Boycott Israel?

On 22 June 2011, Unison National Delegate Conference voted against a policy of “critical engagement” with the mass Israeli trade union federation, the Histadrut. The effect of this vote is to suspend relations with Histadrut pending a review and further recommendations next year. The debate on conference floor was very confused. In November 2010, a Unison delegation travelled to Palestine and met with the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU). The PFTUC recommended the policy of “critical engagement” with the Histadrut. In April 2011, this advice was repeated. Then in May 2011 a...

Over the weeks since the New South Wales election on 26 March, Rupert Murdoch's paper The Australian has run a big campaign against sections of Australia's Green Party over their policy of boycotting Israel. Several front-page stories have targeted Fiona Byrne, Green mayor of the Sydney suburb of Marrickville and narrowly-unsuccessful Green candidate for the Marrickville electorate in the NSW election, and Lee Rhiannon, elected as a NSW Senator to the federal Parliament in 2010 and due to take her seat in the Senate in July 2011. The Australian strongly supports Australia's conservative...

One litmus test of whether one is engaged in reasonable criticism of Israel or simple anti-Semitism is whether you think anyone in the Jewish state is a legitimate partner for discussions. If you think everyone in Israel is somehow complicit in the occupation, that every Zionist is a racist, and so on, you will not want to have anything to do with Israeli peace organisations or the left. In the trade union movement, this is expressed through the question of relations with the Histadrut, Israel's national trade union centre. Most unions in most countries have no problem with the Histadrut. In...

Salon Mazal, an "infoshop" in Tel Aviv hosting meetings, discussions and a radical library, is proof that there’s still an Israeli left. Why, then, are people within that left arguing that social change has to be imposed from outside through "boycott, divestment and sanctions" (BDS)? I went to a "Why boycott" discussion to find out. Whilst there, I came to understand something that may be obvious to most: BDS is intended as non-violent force. Abandoning ideas as the battleground, it aims to give Israelis no choice but to challenge the occupation and, presumably in the minds of many proponents...

Speeches from "Israel-Palestine: what should the left say? Two states and workers' unity or one state and right of return?", a debate with Workers Power at Ideas for Freedom 2010 (11 July) The session was chaired by Tom Unterrainer of the AWL National Committee. Camila Bassi (Workers’ Liberty) The history of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is one of competing narratives. What do I mean by that? Narratives that differ in their selection, their emphasis, and their interpretation of particular events and which, in turn, suggest quite different responses to the conflict’s present-day conditions...

The current position in the Higher Education sector is complex in terms of the mandate which the union’s HE Committee has been given in organising industrial action. The first is that we are mandated to ballot for industrial action to take place at the start of the autumn term should no adequate progress be made. Any ballot over the summer runs the risk of a low turnout. Whatever happens, we need to prepare for a highly aggressive assault by employers. We know from last year that the employers clearly have an agenda to up the ante on issues like docking pay of striking workers. On the issue of...

On a demonstration near the Israeli embassy during the Hezbollah-Israeli war in Lebanon, I talked with a well-known anti-Israel activist, a woman in her mid-50s, whom I've know since she was 16. Discussing the agitation for a boycott of Israel, I conceded that on principle a case might be made for some sort of boycott. Except, I said, that "any boycott movement against Israel would soon turn into a Jew-hunt". She responded candidly: "So what?" So what? A boycott would be an ineffectual, crude, and indiscriminate weapon. And its political cost would be a campaign against Jews - "Zionists" - who...

As we reported in Solidarity 3/164, the University of Sussex Students’ Union recently passed a policy committing it to a boycott of Israeli goods. Workers’ Liberty opposes such boycotts because we believe they cut against what is objectively necessary — international working-class solidarity to help Palestinian and Israeli workers build unity around a programme of mutual respect and equal rights — and create the potential for an anti-semitic backlash by exceptionalising Israel. A group of students at Sussex succeeded in winning the necessary levels of support to trigger a rerun of the policy...

Produced by Workers' Liberty students. For a downloadable, copyable version of this briefing, see attachment. "Permissible and obligatory are those and only those means which unite the working class, fill their hearts with irreconcilable hostility to oppression, teach them contempt for official morality, imbue them with consciousness of their own historic mission, raise their courage and spirit of self-sacrifice in the struggle. Precisely from this it flows that not all means are permissible. When we say that the end justifies the means, then for us the conclusion follows that the great...

The University of Sussex Students Union is due to hold a second referendum on whether to implement a boycott of Israeli goods in SU outlets. The boycott policy was passed by an earlier referendum at the end of October by a margin of 562 to 450. However, a group of students has now gathered the 150 signatures required to reopen and rerun the vote. Supporters of the boycott have said that they see themselves as part of an international BDS — boycott, divestment and sanctions — movement, intended to apply sufficient economic, moral and political pressure on Israel to force it to observe...