UK councils face court challenge over Israel boycotts
Jewish Human Rights Watch files suit against local municipalities for passing ‘anti-Semitic’ BDS motions
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A Jewish group has launched a lawsuit against British local authorities that called for boycotts of goods from Israeli settlements, claiming the actions are anti-Semitic.
Jewish Human Rights Watch — an organization devoted to monitoring efforts to boycott Israel — is asking the High Court to rule against three councils: Leicester in England, and Swansea and Gwynedd in Wales. It claims the authorities have failed to consider “the impact of their actions on the Jewish community.”
Leicester and Swansea councils say their resolutions calling for sanctions are nonbinding, apply only to illegal settlements and are not attacks on the State of Israel.
Leicester’s motion, passed last November and submitted by council member Mohammed Dawood, called for boycotting products from the West Bank “in so far as it is legal,” citing Israel’s “continuing to ignore and breach international law” and “continuing its occupation” of Palestinian territories.
Gwynedd says it backed a trade embargo with Israel in 2014 to condemn “attacks by the Israeli state on the territory of the Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip.”
The British NGO War on Want on Wednesday slammed JHRW’s legal proceedings as “shameful,” according to a report in the Independent. “The illegal settlements are a part of the systematic abuses of international law and human rights committed by Israel against the Palestinians,” senior campaigner Ryvka Barnard said.
A two-day court hearing in the case began Wednesday.
The Times of Israel Community.