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ISRAEL

France acquits activists over Israel boycott call

A court in Perpignan, south-western France on Wednesday found three pro-Palestinian activists not guilty of discrimination and hate crimes, after they called for a boycott of Israeli products during a protest at a shopping centre.

France acquits activists over Israel boycott call
Pro-Palestinian activists, not including those acquitted on August 14th, call for a boycott of Israeli products in Paris in 2010. Photo: Patrick Kovarik/AFP

The court in Perpignan upheld a recommendation from prosecutors that the three be found not guilty for the boycott call, made during a protest at a shopping centre in the southern city in 2010.

The activists were charged following a complaint from the BNVCA anti-Semitism group, which launched a series of legal actions against activists calling for boycotts of items produced in areas annexed by Israel following the Six Day War of 1967.

Prosecutors had said there was no evidence the boycott call by Jeanne Rousseau, Yamina Tatjeur, and Bernard Cholet  was an incitement to hatred or violence.

"This is a recognition of our fight for peace and justice," Tatjeur told AFP after the ruling.

Wednesday's acquittal is not the first occasion in recent months that a French court has ruled in favour of pro-Palestinian activists.

In April, The Local reported how Air France was forced to pay €100,000 in damages for discriminating against a pro-Palestinian activist.

Horia Ankour had been attempting to travel to Israel to take part in the "Welcome to Palestine" campaign, which saw hundreds of activists seek access to Israel in a bid to travel to the Palestinian territories.

The nursing student  was ejected from a plane in Nice, southern France, which was destined for Tel Aviv, after an Air France employee asked if she was Jewish, and she replied "no."

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ISRAEL

Former Israeli soldier attacked on Berlin street

A former Israeli soldier was attacked in the German capital Berlin, police said Saturday, with one or several unknown assailants spraying him with an irritant and throwing him to the ground.

Former Israeli soldier attacked on Berlin street
Israeli soldiers on operation near the Gaza Strip. Photo: dpa | Ilia Yefimovich

The 29-year-old was wearing a top with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) logo when the attackers started harassing him on Friday about his religion, the police added, calling it “an anti-Semitic attack”.

Officers are seeking the assailants, who fled immediately after the attack, on suspicion of a politically-motivated crime.

Saturday is the second anniversary of an attack by a far-right gunman on a synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle, who killed two in a rampage when he failed to break into the house of worship.

It was one of a string of incidents that led authorities to declare the far right and neo-Nazis Germany’s top security threat.

Also this week, a musician claimed he was turned away from a hotel in eastern city Leipzig for wearing a Star-of-David pendant.

While the allegations prompted a fierce response from a Jewish community unsettled by increasing anti-Semitic crimes, several investigations have been mounted into contradictory accounts of the incident.

In 2019, police recorded 2,032 anti-Semitic crimes, an increase of 13 percent year-on-year.

“The threat is complex and comes from different directions” from jihadists to the far right, the federal government’s commissioner for the fight against anti-Semitism Felix Klein said recently.

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