The London-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) has won a landmark legal victory against the British government, with the Supreme Court ruling that local pension schemes could divest from companies complicit in Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian Territories.
Since 2017, PSC has been fighting the UK Government in the courts, protecting the right to undertake BDS campaigns in the UK.
“We won in the High Court, then lost in the Court of Appeal, but today the final verdict from the Supreme Court is in – and we have won,” said PSC in a press release.
#BreakingNews : Palestine Solidarity Campaign has defeated the UK Government in the Supreme Court over ethical pensions divestment! This is a HUGE win for the BDS movement. Find out more here: https://t.co/3RPachKfdd@PSCupdates pic.twitter.com/G16Xguno92
— Palestine SunBird (@PalSunBird) April 29, 2020
“With support via submissions from the Quakers, Campaign Against Arms Trade and War on Want and with a huge body of small donations from thousands of members and supports to fund the legal challenge, we have managed to defeat regulations that would have stopped Local Government Pension Schemes from divesting from companies complicit in Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people, and additionally from divesting from the UK defense industry,” the organization added.
“The Supreme Court has ruled in our favor and the regulations the Government introduced in 2016 are now finally and definitively declared illegal and thrown out.”
Palestine Solidarity Campaign has scored another HUGE win over UK Government & the Israeli Government and other sponsors and facilitators of Israeli apartheid in PALESTINE.
The Supreme Court has ruled in favour of Ethical Pension Divestment !. CONGRATULATION BDS . pic.twitter.com/nOoiDXjAJ0— osman (@osman04046922) April 30, 2020
PSC said that “today is a great victory from which we will draw strength for the battles ahead.”
For years, Israel and its allies have been working to delegitimize activism for Palestinian rights and criminalize action in support of the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).
Israel's $72m 'war chest' to fight BDS arrives in Europe | Israeli–Palestinian conflict | Al Jazeera – But every attempt just strengthens the Palestinian cause https://t.co/63QcTjoiHM
— Aslam Bava (@AslamBava) December 26, 2018
“Understandably, Israel has little interest in countering BDS using grassroots efforts, which has been the backbone of the Palestinian boycott movement for years,” wrote Palestine Chronicle editors Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo in a recent article.
“Instead, the Israeli government has invested in persuading US, European and other western legislators, political parties and governments, in the hope of designating BDS – and any call for boycott – as an anti-Semitic one, punishable by law,” Baroud and Rubeo added.
(Palestine Chronicle, WAFA, Social Media)
