A local Spanish court has suspended the boycott of Israel previously adopted by the municipal council of La Roda de Andalucía in the Seville province.
This ruling hands the BDS campaign in La Roda, whose Council was the first in the world to join the boycott, “a serious loss and paves the way for further legal action against the enforcement of BDS policies,” the Lawfare Project, which conducted the legal battle, said.
In his ruling, Judge Luis Alfredo de Diego Díez stated that the City Council had exceeded its power in public procurement by committing to the boycott and that their action had constituted a de facto veto that discriminated not only in the area of public procurement, but also in every area relating to Israel.
According to the Court, the boycott was also in breach of the principle of political neutrality of public offices, whose aim is to further the general interests of the public rather than promoting the ideas of a political faction.
The City Council of La Roda announced its participation in the BDS campaign in August 2014. Since then, La Roda has been enforcing the boycott by inspecting machine-readable barcodes from every item purchased in public tenders, and returning to its suppliers any product that carried the barcode number 729, the number that denotes Israeli-made products.
The Mayor of La Roda, Fidel Romero, has been a visible proponent of the boycott since it was implemented.
The Lawfare Project’s Spanish counsel, Ignacio Wenley Palacios, who has secured over 40 writs of injunction and decisions against the Spanish boycott campaign, stated that “the fact that groups target Israelis, and ultimately Jews, in the name of spurious arguments on collective rights, with discrimination and blatant breaches of the principle of equality under the law, should concern all of us: Jews and non-Jews alike. This decision shows that we must stand up in defense of the freedoms and liberties of every individual.”
“It is individuals that ought to be protected against the abuses of radical politics, while Mayor Romero should be relieved from his post for clear breaches of the non-discrimination policies that rule government bodies,” he added.
Source: World Israel News
