EU Court of Human Rights supports criminalisation of boycott of Israeli goods

this follows the highly political bias of the 1973 US antiboycott laws recentley re-activated in the Bush administration and left intact by Obama administration.

 http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/antiboy.html

The people whose job it is is to find and prosecute anti-Semitism see through the bullshit of the BDS movement. If only morepeople had the same intellectual integrity!

Perhaps you seem to be confusing anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, there is a clear cut difference between the two. Just because you oppose the Zionist expansion into Palestinian owned land via the construction of ILLEGAL settlements and a concrete wall to effectively cement the land grab does not mean you support the persecution of Jewish people on the basis of their cultural or religious beliefs. Indeed there are anti-Zionist Jewish people who oppose Israeli encroachment into land which is not theirs. Perhaps you could do with refreshing your memory and doing a little reading, before posting baseless nonsense that the activists here on Indymedia are nothing more than fascist anti-Semites.

That you support the courts ruling shows your ulterior motives and support for the police state, the state should have no powers to enforce the purchase of Israeli goods if it goes against peoples morals. No doubt though you'd support the same ruling if it was with regards to the South African apartheid regime. So carry on purchasing your goods stained with the blood of your fellow human beings, there are people out there who actually give a damn about the suffering.

This never would've happened with the mass boycott of South African products that some people may remember in the 80's and early 90's against Apartheid.

Of course, because Jewish people are seen as the target, suddenly its 'Anti-Semitic.'
A bollocks term, considering that Palestinians are a 'Semitic' people, and, in fact, the majority of Israeli Jews have very little 'Semitic' blood in their veins, as they are mostly of Medieval European descent.

This is a protest against the racism of the Israeli state against the Palestinian people, not against the Jewish people themselves.

Who the fuck are these wankers to tell me whether or not i can boycott israel. fuck you strasburg you spineless bunch of money grubbing racist cunts. all solidarity to palestine!

are the "spineless cunts" who rule against the UK all the time, so are they right or wrong from now on?

If we believe in the Eu human rights court then we must believe this ruling is right if not then they could well have made a simelar bad ruling against the UK on several recent occasions.


hmmmmmmmm

1. Boycott is 'discriminatory and punishable', say EU Court judges
2. 'Interference with...freedom of expression is needed to protect the rights of Israeli producers.' says the extreme right Jerusalem Post
3. 'First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win', observed Gandhi

The European Court of Human Rights has moved to criminalise support for Palestinian human rights. The EU has consistently rewarded an Israel sinking ever deeper into crime, with open ethnic cleansers as Foreign Minister and Prime Minister. Now the judiciary joins the executive in aligning with Israel and criminalising those who support the call from Palestine for BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) against the bloody violence of the Israeli state. Hardly suprising when the British Government is involved in an equally bloody military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Birds of a blood-stained feather flock together.

This ruling is a response to the growing support for BDS following Israel's most recent massacres in Gaza in January. It criminalises the entire Scottish, Irish and South African trade union movements.

It might soon become illegal to stand up to the violence of Israel with the non-violent weapon of boycott. The courts, then, will leave supporters of Palestine with no choice but to challenge these laws in every way possible, including civil disobedience and non-violent direct action. This ruling is designed to protect those carrying out the ethnic cleansing of Palestine: according to the Jerusalem Post, the European court of Human Rights 'ruled that interference with...freedom of expression was needed to protect the rights of Israeli producers.' Producing goods on ethnically cleansed land while working to destroy Palestinian producers.

The growing BDS movement will not be deterred by this latest ruling. After all, the British Government defied the ICJ (International Court of Justice) 2004 ruling that Israel's apartheid Wall is illegal and must come down. The people of Gaza are being crushed by an open alliance of Israel, the US, the EU and the Arab regimes. They have no allies but a slowly awakening world civil society. They have paid many times over in mountains of corpses for their refusal to accept Israeli/Western plans for them to disappear. Compared to their heroism and suffering, the cost of standing up for human rights against the European Court of Human Rights remains very modest. Here in Scotland, we do not face Israeli death squads, the murder of our children, bulldozed homes, burning farms, prison walls, the kidnapping of our finest sons and daughters into dungeons, routine torture, expulsion or daily humiliation by a murderous soldiery.

Five Scottish PSC members will appear in court on Friday August 7 charged with 'racially aggravated' crime for disrupting a musical performance by official 'Cultural Ambassadors' of Israel when they came to Scotland last year. The charges are no more absurd than the defence of 'Israeli producers' by the European Court of Human Rights while Gaza lives with Israeli-induced hunger and misery. The five are privileged to stand alongside so many others fighting for justice, and with the people of Palestine whose resistance to Zionist crime has inspired the world, but has long been criminalised by Israel's Western allies.

We invite you to come to the Court on Chambers St, Edinburgh at 9.15am on Friday 7 August to show your:

- solidarity with Palestine
- support for the boycott of Israel
- opposition to 'interference with freedom of expression to protect Israeli producers'

Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign

There is legality and there is morality, and these are never the same thing. It is correct for people here to point out that this law would have kept Mandela imprisoned in apartheid South Africa to this day.

You can find out more about this case by searching 'Jean-Claude Fernand Willem', though it helps if you read French.

The French courts and laws are more to blame than the ECHR as the French have a specific 'anti-boycott' law that was drafted primarily to protect Israel. The original French sentence was three years in prison and a 45000 Euro fine, reduced on appeal to a 1000 Euro fine - for a mayor simply asking for his council not to buy Israeli fruit juice. No actual boycott took place and this judgement would not apply to anyone not in government calling for a boycott.

This is still a very serious misjudgement by the ECHR that must be challenged, and the next step in challenging it is to appeal to the full 17 judge ECHR. I would suggest concerned people ask for the lawyers, Joseph D. Dendouga in Lille to launch such an appeal and offer messages of support. The dissenting Czech Judges' opinion shows there is legal reason to appeal.

"
First, the content of the announcement was rather vague as to its effective implementation in commercial relations. Second, the impact of the measure was limited, in respect of catering services to a small town. Finally, the effects of the announcement, the practical consequences of that agreement have not been demonstrated. Therefore, and given all this, the words of the complainant could not be equated with real economic boycott measures within the meaning of the penal code above...
But the most important issue that arose in the Court was whether the interference was "necessary in a democratic society." In truth, there are some flaws in the reasoning of the decision: the majority recognizes the need to address this issue, but the argument for justifying it as "necessary" does not appear in the end. In conclusion, in light of all the elements of the case, it seems clear that the applicant's conviction amounted to an unnecessary interference and is disproportionate to the right to freedom of expression.
"




Article 10 – Freedom of expression

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.

2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.



The applicant, Jean-Claude Fernand Willem, is a French national who was born in 1934 and lives in Seclin (France), a municipality of which he was mayor (for the Communist party) at the relevant time. On 3 October 2002, during a session of the town council and in the presence of journalists, Mr Willem announced that he intended to call on his services to boycott Israeli products in the municipality. He stated that he had taken that decision to protest against the anti-Palestinian policies of the Israeli Government. Representatives of the Jewish community in the département of Nord filed a complaint with the public prosecutor, who decided to prosecute the applicant for provoking discrimination on national, racial and religious grounds, under Articles 23 and 24 of the Press Act of 29 July 1881. Mr Willem was acquitted by the Lille Criminal Court but sentenced on appeal on 11 September 2003, and fined 1,000 euros (EUR). He lodged a cassation appeal but was unsuccessful.

The court said quite plainly that something can be both anti-Israel -and- anti-Semitic. That won't come as a shock to anyone who, say, has seen a lot of Latuff cartoons, or read a lot of Indymedia, where you constantly see such nonsense as the "most Jews aren't even Semitic" white power meme in an earlier comment. Does Ohnanka even know he's spouting white power crap with that? Probably not. Why? Because the anti-Zionist movement in the UK has done such a shit job keeping anti-Semitism out of their ranks. And sadly UK Indymedia has its part in that.

The EU ruling, by the way, resembles the legal advice given the UCU by their own solicitors not to pursue an academic boycott against Israel for exactly the same reason - that it disproportionately affects Jewish scholars here and abroad.

You are 100% wrong about what the court said so I take it you never actually read the judgement. It repeatedly and specifically says it is not alleged that Mr. Willems call for a boycott was antisemitic. The judges said it was discriminately on national grounds, that private citizens and corporations could not be boycotted simply because of the country that they live in. Have a read of the judgement yourself if you don't believe me but it is the opposite of what you claimed.