High Court, low expectations for the Israeli left
Meron Rapoport
Monday 20 April 2015
For years, Israeli liberals believed the High Court could save Israel from itself. After a new ruling upholding a law against boycotting, they are losing faith.
A statement issued by the Israeli leftist Meretz party on Wednesday following a High Court ruling upholding a law that allows companies to sue those calling for political boycott, was unusual.
Not because of its content: Meretz members openly call for boycott of products produced on Israeli settlements. But because for decades, criticism of Israel’s High Court came from the right-wing. Now the liberal left joins in.
The statement read: "Meretz opposes a boycott on the state of Israel, be it economic, cultural or academic, but the High Court was wrong by not distinguishing between a boycott on the state and a personal purchase choice (done) by private people as part of a non-violent protest in order to bring a change."
Israel’s anti-boycott law was enacted in 2011 following an initiative by right-wing parliamentarian Ze’ev Elkin, from the Likud Party who lives in a settlement in the West Bank. The law was supposed to dampen the threat of an international boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) movement by intimidating Israeli individuals and organisations who had joined it, and worse – provided "incriminating" information about Israeli activities from alleged war crimes in Gaza to wine produced on illegally confiscated Palestinian land in the West Bank.
in full: http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/high-court-low-expectations-israeli-left-1752394621
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