The Diplomat
The Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE) rejected and regretted yesterday the decision of the Barcelona City Council to break the twinning with Tel Aviv and relations with the State of Israel.
“With the sole support of 4,000 signatures, by decree and without debate, the Government Commission of the Barcelona City Council has taken this decision that represents neither in form nor in substance what Barcelona and its citizens are,” stated the FCJE in a press release.
According to the Federation, “in recent weeks pressure has been growing around the Jewish communities with this campaign by the Barcelona City Council.” “From the FCJE we have experienced this with great concern and so we communicated it at the time to Mayor Ada Colau through an open letter dated January 17,” it added.
“Regardless of the government of the city of Tel Aviv, the Barcelona City Council has not taken into account that it is a city that is an example of coexistence, defense of freedoms, protection of minorities and where its citizens live in peace regardless of their origin,” he continued.
“We see with great concern how only a single city, a single country in the world is having its actions and legitimacy questioned,” stated the FCJE. “It so happens that Israel is the only Jewish country in the world. That is why, in our view, this decision has nothing to do with politics or human rights or peace. This has a name and it is called ‘Sophisticated Anti-Semitism’,” he warned. “We appeal to the citizens of Barcelona to continue working for coexistence and against anti-Semitism in whatever form it manifests itself,” he concluded.
The Barcelona City Council yesterday temporarily suspended institutional relations with the State of Israel and all official institutions of the country, including the twinning with the city of Tel Aviv, after meeting with the driving entities of the citizen initiative Barcelona with Apartheid no, Barcelona with human rights yes, in support of the Palestinian people, who have collected more than 4,000 signatures. According to Colau, the decision “is in no way a discrimination against the Jewish population, it is a criticism of a government, not of a people or a religion”.
The Barcelona City Council twinned with Tel-Aviv and Gaza in 1998, a few years after the signing of the Oslo Accords (1994), which were to bring peace to the region. The leader of the PSC in the City Council and third deputy mayor, Laia Bonet, yesterday described as “a very serious mistake the unilateral decision of the mayoress”, who decided to act “by decree” in the face of “the certainty that in the next plenary session the proposal to break the agreement of Barcelona with Tel-Aviv and Gaza would be unanimously rejected”.
