Scottish Zionists claim TUC vote for justice was racist

by Mick Napier

With two votes against, 400 delegates at the 2009 Scottish Trade Union Congress in Perth voted on Wednesday for BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel) and a review of its relations with the Israeli Histadrut, in support of the Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice.

Sadly, Ephraim Borowski, Director of the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities, has responded with the usual Zionist ‘one size fits all’ accusation that these Scottish workers were ‘anti-semitic’. Nothing is further from the truth. The delegates of every trade union in Scotland were driven by feelings of solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people and anger at Israeli theft of land, extreme violence, racism and state-enforced apartheid.

The leaders of SCoJeC have a record of throwing around reckless accusations. Last year, Scottish PSC took legal action against their malicious allegations that our own organisation was racist, with the result that SCoJeC had to pulp 6,000 copies of a book published in the name of Scottish Jews. Scottish PSC urges SCoJeC members to look carefully at such a pattern of reckless behaviour by their representatives.

SPSC has always stood against Israel's attempts to implicate all Jews in Israel’s crimes. Opposition to Israel’s crimes is now shaping into active boycott of Israeli state institutions and companies, or any company complicit in Israel’s violations of international law. SPSC will seek to build upon our track record of working together with Israelis committed to Palestinian human rights, especially the representatives of over one million Israelis who are openly calling for international boycott to oppose Israeli apartheid.

We all have to face up to the same issues: what to do when our self-styled representatives support crimes that implicate us all? Common decency, but also a sense of self-interest, demands that we oppose the aggressions being committed in our name against the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.

24 April 2009