Posted by John, September 28th, 2009 - under Israel, Zionism.

Tags: Apartheid

In an important step forward for the international Palestine solidarity campaign, the British Trade Union Congress (equivalent of the ACTU) has voted to back a boycott of Israeli goods.

After a heated debate at its national conference, the TUC General Council passed a motion calling on the British Government to condemn the Israeli military aggression and the continuing blockade of Gaza, end arms sales to Israel which reached a value of £18.8 million in 2008, and seek EU agreement to impose a ban on the importing of goods produced in the illegal settlements.

Their statement went on: “To increase the pressure for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories, and the removal of the separation wall and the illegal settlements, we will support a boycott…of those goods and agricultural products that originate in illegal settlements – through developing an effective, targeted consumer-led boycott campaign working closely with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign – and campaign for disinvestment by companies associated with the occupation as well as engaged in building the separation wall.”

The TUC statement was far from perfect – the final motion was a compromise between left and right – but it is nonetheless highly significant that Britain’s peak union body would align itself so clearly with the Palestinian cause, and with the growing international boycott campaign.

This is just the latest indicator that an increasing number of organisations and individuals are prepared to take a stand against Israel.

For example the September 25 Palestine protest in Australia was endorsed by the Victorian Trades Hall Council, which passed a motion stating that “VTHC stands in solidarity with the people of Palestine on this day and their continuing struggle for freedom and human rights.”

And in the same week as the TUC Congress, hundreds of artists and activists put their names to an open letter to the Toronto International Film Festival objecting to Tel Aviv being chosen as the first of its “city to city” showcases.

The letter said that to celebrate Tel Aviv without talking about occupation or this year’s bloody attack on Gaza is “like rhapsodising about the beauty and elegant lifestyles in white-only Cape Town or Johannesburg during apartheid without acknowledging the corresponding black townships of Khayelitsha and Soweto.

“In the wake of this year’s brutal assault on Gaza, we object to the use of such an important festival to stage a propaganda campaign on behalf of what South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former US president Jimmy Carter, and UN General Assembly president Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann have all characterised as an apartheid regime.”

The fact that more and more people are gaining the courage to take a stand indicates that since the Gaza war, the ideological defences of Israel are starting to crack open.

While the apologists for Zionism still hurl accusations of anti-Semitism at anyone who dares to criticise Israel’s crimes, the baseless nature of such charges is increasingly clear.

The claim that Israel is the victim, or even that blame for the conflict should be shared by both sides, has become untenable in the wake of the Gaza war, a one-sided bloodbath that sickened millions around the world, including in the usually indifferent West.

Support for Israel is increasingly associated (correctly) with foul war-mongering and anti-Muslim racism. It is indicative that skinhead fascist demonstrators in Britain, protesting to kick Muslims out of the country, now carry Israeli flags on their marches.

But while the truth about Israel is becoming clearer to ever wider layers of people, it remains the case that Western governments – in particular the US and Australia – stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel no matter how odious the crimes it carries out.

If anything, the Australian government is even more pro-Israel than the US. It even went so far in September as to ban SBS from referring to the occupied territories as Palestinian land – a stance that aligns them with the extreme right-wing fringe of Zionism.

On the university campuses, students campaigning for Palestine have met with numerous attempts to stop them from speaking out. And the mainstream media in Australia is still relentlessly pro-Israel.

This indicates the vital importance of building an ongoing solidarity movement that can combat the right-wing pro-Israel arguments, and establish that solidarity with Palestine is as necessary and as justifiable as it was to oppose the Iraq war, or the apartheid regime in South Africa.

This article, by Corey Oakley, first appeared in Socialist Alternative.