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Canada’s Green Party backs Israel boycott

August 8, 2016 at 12:41 pm

Canada’s Green party has voted to back the use of boycott, divestment, and sanctions, in support of Palestinian self-determination and against Israeli occupation and settlements.

The resolution, passed at their biennial national convention in Ottawa on Sunday, was tabled by the party’s shadow justice minister Dimitri Lascaris, though opposed by party leader Elizabeth May.

Lascaris, a past Green candidate, said after the vote that he had “never felt prouder to be a member of this party”, adding: “We took a brave stand today for human rights.”

On Friday, the Greens also adopted a resolution “to revoke charitable status from organizations complicit in violating international human rights law.” The resolution originally singled out the Jewish National Fund, but was amended to remove reference “to any specific group.”

The pro-boycott resolution commits the Green Party to support “the use of divestment, boycott and sanctions (“BDS”) that are targeted to those sectors of Israel’s economy and society which profit from the ongoing occupation of the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territory].”

The resolution also expresses the Green Party’s opposition to “all efforts to prohibit, punish or otherwise deter expressions of support for BDS.”