Spanish anti-BDS org gets boycott resolution nixed by court

A Spanish district court has annulled a BDS resolution passed by the municipal council of Ayamonte, a town in the country’s southwest, banning any association or economic agreement with Israeli companies and organizations.

The decision was made September 4 in response to a legal suit by the ACOM anti-BDS organization in Spain, which has succeeded in fighting a strong battle against the spate of more than 100 municipal and regional council BDS resolutions.

ACOM has succeeded in having approximately 35 of these resolutions repealed or annulled, of which the Ayamonte resolution, originally passed in May 2017, is the latest.

The initiative behind these resolutions, all of which are extremely similar in content, comes principally from the left-wing populist Podemos Party which is strongly pro-Palestinian.

These BDS motions include provisions banning the municipality or local authority from entering into contracts and agreements with Israeli companies and entities, and even banning business ties and agreements with Spanish citizens who are associated with Israel or Israeli organizations and companies.

The Huelva Court Number 1 wrote in its decision that the content of Ayamonte’s resolution “violates Article 14 of the Spanish Constitution,” since it incites and discriminates against Spanish citizens for reasons of birth, race, sex, religion, opinion or other conditions or circumstance, personal or social, ACOM said.

This latest victory follows the retraction by the municipal authority of Sagunto, a town in eastern Spain, of a BDS motion it approved in June this year.

ACOM informed the Sagunto municipal authority that its motion was illegal and discriminatory, and has been struck down on dozens of occasions by Spanish courts, leading to its swift retraction in August.

“We will continue to stop the BDS extreme movement from infiltrating the institutions of all the Spanish citizens and from breaking the democratic, pluralistic and open nature of our institutions,” said ACOM President Ángel Mas at the time.

“The excluding measures against the Jewish minority, supported by parties like Podemos, violate the common framework of coexistence and promote the discrimination based on ethnic or national origin,” Mas said.

The anti-Israel political activity in Spain has recently spilled over into Latin America, in the case of Chilean city Valdivia. The city passed a BDS resolution advocated by left-wing, pro-Palestinian groups in Chile which was very similar to those advanced by Podemos.

As reported by The Jerusalem Post, an organization of Chilean-Israelis recently filed legal action against the resolution.