Boycott Israel?

The debate as to whether boycotting Israel is a good tactic in support of the Palestinians

Boycott calls are a diversion from solidarity

The profile of calls to boycott Israel has risen since 7 October. The official Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement is playing catch-up with a primarily social media-driven effort, which has now spread to advocate boycott of the most active anti-war movement in Israel, Standing Together. Following the Hamas attack and the Israeli onslaught, people used TikTok and other social media platforms to call for boycott of various brands. At one point, the four being targeted were McDonalds, because an Israeli franchisee provided free meals to the IDF; Puma, as the kit supplier to Israel’s...

Boycott Germany is a nonsense

French writer and Nobel prize winner Annie Ernaux, US academic and writer Judith Butler, and deputy director of the French National Museum of Modern Art Catherine David are the most prominent of the 1,500 signatories to have put their names to the “Strike Germany” statement to date.

Who are “Friends of Al-Aqsa”?

Friends of Al-Aqsa (FOA) is one of the most prominent organisations at the Palestine demonstrations. It has large numbers of stewards in green bibs and seems to have successfully monopolised the production of Palestine flag stickers, all emblazoned with the FOA website and logo. FOA, established in Leicester in 1997, is another spin-off loose affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), one of the world’s oldest political-Islamist groups, Egypt-founded but global. FOA’s public focus is solely on Palestine activism. It is the main MB-sympathetic group in Palestine activity. FOA holds a seat on the...

Letter: Kent protest not as “practical” as it seems

There has been wide publicity for 150 people, many union activists, blockading a military-component factory in Kent on Thursday 26 October, with implications or statements that the factory is “providing weapons to the Israeli military”. Many people surely took part out of horror at the Israeli government’s collective punishment of Palestinians, and good for them. Only the image of doing something immediate and practical against Israel’s misdeeds in Gaza is not quite right. Elbit Systems UK Ltd, the main target for some years for similar protests by the Palestine Action group, including brave...

Israel-Palestine: unravelling the issues

Why a Palestinian Arab state? The Palestinian Arabs are a defeated people, the main victims of the Jewish-Arab war of 1947-9 and of wars since, especially the 1967 war in which Israel won control of the West Bank from Jordan and of Gaza from Egypt. The root problem of the Palestinian Arabs is their dispossession by the Israeli state. However, their condition today is not just Israel’s responsibility, and it cannot be mended by seeking revenge on Israel. The fact that many Palestinians continue today as refugees is also to be explained by intra-Arab politics, and by the desire of various Arab...

UCU turns its back on Ukrainians

Little over a decade ago the UCU trade union (which represents staff in Further and Higher Education) was hit by a wave of resignations by Jewish members. They no longer found the union to be habitable for Jews. Their resignations followed decisions by successive UCU congresses to: boycott Israeli academics and HE institutions; sever ties with the Israeli trade union federation Histadrut; disassociate the union from the EUMC definition of antisemitism (a forerunner of the IHRA definition); reject a motion condemning UCU’s decision to invite an international speaker known for antisemitism; and...

Israel-Palestine at Labour conference

The conference agenda has several motions on Israel-Palestine, mostly elaborations on Labour and Palestine’s model motion . No likely composite will deserve support as improving Labour’s existing policy. Nor would the model motion circulated by the Labour right (Labour To Win), but no CLP has submitted that . • No motion adds to Labour’s “two states” policy what it mostly lacks — solidarity with forces on the ground fighting for that, such as the Jewish-Arab Standing Together movement in Israel, trade unions, or campaigns against checkpoints and house demolitions. Probably all the CLPs...

BDS policy blocks strike solidarity

At the National Executive Committee of the public services union Unison on 14 July, a full time official blocked a message of support to striking hospital workers in Israel on grounds of the union’s “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions” (BDS) policy. The official declared the motion invalid because the workers are organised by the Histadrut (the Israeli TUC), and Unison takes its BDS policy to rule out links with it. The Socialist Party, whose members moved the motion, points out that the lack of formal links should not have prevented a message. But the official got away with it, showing how BDS...

Speech at the UCU Congress

We will report on the Congress and Higher Education Sector Conference of the University and College Union (UCU) in next week’s Solidarity . Here we re-publish in full a speech made by Cambridge UCU delegate, Josh Lovell, who spoke in the late motion debate on Israel/Palestine. “Congress, as this is a motion passed in my branch, I will be voting in favour as per my mandate but want to share some views in a personal capacity. "In previous motions, where delegates (myself included) have called on the union to speak up and campaign for sanctions, or boycotts, these have always been tied to...

Students mobilise on Palestine

The student union at SOAS university in London joined the Palestinian call for a strike on 18 May, and finished the week with a campus vigil for lives lost to colonial violence. London students went on to join the internationalist bloc at the Palestine demo in London on Saturday, connecting struggles from Colombia, Ethiopia and Palestine as a common struggle against oppression and state violence. Apartheid off Campus, a student campaign group, has called a day of action for Friday 28 May: “a call for students to unite for BDS”. The student union at SOAS university in London voted to reaffirm...

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