The Second Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, in 1898. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) filed a complaint with the World Zionist Congress that calls for the disqualification of a slate of progressive groups from the Congress’s upcoming election over those groups’ support of sanctions and boycotts against Israel.

ZOA objected to the eligibility of Ameinu and Partners for a Progressive Israel (PPI), groups that are part of the election’s “HaTikvah slate,” which is named after Israel’s national anthem.

Ameinu “lobbies for international sanctions against Israeli leaders whose political positions they disagree with” and PPI “promotes boycotts against Israeli Jewish businesses in Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem,” ZOA said.

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“For the World Zionist Congress to allow groups to run who demonize Israel, promote placing international sanctions on political leaders they disagree with, and harm Israel and its people (both Jewish and Arab) economically through promoting boycotts, is an affront to the very meaning of Zionism, and does severe harm to Israel,” ZOA President Morton A. Klein said in a statement.

The HaTikvah slate is “misleadingly” named, ZOA said, because voters assuming the slate “shares the same nationalist sentiments” as the Israeli national anthem may be “misled into voting for a slate that in fact promotes boycotts against Jewish businesses in eastern Jerusalem and other areas encompassed by the song.”

The election for the 37th World Zionist Congress, which has met regularly since its inception in 1897, will begin Jan. 13 and last through April 30, 2015. The Congress is set to convene next October.