Welcome to Europe’s “Israel free” cities
Welcome to Europe’s “Israel free” cities

The City Council of Trondheim, the third largest Norwegian town, passed a motion calling on its residents to boycott Israeli goods. A city that aspires to be “Israel free”. Then it was the turn of another Norwegian city, Tromso, 72,000 inhabitants, whose City Council approved a similar motion. Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik, also adopted a motion to boycott Israeli products.

This is not a city, but one of the largest regions of Spain. It is Valencia, where the leftist party València en Comú has managed to vote on the following motion: “Today the Provincial Council of Valencia is declared free from Israeli apartheid”.

The semi-autonomous region, which governs 250 municipalities and 2.5 million inhabitants, has approved the proposal. Meanwhile, a Spanish court has declared illegal a similar motion of the municipality of Santiago de Compostela. In recent years in Spain more than 50 municipalities have endorsed the boycott of Israel. Like Ibiza, a popular tourist destination, where the City Council of Santa Eulalia, the second largest city, has voted for a boycott of goods from the Jewish State. These motions do not remain without consequences. The Spanish town of Villanueva de Duero, for example, no longer distributes the Israeli Eden Springs water in its public buildings.

It is a major phenomenon also in England, where some city councils were acquitted by a court from accusations of anti-Semitism after imposing a boycott of Israeli goods. This is the Leicester City Council, Swansea City Council and Gwynedd. In France, the town of Bondy, near Paris, passed a motion for the boycott of Israeli goods. The mayor, Sylvine Thomassin, who belongs to the Socialist Party of President François Hollande, approved the resolution with only five objections. In Ireland, many cities governed by Sinn Féin endorsed the ban on Israeli products. The Irish town of Kinvara became “Israel free”: no one in the city should use the goods of the Jewish State. Pro Palestinian activists have lobbied to pressure restaurants and cafes to delete anything produced in Israel.

The Mayor of Newry, in Northern Ireland, has written to all retailers asking them to provide a list of Israeli products in stock. He then asked to remove them from sale, supported by 21 votes in favor and three against at the City Council.

Israeli goods disappear from major cities such as Leicester, the tenth largest in the UK, and entire Spanish regions such as Valencia.

A few days ago came the data on the escape of the French Jews: 5,000 have emigrated to Israel in 2016, bringing to 40,000 the number of Jews of France who left the country in the last ten years. Jewish goods disappearing, Jews packing their bags, how familiar!