User:ImTheIP/List of BDS-related lawsuits

List of BDS-related lawsuits is a list of lawsuits filed by opponents of the BDS movement against its supporters. BDS calls for comprehensive boycotts of Israel until it stops alleged human rights violations against the Palestinians.

The list is sorted by the lawsuit's filing date. For lawsuits challenging anti-BDS laws see Constitutional challenges.

Baldassi & Others v. France
On September 26, 2009 and May 22, 2010, eleven activists of the Palestine 68 Collective, a group supportive of BDS, participated in demonstrations outside the same supermarket urging customers not to purchase goods imported from Israel. They wore shirts emblazoned with the words "Long live Palestine, boycott Israel" and handed out flyers saying that "buying Israeli products means legitimizing crimes in Gaza."

In 2011 following a memo issued by French Minister of Justice Michèle Alliot-Marie instructing prosecutors to prosecute citizens calling for boycotts of Israeli products, the activists were charged with inciting discrimination under article 24 (8) of the Press Law of 1881. The trial court, the Tribunal correctionel de Mulhouse, acquitted the defendants. But the ruling was appealed by four groups, France-Israel Chamber of Commerce, Avocats sans Frontières, Association France-Israel and the Simon Wiesenthal Center's french associate the Bureau National de Vigilance Contre l’Antisemitisme, to the appeals court, Cour d'appel de Colmar, which convicted the defendants in November 2013 and fined them 1000 Euro each per participant. They were also ordered to pay the court expenses of 28,000 Euro. The supreme civil court, the Cour de cassation, upheld the conviction in October 2015, citing a law that prescribes imprisonment or a fine for parties that "provoke discrimination, hatred or violence toward a person or group of people on grounds of their origin, their belonging or their not belonging to an ethnic group, a nation, a race or a certain religion."

The decision was appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) which had to decide whether it was justified to restrict the defendants right to freedom of expression as defined by article 10(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 10(2) of the Convention allows for such restrictions if they are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society." The Court noted that, as interpreted in this case, the French law would appear to prohibit any call for boycotts based on geographic origin, regardless of other circumstances. It further contended that the defendants actions were a form of political expression and that article 10(2) leaves little room for restricting such political expression. The Court firmly rejected the idea that BDS would be discriminatory or anti-Semitic in itself.

On June 11, 2020, the Court delivered its unanimous ruling, acquitting the defendants, and ordering the French Government to pay each applicant 7380 Euro each.

Fraser v. University and College Union
At the 2011 conference, the University and College Union voted to adopt an academic and cultural boycott of Israel and to disassociate the UCU from the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC)'s discussion paper on a working definition of antisemitism. Shortly thereafter, Ronnie Fraser, Jewish UCU member and chair of the Academic Friends of Israel, represented by Anthony Julius, sued the union for breach of the Equality Act 2010 with the Employment Tribunal. Fraser complained that the union had created an After a 20-day hearing the tribunal rejected his claim, harshly rebuking Julius for "misusing the legal process", writing: "The result is that the proceedings are dismissed in their totality... Lessons should be learned from this sorry saga. We greatly regret that the case was ever brought. At heart, it represents an impermissible attempt to achieve a political end by litigious means... We are also troubled by the implications of the claim. Underlying it we sense a worrying disregard for pluralism, tolerance and freedom of expression, principles which the courts and tribunals are, and must be, vigilant to protect."

Scorn was also invoked for Julius' decision to pursue certain points, with complaints variously dismissed as "palpably groundless", "obviously hopeless" and "devoid of any merit". The pro-Israel media-monitoring watchdog CAMERA criticized the rejection.

Olympia Food Co-op lawsuit
In July 2010, the Board of Directors of the Olympia Food Co-op (OFC) decided to institute a boycott of Israeli goods. On March 11, 2011, StandWithUs and Akiva Tor, the Israeli Consul General to the Pacific Northwest, meet with five members of the co-op and their attorney. Around the same time, four of the five co-op members appeared in a video produced by StandWithUs, describing the negative impact they felt the boycott had had on the co-op. Six months later the five co-op members sued the co-op in a case known as Davis, et al., v. Cox, et al. arguing that the board had acted beyond their scope of their authority and breached their fiduciary duties. The defendants were aided by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the plaintiffs by StandWithUs.

The Court ruled in 2012 that the lawsuit was an illegal Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) and ordered the five co-op members to pay the 16 defendants $10,000 each under Washington's anti-SLAPP statute as well as other legal fees. The five plaintiffs appealed the decision to the Washington State Court of Appeals which on April 7, 2014 upheld the ruling of the lower court. It also upheld the constitutionality of Washington's anti-SLAPP law, which the plaintiffs had challenged.

In 2015, Washington Supreme Court struck down the anti-SLAPP law which meant that the case could be reopened. But at that point, the plaintiffs had abandoned the case and the litigation was ended on March 9, 2018.

Shurat HaDin v. Lynch
In 2012, Dan Avnon, a political theorist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, applied for fellowship at Sydney University and asked Jake Lynch at Sydney to endorse his application. Lynch refused, citing his leadership with the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, his support for the BDS movement, the fact that the Hebrew University has a campus in the West Bank and ties to the Israeli military. In 2013, Shurat HaDin sued Lynch for violating Australia's anti-racism laws and attempted to use the suit to outlaw BDS in Australia. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry publicly denounced the suit as an inappropriate use of the courts.

In April 2014, the court struck part of the suit, and Shurat HaDin lawyers narrowed the complaint to the specifics of Avnon and Lynch. But Avnon made known that he did not support the suit. In July 2014, noting that Shurat HaDin did not represent a willing client and did not have a complaint of its own, the court dismissed the case and awarded attorney fees to Lynch. Shurat HaDin said that "the case was thrown out on a technicality, not on the merits of the arguments ... [Lynch's] lawyers came up with a trick to avoid the issue being heard on its merits." Shurat HaDin's spokesperson said the suit was a warning to other Australian academic institutions.

American Studies Association boycott lawsuit
The American Studies Association (ASA) joined the academic boycott of Israel in 2013 and in 2016 it was sued by four ASA members represented by Kenneth L. Marcus of the Brandeis Center and Jerome Marcus of the Israeli think tank Kohelet Policy Forum. The lawsuit alleged that the boycott fell outside the scope of the ASA’s corporate charter and stated mission, a type of legal argument known as ultra vires.

The lawsuit was dismissed in 2019 when the judge ruled that plaintiffs lacked standing. A second, related case filed by David Abrams of the Zionist Advocacy Center in the state of New York was previously dismissed for "[demonstrating] neither injury nor standing to sue."

Bibliotechnical Athenaeum v National Lawyers Guild, Inc.
In 2016, the progressive bar association the National Lawyers Guild held an awards banquet for which it printed a program, the Dinner Journal, partly consisting of advertisements congratulating one or more of the honorees. David Abrams, asked on behalf of his company Bibliotechnical Athenaeum, to take out a 3" x 3" ad in the program reading: Bibliotechnical Athenaeum Congratulations to the Honorees 4 Shlomtzion St. Elazar Gush Etzion 9094200 State of Israel Gush Etzion is a settlement located in the West Bank and considered illegal under international law. Abrams is the director of the Zionist Advocacy Center, a registered foreign agent for the International Legal Forum which is funded by Israel's Strategic Affairs Ministry. The Guild refused the request, citing a "resolution barring [it] from accepting funds from Israeli organizations." Abrams therefore sued the guild, claiming that this constituted public accommodation discrimination based on national origin violating New York state law.

The Guild filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that it had the right to decline to publish Abrams' ad because of the controversial nature of the Gush Etzion address expressed a political message which grossly contravened with the Guild's own views. The court however rejected the Guild's argument, stating that it could not determine whether denoting whether an address is in Israel or not is controversial: "Defendants' arguments, however, must be rejected, as this court cannot, at least on this record, take judicial notice of the controversial nature of settlements in the West Bank….. [A] court may take judicial notice of facts that are capable of "immediate and accurate determination by resort to easily accessible sources of indisputable accuracy." Whether denoting an address as being in Israel is controversial or noncontroversial does not fall into that category. Quite to the contrary, the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank is the very epitome of a topic that cannot be reduced to "indisputable accuracy.""

Having discarded the Guild's arguments, the court stated that it could not rule out the possibility that the Guild's refusal to publish his ad might have amounted to public accommodation discrimination. While emphasizing that "this case may eventually turn on the First Amendment" the court thus allowed the case to move forward.

Eugene Volokh in an analysis on the blog The Volokh Conspiracy argues that the court's analysis is wrong and it should have recognized the Guild's freedom from compelled speech. According to him, the Guild has an absolute right to choose what not to publish in its publications.

In 2020, the parties reached a settlement in which the Guild agreed to publish an advertisement for Abrams' company in its next journal, without including the name of any settlement, and to also clarify and reaffirm its policy opposing all forms of discrimination and circulate it to members."

Lorde concert cancellation
In January 2018, Shurat HaDin filed a lawsuit demanding NIS 15,000 to each of three teenagers (about $13,000), Shoshana Steinbach, Ayelet Wertzel and Ahuva Frogel, against the New Zealand Palestinian solidarity activists Justine Sachs and Nadia Abu-Shanab for allegedly convincing the New Zealand singer Lorde to cancel her scheduled tour of Tel Aviv in mid-2018. The lawsuit alleged that the cancellation had damaged the teenagers "artistic welfare" and that they had suffered "emotional" injury and "above all damage to their good name as Israelis and Jews." The lawsuit was filed under the Israeli Law for Prevention of Damage to State of Israel through Boycott. Sachs and Abu-Shanab had earlier penned an open letter on the New Zealand online current affairs magazine The Spinoff in December 2017 urging Lorde to cancel her Israel concert, citing human rights abuses against the Palestinians. The letter read: "Dear Lorde ... we’re two young women based in Aotearoa, one Jewish, one Palestinian, ...

Today, millions of people stand opposed to the Israeli government’s policies of oppression, ethnic cleansing, human rights violations, occupation and apartheid. As part of this struggle, we believe that an economic, intellectual and artistic boycott is an effective way of speaking out against these crimes. This worked very effectively against apartheid in South Africa, and we hope it can work again.

We can play an important role in challenging injustice today. We urge you to act in the spirit of progressive New Zealanders who came before you and continue their legacy."

In October 2018, the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and ordered that the two New Zealand activists pay NIS 45,000 in damages to the plaintiffs, plus NIS 11,000 in legal fees (about $23,600). This is believed to be the first successful application of the 2011 law.

The two activists stated that they had "no intention" of paying the teenagers, and launched a crowdfunding campaign in order to give the money to the Gaza Mental Health Foundation, and raised more than $18,000 in three days. Darshan-Leitner said that legal agreements between Israel and New Zealand allowed her to enforce the ruling in New Zealand, and to "go after [the activists'] bank accounts until it has been fully realized." Legal experts in New Zealand said that the lawsuit was an attempt to chill free speech and that attempts to enforce the judgement were unlikely to be successful.

BDS-event on University of Massachusetts Amherst
In the spring of 2019 Professor Sut Jhally at University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) organized a panel discussion to take place in May about "the increasingly vitriolic debate over U.S. support for Israel." The event, titled "Not Backing Down: Israel, Free Speech, and the Battle for Palestinian Human Rights" were to feature speakers including Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, activist Linda Sarsour, Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill among others.

The event drew criticism from the Anti-Defamation League of New England and a number of Zionist organizations, including the AMCHA Initiative, CAMERA, Hasbara Fellowships, Israel Allies Foundation, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and the Zionist Organization of America, requested that the university cancel its sponsorship of it. The Massachusetts Republican party stated that the event was "in violation of the federal government’s guidelines regarding anti-Semitism."

On April 29, three anonymous UMass students filed a lawsuit and a motion for a preliminary injunction against the university. They argued that because the Department of Education has "adopted" the State Department's Working Definition of anti-Semitism, "allowing a faculty-sponsored BDS event on campus violates the prohibition against anti-Semitism on campuses of the United [States] Department of Education." The plaintiffs further argued that because the university opposes academic boycotts of Israel, the university must prevent advocacy of such boycotts on its campus. The judge presiding over the case denied the injunction on First Amendment grounds which allowed the event to proceed as planned.

In July, the judge ruled that the students had to re-file the case with their real names if they wished for the case to move forward. The students didn't do that and their lawyer, Karen Hurvitz, voluntarily asked the court to dismiss the case.

Shurat HaDin v. Nepal
In 2018 Palestinians held a number of demonstrations against Israel in vicinity of the Gaza-Israel border attended to by thousands of Palestinians. Israeli snipers shot and killed almost two hundred Palestinians, one of which was the nurse Rouzan al-Najjar who was killed while trying to treat a wounded protester.

Following the killing, the Facebook page Freedom for Gaza published a post with a photo of al-Najjar next to a photo of a former Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) solider, smiling in full uniform and holding an M-16. The soldier was Rebecca Reem, an American citizen who had immigrated to Israel at the age of 18, and enlisted in the Israeli army as a so called "lone soldier". According to News.com.au and the Jerusalem Post, Reem's photo came from a post published in May 2014 on the IDF's official Facebook page, where it had the caption "IDF soldier specializing in education who later decided she was meant for the field. Today she’s a trained fighter in IDF Field Intelligence, defending the home she knows and loves."

Shortly after the post was published, it was edited to clarify that it was a comparison and that Reem didn't kill al-Najjar. But Reem was still accused of being complicit: "Does that make Rebecca innocent? Absolutely not! She is complicit and is still a terrorist who made the choice to leave the US and go to a land to which she has zero ties specifically to murder the indigenous people of that land...but again it was not her who killed Razan".

In 2020, Shurat HaDin on behalf of Reem filed a lawsuit against Napal, the Facebook page administrator that had published her photo, demading $6 million. Napal since changed the Facebook page's status from public to private which Shurat HaDin heralded as a "first sign of victory and a deterrent."

News and press releases

 * Baldassi & Others v. France


 * Fraser v. University and College Union


 * Shurat HaDin v Lynch


 * Olympia Food Co-op lawsuit


 * American Studies Association boycott lawsuit


 * Bibliotechnical Athenaeum v National Lawyers Guild, Inc.


 * Lorde concert cancellation


 * BDS-event on University of Massachusetts Amherst


 * Shurat HaDin v. Nepal