but sanctions on Iran and Russia are official French policy.
A case has been winding through the French courts. In 2009 and 2010, 12 BDS activists protested outside a number of supermarkets in Mulhouse, France. They were wearing t-shirts that read "Long live Palestine, boycott Israel." They also handed out fliers that said that "buying Israeli products means legitimizing crimes in Gaza." They also applied pro-boycott stickers to vegetables imported from Israel.
They were doing this right after Operation Cast Lead, which lead to the deaths of 1400 Palestinians in Gaza, (over half of whom were civilians) and 13 Israelis, (3 of whom were civilians). This is the action in which IDF rabbis told soldiers they were fighting a "holy war for the promised land", and about which the IDF spokesperson said the IDF was instructed not to consider civilians when conducting assassination bombings.
France's highest court of appeals this week ruled the 12 activists were guilty of "inciting hate or discrimination".
More below the fold:
Glenn Greenwald takes a hard look at the ruling and similar attempts elsewhere:
The odious campaign to outlaw activism against the Israeli occupation extends well beyond France. In May, CBC reported that Canadian officials threatened to prosecute BDS activists there under “hate speech” laws, and after those officials denied doing so, we obtained and published the emails proving they did just that. The February Haaretz article described this troubling event in the U.K.: “In 2007, the British University and College Union said it would drop plans to boycott Israeli institutions after legal advisers said doing so would violate anti-discrimination laws.” In 2013, New York City officials joined an (ultimately failed) Alan Dershowitz-led campaign to threaten the funding of Brooklyn College for the crime of hosting pro-BDS speakers.
Greenwald does not mention the various anti-BDS legislation passed in the US, they are mostly at the state level, but have included anti-BDS laws passed in
Indiana,
Illinois,
Tennessee and
South Carolina. A bill titled the
Boycott our Enemies, not Israel Act has been introduced in the House of Representatives, it has 11 co-sponsors. An
amendment to the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) requires US negotiators to make BDS opposition part of their negotiations. The Obama administration pushed back on a
Congressional attempt to equate boycotts of settlement products with boycotts of Israel. US officials warned it would cause immense problems with EU negotiating partners, but Obama
eventually signed the law. A France-like law would infringe on the first amendment so most of the US laws have sought to condemn BDS, or require contractors to confirm they do not boycott Israel, or require state-controlled pension funds from divesting in companies that boycott Israel. Some of the laws mention Israel specifically, others are written more broadly. All of them have been the
result of
lobbying by pro-Israel organizations.
Where are all the newfound free speech activists who insisted after the Charlie Hebdo murders that a defense of free expression was so vital to all that is good and just in the Western world? Why isn’t the #JeSuisBDS hashtag trending in defense of these activists who have been persecuted — prosecuted — by France for their political views? The answer is clear: Many who reveled in wrapping themselves in the “free speech” banner earlier this year — beginning with France itself and extending throughout the West — have no genuine belief in that right. That’s why these countries not only stand silent in the face of such a fundamental assault on free speech, but aggressively perpetrate those abuses.
Haaretz
reported on the case earlier in the year:
Trichine, 54, is one of approximately 20 anti-Israel activists who have been convicted under France’s so-called Lellouche law. Named for the Jewish parliamentarian who introduced it in 2003, the law is among the world’s most potent legislative tools to fight the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, and has catapulted France to the forefront of efforts to counter the movement through legal means.
[...]
Before the convictions of Trichine and her associates, a solidarity petition by pro-Palestinian activists failed to garner more than 1,500 signatures. After the convictions, 51 groups — among them several labor unions and political parties with hundreds of thousands of supporters combined — condemned the verdict as “an unbearable attack on freedom of expression.” Three short documentaries have been made about the case, which has been covered in dozens of articles in leading French publications.