The Legal Forum for Israel is preparing to submit a series of lawsuits against leftist organizations that call to boycott products from Judea and Samaria, after the High Court this week ruled that those calling to boycott the state of Israel must pay compensation for their economic damage.

Attorney Yifa Segel of the Forum told Arutz Sheva that “we were witnesses in recent years to calls to boycott goods, an academic boycott, an artist boycott and more, they made blacklists against us.”

According to the attorney, since the law against boycott groups which was authored by Likud MK Ze’ev Elkin passed, there has been a dramatic decrease among the leftist organizations.

“Some dropped their activities drastically, and some still continue,” she said.

Segel said the lawsuits her organization is planning to launch will have a serious impact on the leftist organizations promoting boycotts, and will deter them significantly.

“We are convinced that if we bring through lawsuits like this, it will create deterrence,” she said. “We are checking a number of means of action; unfortunately there are more than a few sources that are breaching the law and causing us great damage. Already many factories and businesses were damaged.”

Meretz is upset

The radical leftist Meretz party, members of which have attacked Judea and Samaria as being “outside of Israel,” was not pleased by the High Court ruling to say the least, claiming the court failed in its role.

According to the radical leftist group, Elkin’s law is meant to create a political “silencing” of the left.

Meretz said it “opposes a boycott on the state of Israel, whether it be economic, cultural or academic. But the High Court was wrong when it didn’t make a distinction between a boycott on the state and a personal consumer choice by individual people expressing a non-violent protest to bring a change.”

The statement indicates Meretz’s opinion that a boycott on Judea and Samaria, the Biblical heartland of Israel that was liberated from Jordanian occupation in the 1967 Six Day War, is not a “boycott on the state,” due to the group’s beliefs that the Israeli citizens living in the region are not living in the state.

Israel has yet to annex the region, even though the 2012 Levy Reportfound it’s presence there is completely legal according to international law, and that the territory was not under the legal ownership of any other state since Jordan never annexed it.

The court ruling comes even as a majority of EU states were revealed this week to be pressing for the EU to label “settlement” products from Judea and Samaria as part of an economic attack against Israel.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/194198#.VTFW-fnF98F

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