European Court rules boycott of Israel illegal

Boycott is 'discriminatory and punishable' - EU Court judges
'interference with...freedom of expression needed to protect the rights of Israeli producers.' - Jerusalem Post
'First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win' - Gandhi

European Court rules boycott of Israel illegal

Boycott is 'discriminatory and punishable' - EU Court judges

'interference with...freedom of expression needed to protect the rights of Israeli producers.' - Jerusalem Post

'First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win' - 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 (see below), 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'