Legal victories?
The European Court for Human Rights of the Council of Europe upheld a French court decision that a specifically anti-Israel boycott is discriminatory and illegal. This opens the way for any Jewish organizations in the EU to bring a case against any anti-Israel boycott of academics or goods and is a victory for the pro-Israel forces.
At last the anti-Israel movements, which have been trying to use trade union boycotts and academic boycotts as a front for their nefarious activities, will now have to think twice before proceeding. They could find themselves sued out of existence. The court ruled that taking such a stand does not constitute interference with anyone's freedom of expression, in this specific case that of the Communist Mayor of the small French town of Seclin, Jean-Claude Fernand Willem, who in October 2002 announced at a town hall meeting that he intended to call on the municipality to boycott Israeli products. Local Jewish organizations brought the case against him that was unsucessful at the local court, but was reversed on appeal at the higher French Court, and was upheld at the European level.
Apart from anti-Israel boycotts, the left's agenda in the West is to delegitimize Israel by trying to smear it with negative stereotypes, such as "apartheid" and "occupier." Another favorite stratagem is to bring one-sided accusations against the IDF, and this was done this week by an Israeli left wing organization called "Breaking the silence." Already the name of the group gives a clue to it's intentions, as if there were any limit on freedom of expression in Israel. This group claims that ca. 30 soldiers have claimed that there were human rights abuses carried out by IDF soldiers under orders from senior officers during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. However, first the soldiers were un-named, second their accusations were undocumented, third they failed to bring any actual complaints to the IDF thru normal channels and fourth they are only 30 out of thousands. So this is a totally unjustified complaint that would have been ignored in most cases, except that the media around the world was primed to pass it off as real case of deliberate IDF brutality. (Of course, nothing was said about the real human rights abuses of Hamas deliberately targeting civilians for 8 years in Sderot and using civilians as human shields).
As Secty of Defense Ehud Barak observed, he is the person to whom any complaint should be addressed by any soldier who sees an illegal act or is given an illegal order, and there exists a whole apparatus (an ombudsman) to take care of any complaints that any soldier has, including mistreatment of the enemy. Since no such complaints were made and no such complaints have been documented, this whole media claim is concocted. One of the complainants is a former soldier, who it was found was never actually in combat, so there is no way that he could have witnessed the events that he claimed had taken place.
Unfortunately the damage is done and millions of people around the world will have their anti-Israel stereotypes reinforced by these false accusations by traitorous left-wing Israelis supported by outside forces, including EU NGOs. Finally the Knesset is considering a bill to outlaw foreign contributions being made to Israeli organizations for anti-Israel purposes.
At last the anti-Israel movements, which have been trying to use trade union boycotts and academic boycotts as a front for their nefarious activities, will now have to think twice before proceeding. They could find themselves sued out of existence. The court ruled that taking such a stand does not constitute interference with anyone's freedom of expression, in this specific case that of the Communist Mayor of the small French town of Seclin, Jean-Claude Fernand Willem, who in October 2002 announced at a town hall meeting that he intended to call on the municipality to boycott Israeli products. Local Jewish organizations brought the case against him that was unsucessful at the local court, but was reversed on appeal at the higher French Court, and was upheld at the European level.
Apart from anti-Israel boycotts, the left's agenda in the West is to delegitimize Israel by trying to smear it with negative stereotypes, such as "apartheid" and "occupier." Another favorite stratagem is to bring one-sided accusations against the IDF, and this was done this week by an Israeli left wing organization called "Breaking the silence." Already the name of the group gives a clue to it's intentions, as if there were any limit on freedom of expression in Israel. This group claims that ca. 30 soldiers have claimed that there were human rights abuses carried out by IDF soldiers under orders from senior officers during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. However, first the soldiers were un-named, second their accusations were undocumented, third they failed to bring any actual complaints to the IDF thru normal channels and fourth they are only 30 out of thousands. So this is a totally unjustified complaint that would have been ignored in most cases, except that the media around the world was primed to pass it off as real case of deliberate IDF brutality. (Of course, nothing was said about the real human rights abuses of Hamas deliberately targeting civilians for 8 years in Sderot and using civilians as human shields).
As Secty of Defense Ehud Barak observed, he is the person to whom any complaint should be addressed by any soldier who sees an illegal act or is given an illegal order, and there exists a whole apparatus (an ombudsman) to take care of any complaints that any soldier has, including mistreatment of the enemy. Since no such complaints were made and no such complaints have been documented, this whole media claim is concocted. One of the complainants is a former soldier, who it was found was never actually in combat, so there is no way that he could have witnessed the events that he claimed had taken place.
Unfortunately the damage is done and millions of people around the world will have their anti-Israel stereotypes reinforced by these false accusations by traitorous left-wing Israelis supported by outside forces, including EU NGOs. Finally the Knesset is considering a bill to outlaw foreign contributions being made to Israeli organizations for anti-Israel purposes.
posted by Jack Cohen at 3:32 PM
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