The regional government in Valencia, Spain, has hired a group that supports the BDS movement, which is widely regarded as anti-Semitic and anti-Israel, to train teachers on how to combat bigotry.
The organization, BDS Pais Valencia, is scheduled to start the 20-day online training on June 8, according to ACOM—a pro-Israel group in Spain—in a statement on Wednesday.
On Twitter, ACOM compared the online initiative to having “a Nazi lecturing against racism or a member of the Ku Klux Klan speaking on racial persecution.”
The virtual seminar was advertised on Spain’s Education Ministry on April 27 under the title “Solidarity and human rights. Learning to teach against hatred and racism (Judeophobia, Islamophobia and Palestine-Israel).”
In 2015, the singer Matisyahu, who is Jewish but not Israeli, was initially disinvited from the Rototom Sunsplash festival in Benicassim, Spain, following what organizers of the music event admitted was pressure from BDS Pais Valencia. Matisyahu ended up performing with no issues.
Numerous courts in Spain, including in Valencia, have deemed BDS as racist or discriminatory.
