STATEMENTS

“EU complicit in Israeli war crimes”, says leadership of global BDS Movement

Posted on March 28, 2016 by Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC)
Responding to comments made today by Lars Faaborg-Andersen, the EU Ambassador to Israel, that “settlement products are welcome on the EU market,” Mahmoud Nawajaa, a spokesperson for the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), said:
“The European Union has once again abandoned its own policies that consider Israel’s settlements illegal. By failing to vote at the UN Human Rights Council for establishing a UN registry of companies implicated in Israel’s occupation regime and by joining the far-right Israeli government’s fight against BDS, the largest nonviolent Palestinian-led human rights movement, the EU is underlining its already well-known hypocrisy and declaring its disregard for human rights.”
Nawajaa added, “This shameless EU complicity in protecting and maintaining Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid confirms the need to intensify grassroots and civil society BDS campaigns against this regime as well as against corporations and institutions that are implicated in its human rights violations. As was the case in the struggle against apartheid South Africa, when governments fail to uphold justice, citizens must act.”
“Europe is complicit in Israel’s serious violations of international law, including war crimes, by continuing its thriving military trade and joint military research with Israel and its import of settlement products that result from Israel’s theft of Palestinian land and resources, a policy the EU says it opposes. The EU has even refused to suspend the EU-Israeli free trade agreement despite Israel’s persistent violation of its human rights clause.”
Commenting on the EU’s participation in the Ynet anti-BDS conference despite Palestinian appeals Nawajaa said:
“The EU has joined the chorus of fanatic Israeli leaders opposing Palestinian rights and BDS, the most hopeful movement working to achieve those rights. Instead of  fighting Israel’s system of injustice, which is the root cause that led to the impressive growth and widespread support for the BDS movement among European citizens, the EU bureaucracy chose to fight the nonviolent resistance to this injustice.”
“We are deeply concerned about statements made by the EU representative at this conference that may lead to further erosion of civil liberties of EU citizens who protest Israel’s policies through BDS action. The EU is playing along in Israel’s war of repression and suppression of free speech,” Nawajaa continued.
Read here the statement issued by the BNC opposing the EU’s participation in YNet’s anti-BDS conference that took place today.