]]>“The Labour NEC has decided to boycott G4S for providing the metal detectors and security guards that protect Israeli civillians from terror attacks. The NEC vote calls into question Labour’s commitment to security and conflicts with the Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn’s strong statements opposing the de-legitimisation of Israel. So what is Labour’s policy now? This decision is pointless gesture politics and we urge Labour’s General Secretary to ensure G4S is treated fairly and that this boycott is reversed.”
This is a cross post from The Telegraph by Jake Wallis
May 5th, 2014
Boycotting Israel: can it ever be justified?
We’re not normally called upon to justify a decision to travel abroad. Few people would challenge me if I were visiting China, despite that country’s appalling human rights record, repression of free speech, and colonisation of Tibet. If I was travelling to America, even though Predator drones kill thousands of innocent people each year, and even though Guantanamo Bay still holds 154 detainees, nobody would complain.
I would not be criticised for travelling to Egypt, which has become a police state that imprisons journalists, attacks protesters, and sentences political opponents to death. Nobody would suggest that I boycott India; or Pakistan; or Venezuela; or Saudi Arabia; or indeed Britain, which – I seem to recall – ignored the United Nations and attacked Iraq.
I could go on. But later this month, I am planning to travel to Israel to appear in the Jerusalem literary festival. As surely as night follows day, I have received an “open letter” from a group of 71 activists calling themselves the British Writers in Support of Palestine (BWIP), led by a poet and “professional Tarot card reader”. They were, I was informed, “extremely disappointed” by my decision, and “respectfully encouraged” me to boycott the event. But I am honoured to have been invited to Israel, and will be proud to attend. Here’s why.
It is my strong belief that Israel is, relatively speaking, a force for good in the world. I’m not saying that it is free from controversy, and I’m not saying that I have no sympathy with Palestinians. But every country that abides by the democratic process, enshrines in law the rights of women and minorities, and conducts itself with compassion both in war and in peace – or at least aspires to do so – deserves our support and respect.
But what about Israel’s flouting of international law, I hear you ask? Very well: but has Britain always been squeaky clean? I have already mentioned the example of Iraq. Britain intentionally bombed civilian targets during the Second World War, which was the last time we were under existential threat (the Area Bombing Directive ordered the RAF to attack the German workforce and destroy morale). Moreover, the Army’s Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre, based in Kensington Palace Gardens, London, between 1940 and 1948, carried out systematic torture on enemy prisoners. If we were at war again, against an enemy that was able to strike at the heart of our civilian population centres, how would we behave?
Would we, perhaps, be tempted to react as we did when the IRA were terrorising the streets of London? Would we reprise the British Army’s Operation Demetrius of 1971, which allegedly included detention without trial, beating, starving, hooding for long periods, harassment with dogs, placing nooses around prisoners’ necks, forcible head shaving, denying prisoners clothes, forcing them to run barefoot behind Army vehicles, burning them with cigarettes, dragging them by the hair and pressing guns to their heads? Would Bloody Sunday, in which 26 protesters and bystanders were shot by British paratroopers, happen again?
These examples are particularly relevant when you consider the geographical, topographical and historical context in which Israel exists. The Jewish state is roughly the size of Wales, with a ridge of high ground running along the middle of the West Bank. If Britain were surrounded by hostile neighbours at such close proximity, some of which contained terror groups bent on the destruction of the country, would we be doing any better? And would a fearful British public be outraged at the Army’s brutality? Or relieved that it was keeping us safe?
It is significant that a man who knows war, Colonel Richard Kemp – the former commander of Britain’s armed forces in Afghanistan – testified to the UN Human Rights Council that the Israeli military does “more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare”. It is right that every instance of military abuse should be treated gravely. But this does not justify a boycott.
From a historical point of view, Israel has been attacked repeatedly by an enemy bent on its destruction (when the Arab world attempted to liquidate the Jewish State in 1967, the settlements had not yet been built). The country has suffered terror attack after terror attack, tragedy after tragedy. Clearly, whatever the boycott activists may say, to draw a parallel with pre-1994 South Africa is ludicrous.
Of course, Israel presents many areas of concern. In particular, the situation on the West Bank is disturbing, as are the societal disadvantages that confront minorities in Israel, particularly Israeli Arabs. The army has been guilty of heavy-handedness many times. And it is sad to witness the tit-for-tat violence the plagues the region, not to mention the heavy civilian losses that are sustained by Palestinians in warfare.
Again, I could go on. But to boycott Israel alone reveals a deeply partisan approach to the conflict, and a ridiculously naïve and even hypocritical one.
By the standards of the pro-boycott activists, should the Palestinians not also be boycotted? Their society is severely intolerant of homosexuals; many go to live in Israel rather than face oppression at home. The Palestinian government has signed a reconciliation deal with a terror organisation, and within weeks they may form a unity government. As Ireported in the Telegraph last week, the Palestinian leadership pays huge financial rewards to those convicted of terror offences, and cold-blooded child killers are celebrated as heroes when they are released.
While we’re on the subject, shouldn’t the BWIP have called their group “British Writers In Support of Palestine and Israel”? And if not, why not?
For these reasons I am proud to be travelling to Israel later this month. As a journalist I value objectivity above all, and am not interested in closing my ears to one side of any story, particularly a story as complex as this. And as a novelist, my concern is with the human condition; attending a festival with fellow writers and artists who are not afraid of challenging ideas can only be a good thing.
And given that according to a YouGov poll, three-quarters of Britons “see no reason why British performers should not travel to Israel” – and fewer than one in five Britons believe that Israeli artists should be barred from the UK – I travel in the knowledge that I have public opinion on my side.
BBC branches spoke against the motion, and the Guardian branch was also a vocal opponent.
After being alerted, UK Labour Leader Ed Miliband spoke out against the boycott proposal during his Israel visit last week. The motion was opposed by the Union’s National Executive Committee. NUJ’s General-Secretary made a strong speech against the motion which might have swayed many delegates. NUJ’s own report of the debate can be read here
A spokesman for the Fair Play campaign said:
“We welcome the decision by the NUJ’s General-Secretary, Executive and Delegates to overwhelmingly reject a boycott of Israel. Seven years ago, the NUJ voted to boycott Israel, provoking a major backlash from serious journalists in Britain and around the world. Today, the Union has renounced this path and has chosen another, better way that’s true to the journalistic values of neutrality and fairness.”
]]>A Fair Play Spokesperson said: ”When Anti-Israel activists failed to convince Eric Burdon to cancel his trip to Israel, they resorted to intimidation and threats instead. This isn’t a victory for boycott campaigners, but for thugs. We call on performers to stand up to these bullies, whose antics do nothing to further peace. As Eric himself said “people cannot be denied music.”
]]>The Jewish Leadership Council of the UK recently led a group of leaders from several Christian organizations to Israel and the Palestinian territories.
This group had the opportunity to meet with and question Israeli officials, citizens and clergy.
Fran Waddams of Anglican Friends of Israel, one of the organizations represented on the trip, responds to a report by the archbishop of Canterbury on his visit to the Holy Land which took place a few days later.
Dear Archbishop Justin,
I toured the Holy Land, together with Christian leaders of other organizations, on a visit organized by the UK Jewish Leadership Council just a few days before you last month, and read your reflections on your own visit to the region wondering whether you would be as attentive and impartial as you were at a meeting a few years ago at which I spoke and you were chair.
It’s heartening that you support the rights of all people in the region “to peace, security, and justice.”
The issues you touch on also arose on our three days of visits and meetings with Israelis, both Jewish and Arab, and Palestinians, and some questions sprang to mind as I read your piece.
You were shocked at the contrast between west Jerusalem and Ramallah.
Next time you visit, would you ask Palestinian leaders why there is such a contrast? The Palestinian Authority has received billions of dollars in aid. Where, exactly, has this money gone? It doesn’t appear to have gone into infrastructure, public buildings and utilities, nor created Palestinian jobs nor gone onto Palestinian tables. It might really help our understanding if we knew the answers to this question.
Palestinians may find passing through IDF checkpoints inconvenient, or even humiliating.
But air travelers of every nationality accept the indignity of intrusive security searches, understanding that there are those who would blow airliners out of the sky if measures were not taken to stop them.
Israel’s security fence and checkpoints exist for the same reason. They were put into place only after dozens of murders and hundreds of mutilations caused by Palestinian suicide bombers who drove unhindered into Israel to carry out their missions. Several people loaded with explosives have been stopped at checkpoints over the years. Every week the Israel Defense Forces intercepts weapons and explosives and prevents indiscriminate death and mutilation of Palestinians and Israelis alike. Israel’s security measures save lives.
One young Palestinian woman has written that “most Palestinian Christians and peace loving Muslims acknowledge (privately) that the wall was built as a direct response to suicide bombers from within the Palestinian community.”
However unwilling the Ecumenical Accompaniers Programme for Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) is to believe it, it is a fact that the number of terror attacks, which reached epidemic proportions by 2003, has dwindled to almost nothing.
Like us, you were alarmed by the danger with which the citizens of Sderot live daily. It’s one thing to read dispassionately the few reports that appear in the UK media, quite another to be on the spot, wondering whether the nearest bomb shelter (at every bus stop) could be reached within the 15 seconds between the Red Alert and the missile exploding. The morning after our visit, terrorists were lobbing missiles toward Israel.
They missed this time. But missing was not the intention, and it didn’t stop Sderot’s parents having to make agonizing decisions on whether they had time to get all their children to shelter in time.
Then we met young IDF soldiers, amazed that British Christians wanted to show appreciation for their dangerous work. Most Christians they encounter are scrutinizing their behavior for faults as they work at checkpoints or try to prevent violence at demonstrations.
These Christians seem indifferent to the dangers they face as they try to distinguish between peaceful Palestinians and those smuggling explosives or weapons.
Finally we had the privilege of visiting Baptist Pastor Naim Khoury in Bethlehem. Brought up to believe that the Jewish Scriptures were irrelevant, he began to read them for himself as a 17 year old. He has discovered that the whole Bible is God’s Word, not just the New Testament and as a result insists that Palestinian Christians are obliged to love all their neighbors, Muslim and Jew.
He also learned that God has given the Jewish people a right to live in the Holy Land. Pastor Khoury does not endorse all that the Israeli government does. Nevertheless, he insists that Jews’ right to live unhindered on the land promised to them by the God is clearly set out in the Bible.
As a result of his courage, Pastor Khoury is shunned by fellow Christians, his church has had its right to conduct official marriages and baptisms withdrawn by the Palestinian Authority, his church has been bombed 14 times, and he was once shot. Nevertheless, his Arab congregation numbers in the hundreds, the largest in the Territories. What an irony.
The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is complex.
It is about land and it is about justice. And your question is excellent – what constitutes a “just solution.” There are many voices that you won’t hear by sticking to “official” channels. The truths told by the “other voices” are out there, but so often those voices have to be sought out.
They’re worth listening to.
They really are.
]]>Trade between Britain and Israel rose by 21.9 per cent year-on-year between the first quarter of 2012 and 2013.
And despite the vociferous boycott campaign, imports from Israel rose by 55.6 per cent in the same period.
The figures released by the Central Bureau of Statistics in Israel show a £170 million overall increase in bilateral trade.
Most of the British imports come from Israel’s renowned high-tech sector. But food produce is also a key contributor to the buoyant trade figures, despite being one of the boycott campaign’s main areas of attack.
The UK is Israel’s second largest export market. The US is the largest.
Noah Shani, minister for Trade and Economic Affairs at the Israeli Embassy in London, said: “Business between Israel and the UK is booming and the latest bilateral trade figures are once again testament to the strength and vibrancy of this trade relationship.”
Hugo Bieber, chief executive of UK Israel Business, a leading organisation promoting trade relations between the two countries, added: “We have seen significant interest from Israeli firms exporting to the UK and also from UK firms looking to purchase best-in-class products and services from Israel.
“Given Israel’s status as the ‘start-up nation’, consistently developing new technologies across sectors, we expect to see trade between the UK and Israel continue to increase.
“When business is put ahead of politics, significant economic benefits can be seen for both the UK and Israel.”
Since the beginning of the year, the UK Israel Tech Hub at the British embassy has helped organise five tech-related business delegations between the two nations.
This week, Middle East Minister Alistair Burt joined a delegation of 20 British pharmaceutical and biomedical companies to Tel Aviv — including NHS representatives .
The two-day trip is part of a number of government-backed delegations promoting co-operative economic relations between the two counties.
Rohan Silva, a senior policy adviser to David Cameron, led a delegation of British supermarket chains and luxury brands to Israel last month.
Meanwhile, at the UK Israel Business Awards on Wednesday, Sir Mervyn King, the retiring Bank of England Governor, praised Israel’s economic performance. “It is one of the very few advanced economies whose output grew every year throughout the economic crisis”, he said. He also revealed that he had advised Israel’s central bank on a new law regulating the functions of the Bank of Israel.
]]>Speaking ahead of the session – organised by the Jewish News in partnership with the London Jewish Cultural Centre and with the support of the Jewish Leadership Council – Alexander said: “I am looking forward to engaging with members of the Jewish community in such a wonderful setting. I hope the evening will prove to be an interesting exchange of ideas and opinions.”
To be in the audience to quiz one of the Labour Party’s most senior figures, click on www.ljcc.org.uk or call 020 8457 5000.
You may remember that at the start of December we encouraged people to write to Len McCluskey, General Secretary of the Unite trade union, about the very one-sided statement he issued about Operation Pillar of Defence.
Mr McCluskey replied by email on 2 January to everyone who had contacted him. We seem to have generated a large number amount of correspondence as he complains “I have received a number of e-mails, some remarkably similar in content, from members of the public (few, if any, appear to be members of Unite) taking me to task”.
Whilst the bulk of his response consists of further criticism of Israel, almost all of it unrelated to the situation in Gaza, he does at least attempt to distance himself from Hamas, stating: “No political or other support has been offered by Unite to Hamas and we remain wary of it, not least because of the banishment of the PGFTU from Gaza when Hamas assumed the government there.” (PGFTU is the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions).
I have replied in a personal capacity as I happen to be a Unite member, addressing a number of the points he makes. If you want to read Mr McCluskey’s email and my response, they are online here:
If you want to send your own response to Mr McCluskey’s email he can be contacted at [email protected]
It is important that we have written in sufficient numbers that Mr McCluskey finds it necessary to respond and is held in some way accountable when he makes one-sided anti-Israel interventions.
Posted by Luke Akehurst 09:47 BST
]]>Anti-Israel campaigners have been trying to block Veolia from participating in a competitive procurement process for new waste management contracts worth £4.8 billion over 30 years from the North London Waste Authority (NLWA). The NLWA covers the London Boroughs of Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Hackney, Haringey, Islington and Waltham Forest.
Local residents – who want to see a level playing-field for Veolia and object to attempts to boycott Israel and companies connected with it as divisive and unfair – wrote to the NLWA asking it to ignore the boycott campaigners.
Responding to these letters from the public, NLWA Managing Director David Beadle has written:
“The Authority is clear that it cannot take the actions of another member of the Veolia Group into account either as a matter of principle or in the evaluation of competitive bids.
The Authority must also take account of section 17(1) of the Local Government Act 1988 which requires that when considering whether to exclude persons from being invited to tender for contracts, local authorities should exercise their functions without reference to matters which are non commercial matters. Under section 17(5) (e), non commercial matters include “the location in any country or territory of the business activities or interests of, contractors”.
Given this very clear advice, the Authority has not and will not take these matters into account as part of its assessment of the bidders. It is arguable that if it did or if it can be credibly alleged that it may have taken this into account, then the process could be challenged at significant expense to the taxpayer and any decision overturned by the Courts.”
A spokesman for the anti-boycotts Fair Play Campaign Group, said:
“This is yet another in a long run of failures for the campaign to boycott Israel. We are very pleased that the NLWA will pick a contractor based on whether they can provide the best service at the best price for local residents. They have not been swayed by a small but vocal minority of extremists who want North London’s town halls to become a battlefield in the Middle East conflict and who are prejudiced against and try to demonise anything connected to Israel.”
The NLWA letter is the second recent rebuff for the boycott campaign, following Hackney Council’s vote in November not to allow boycott campaigners to speak at a full council meeting.
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This evening the Twitter account of the London BDS group (@londonbds) tweeted this link to an article by Press TV. Ostensibly the article is about sanctions against Israel but almost instantly, and with a remarkable level of vitriol, descends into an antisemitic diatribe covering such diverse topics as the Talmud, the Holocaust and the ‘Jewish lobby’.
In fact, the piece is so prejudiced and so full of antisemitism that it’s difficult to even pull out a few quotes. However, of particular concern are the accusations that:
Netanyahu played his role as expected. Straight out of the Talmud, his coalition does not accept demands from the non-Jewish sub-humans. He will bet the farm on the Jewish Lobbies in the main Western countries, that they can bully their host country legislatures to do their bidding. They have a long track record.
And:
Real historians like David Irving were attacked for printing the forbidden truth and made examples of to cower the rest of the sheep. And yes, Jewish lobbies had their fingerprints all over the dirty deed.
Note that at one point the author uses quotation marks around the words ‘Holocaust’ and ‘survivors’.
It is a truly staggering article, so full of antisemitic accusation and rhetoric that it would have been simply impossible for anyone to have not have noticed the content before tweeting it.
Which begs the question, why did London BDS tweet the article? And will other groups who share their views on Israel publicly condemn this latest disgraceful episode.
Once again serious questions must be asked about the motivations of many of those behind the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
Legitimate debate about the Middle East is one thing. Pure antisemitism, promoted by Israel’s critics in the UK, is something else entirely. We can not let it pass in silence.
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