Bloomberg Report: BDS Not Effective

YERUSHALAYIM

While it may have had some high-profile victories, like the cancelation of visits by academics or entertainers, the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement has not had a significant effect, according to a Bloomberg report.

According to figures cited by the report, “Foreign investments in Israeli assets hit a record high last year of $285.12 billion, a near-tripling from 2005 when the BDS movement was started by a group of Palestinians.

“We don’t have a problem with foreign investment in Israel — on the contrary,” said Israeli Finance Ministry Chief Economist Yoel Naveh Naveh in an interview with Bloomberg.

The Israeli economy is expected to grow 2.8 percent in 2016 — more than in Europe and the United States, where growth will be under 2 percent, said the report.

In a related development, a Spanish court last Thursday struck down a municipal boycott of Israel, in what anti-BDS activists hailed as a landmark decision, The Jerusalem Post reported.

In January, the City Council of Langreo approved a declaration to boycott both Israel and any person or company that might support Israel. The decision proclaimed the city as “Free of Israeli Apartheid” and committed it to the BDS campaign against Israel.

“For the first time in a court decision, the court said that the BDS declaration in the city was discriminatory, anti-Semitic, broke human rights and needed to be canceled,” Angel Mas, chairman of ACOM, a pro-Israel organization, said.

Langreo, a city of 43,000 in northern Spain, is dominated politically by the Communist Party and the extreme left-wing Podemos, according to Mas.

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