Boycott goes on trial in Israel's High Court
http://972mag.com/boycott-goes-on-trial-in-israels-high-court/87263/
Civil rights organizations argue the ‘anti-boycott law’ has created a chilling effect, stifling debate on one of the most divisive issues facing Israeli society. If that’s the case, the state counters, then how has BDS grown so much in recent years?
In a hearing that felt at times like the political boycott itself was on trial, an extended panel of nine justices from Israel’s High Court of Justice heard arguments for and against legislation targeting calls to boycott Israel on Sunday. It was the second such session following petitions by civil rights groups asking the court to strike down the law.
Lawyers for civil society groups including Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc), the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and Adalah-the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel made a passionate case that the two-year-old piece of legislation unconstitutionally violates freedom of expression. Attorneys for the Knesset, joined by the right-wing Legal Forum for Israel, contested that the law exists to defend the civil rights of Israeli citizens who may be harmed by boycott.
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The civil society groups argued that even if the law is nearly impossible to enforce, its very existence has a “chilling effect,” leading to self-censorship and stifling of a necessary and legitimate political debate about Israeli policy, and that it is not an attack on Israel itself. They claimed that the law effectively blocks a legitimate form of non-violent protest against the policies of the state. Peace organization Gush Shalom, for example, was forced to remove from its website a list of products and companies originating from the West Bank; its lawyers claimed that the law thus alters and hinders prior activity of the organization.
The more a society clamps down on freedom of speech and punishes its citizens for taking a moral stand the less of a democracy it becomes.
The apartheid picnic seemingly is throwing its own under the bus if it feels threatened by rights of free speech.
