On April 21st, a committee to support Palestine located in the German city of Stuttgart has won a judicial victory against the city’s website, which had formerly banned it from announcing any of its activities on it under pretext of anti-semitisim.
The city’s website had previously banned the Stuttgart Palestine Committee from displaying its advertisements on its page, as it was an “anti-Semitic group”. That label was attached to the committee after incitements of a journalist in Jerusalem post deemed it “an extension of the BDS movement.”
The BDS is a movement that aims at ending the Israeli apartheid over Palestine–as the group has previously done in South Africa through peaceful means of boycott, divestment, and sanctions which calls for a boycott of “Israel” economically to force it to withdraw from the lands it occupied illegally.
The BDS which has been the victim of a zionist-led smear campaign that tried once and once again to frame the group, although unsuccessfully, as an antisemitic.
The crusade against the group comes as a result of the group having sway over investments and money-generating activities in the region whether that being company franchises, concerts, food chains…etc.
Despite these claims, the German administrative court ruled on Friday, April 21st, that the committee was allowed to display its activities and events on the municipality’s website as a part of its inalienable right to self-expression on a public site.
the court refrained from discussing claims of anti- semsemitism
The municipality’s decision to ban the committee came as a result of the Germain parliament which calls for all municipalities to not allocate resources or spaces for BDS supporters considering the group antisemitic and a threat to “Israel’s right of existence”
The municipality added that this was a public website that the Palestinians had the right to access. it refrained from labeling the group anti-semitic. it also added that there was no law that encumbered the right of free speech and any decision as such should be considered unconstitutional and aimed against those with certain political views.
The court also considered the parliament’s stance against the BDS not legally binding and nothing that surpass a personal biases.
The court also considered that there are no indications that the boycott campaign “abandons the intellectual and peaceful side of the conflict, or that it has concrete dangerous intentions, and as such the boycott campaign directed against Israel does not incite hatred for the Jewish population in Germany.”
This legal victory is the second for the committee, after obtaining a judicial decision not to allow municipalities to close their rooms in front of their activities for boycotting Israel, and considering the previous decision of the Munich municipality a violation of freedom of expression.
Shortlink for this post: https://daysofpalestine.ps/?p=18471
