Friday, September 18, 2009

British Trade Unions to Boycott Goods From Israeli Settlements

The Trades Union Congress (TUC), the British equivalent of the AFL-CIO, passed a resolution at its annual conference yesterday calling for a boycott of goods originating from Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Originally, the TUC wanted an across the board boycott of all Israeli goods. The TUC objects not only to the settlements but the separation fence and the IDF's defensive operations in Gaza last December and January.  Narrowing their focus on the settlements, I fear, has given anti-Israeli forces a stronger hand.  

By confining their protests to the settlements anti-Israeli forces in the trade union movement and elsewhere can argue they object only to the settlements and nothing else.  That isn't true of course. But yet the settlements are unpopular amongst those who normally support Israel. President Bush had little sympathy for the settlements and neither did former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the late William F. Buckley. It would come as no surprise me if similar protests targeting the settlements are made by other trade unions around the world as well as college and university campuses where divestment movements were so popular earlier this decade.

As I have argued before the settlements are a red herring.  After all there are no settlements in Gaza and yet the rocket attacks into Israel escalated.  I have no reason to believe the Palestinians nor the Muslim world will be mollified in the least should the settlements in the West Bank be abandoned. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As Joan Peters [From Time Immemorial] established in her exhaustive investigation of Israel and the "Palestinian" problem, the Palestinian state is within the borders of Jordan. The two states were established by the UN in 1948.

The Palestinians were prevented by their Israel hating leaders from occupying their new state. Their leaders, then and now, wanted them in miserable refugee camps so they could deny the land given to them and demand what they desired all along: Israel's total territory and the Jews driven into the sea.

This is why the Palestinian and Arab nation's maps do not show the Israeli nation.

The Israelis should not relinquish one more square foot. If they do, it will not achieve peace. The Palestinian appetite for Israeli land is unquenchable.

Israel should not concern itself with the British Trade Unions boycott. It is born of an ancient scar in that part of the world. Britain is experiencing a resurgence of anti-Semitism largely because of their ever growing Islamic population and their desire for easy access to Arab oil without the fear of terrorism, which is believed to be due to their government's support of the Israeli nation.

Sadly, Israel has become what the Bible describes as a " cup of trembling" to the world.