only because of their national origin.”

Ramon Pérez-Maura, a journalist for Spain’s third-largest newspaper ABC, said in August that until recently, the Spanish judiciary was vulnerable to intimidation from BDS supporters. “The problem was pressure and intimidation of judges by lobby groups with anarchist traditions and violent tactics,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “There has been a crackdown on this sort of thuggery and this has empowered the judiciary, not only on Israel.”

A year ago, Spain’s highest court awarded Ariel University a $100,000 discrimination settlement after it was excluded from a Spanish scientific competition because it is located in the West Bank.

Though the BDS campaign is often presented as a peaceful effort to pressure Israel to comply with Palestinian demands, its leaders are more explicit and extreme in their goals. Many leaders of the campaign, which was launched by Palestinian groups in 2005, have publicly affirmed that they seek Israel’s destruction. BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti, an opponent of the two-state solution, said in 2014 that Palestinians have a right to “resistance by any means, including armed resistance,” while leading activist As’ad Abu Khalil acknowledged in 2012 that “the real aim of BDS is to bring down the state of Israel.”

[Photo: PROVater_fotografo / Flickr ]