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Mick Napier of Scottish PSC on
how Israel has arrived at pariah status in world opinion
Israel’s popularity amongst the general public is at an all-time low, not only in Scotland and the UK, but across the whole of Europe and most of the world. In a survey in November last year concluding that “Israel is the Worst Brand in the World”, Global Research reported findings across 35 countries “that Israel is suffering from the worst public image among all countries of the world.” This is no mere blip: all previous surveys of popular opinion show that opposition to Israeli apartheid and terrorism is majority opinion. Well over half of all Europeans think Israel  poses the "biggest threat to world peace," according to a poll commissioned in October 2003 across Europe by the European Commission. The Israeli Govenment has recognised its pariah status among the thinking and humane sections of the population in the US, and has launched a campaign to boost Israel among American soft porn buyers. Leading Zionists have suggested a wave of European anti-Semitism is responsible, but the reasons for the widespread perception of Israel as a threat to peace are not hard to find: mass killings, turning Gaza into the world’s largest prison, invading its neighbours, and an atrocious apartheid system which denies fundamental economic, social and political rights to all non-Jews.
Now Britain’s largest trade unions, including UNISON, have debated at annual conferences and overwhelmingly passed motions for a comprehensive boycott and sanctions against Israel as long as it commits such systematic planned human rights violations. The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) also declared for boycott of Israel. Not only trade unions from the UK, South Africa, Canada, Brazil, Norway and elsewhere: the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church is urging divestment from American corporations that support the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. 
At the same time, however, that mass public opinion is moving against Israel, the UK government remains among the most militant supporters of Israel, refusing support to the families of UK citizens found by a British jury to have been murdered by the Israeli Army. Tony Blair worked hard and succeeded in getting Europe to join with Israel and the USA to impose harsh sanctions on the people of Gaza for voting in a way that Washington and London do not approve. The UK also lobbied openly to delay a UN Security Council cease-fire vote and thus to allow the Israelis to devastate South Lebanon last year, cynically joining the clamour for a cease-fire only when it was clear Israel faced a shattering defeat at the hands of a determined, resourceful and technically brilliant Hezbollah resistance.
Such British complicity in Israeli crime, coupled with widespread popular revulsion at Israeli ethnic cleansing and apartheid, lays the basis for a successful campaign of solidarity with the people of Palestine. Whenever we rely on grass roots energy we can defeat political Zionism, despite their entrenched political support at the top of each major UK party. It was that energy that was mobilised to make the Israeli cricket team fully aware last summer that they were not welcome in Glasgow when they tried to play here: protests forced them to play their final games behind barbed wire in Lossiemouth Ministry of Defence establishment up in the Highlands. A similar threat of mass protests forced the return last year of the tainted money donated by the Israeli Embassy in London to the Edinburgh International Film Festival. The response from Arab Film producers was gratifying.
There are four main areas where Israel and its supporters can be defeated through concerted campaign and boycott:
supporting Glasgow University’s imprisoned Rector, Israeli prisoner Mordechai Vanunu
removing charitable status in Scotland from the racist JNF-KKL (Jewish National Fund)
boycotting 100% Israeli-owned water cooler company Eden Springs
picketing the Israeli-owned Caledonian Hotel in Central Edinburgh
Mordechai Vanunu was elected by the students at Glasgow University for his courage and steadfastness in opposing Israel’s arsenal of WMDs, his opposition to aggressive wars by the US, Britain and Israel and his solidarity with the people of Palestine. Currently, almost 50 MSPs have supported Margo MacDonald’s motion demanding his freedom from Israeli detention. If more people write to their MSPs (we have eight each) then we can secure a parliamentary majority for the elected Rector of Glasgow university and against this particular Israeli human rights violation, which also violates the rights of a good number of Scots as well, both Glasgow University students and others whom Vanunu has now been sentenced to prison afresh for speaking to. Of course Mordechai Vanunu is only one high-profile political prisoner in Israel – there are 11,700 others held in atrocious conditions and routinely tortured in what Gordon Brown calls ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’
The Scottish JNF-KKL, and their UK counterparts (Jewish National Fund) raise money here to acquire land in Israel and Palestine which all Arabs, either Muslim or Christian, are forbidden to lease, live on, or sleep overnight on. Gordon Brown is an open Honorary Sponsor of this racist organisation. Despite this, the increasing awareness of Israel’s denial of basic human rights to Palestinians means that we can now campaign to remove their charitable status here in Scotland with the realistic expectation of success. The JNF’s support for apartheid is so naked that their recent application for affiliation to a key UN committee was rejected (with Britain voting for the JNF, of course). If those who are currently angry at Israeli crimes raise their voices on this issue, the Charities Commission in Scotland (OSCR) will be forced to cancel the charitable status of this racist, openly political, campaign. The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign is confident of victory on this human rights issue but, as we said recently, it is essential that OSCR and the wider Scottish public hear the testimony first hand of Palestinians who have suffered at the hands of KKL-JNF.
The Palestinian people, as I have seen in numerous fact-finding visits there, are determined to resist Israel’s plans to drive them out of Palestine, and to confine them in prisons until the opportune moment to implement mass ethnic cleansing. They are suffering terribly under the impact of the Israeli-Western sanctions and killings. Don’t be misled – when an Israeli thug pulls the trigger to murder a passing Palestinian adult or child for no reason whatsoever, it is as if any one of the British Government’s Ministers is pulling the trigger. The killer acts with impunity, safe in the knowledge that the Israeli government wants the Arabs driven out again, to complete the ethnic cleansing of begun in1948, and knowing that the Palestinians stand utterly alone, with every government in the world either defending the atrocities, or turning a blind eye and punishing the Palestinians for embracing democracy.
All Palestinians I have met, as well as the only Israelis worth talking to, are clear that the crisis in Israel-Palestine cannot be solved locally. Since the world’s governments are working hard to defend Israel, without any semblance of a mandate from their populations, it is necessary for concerned citizens the world over to raise the issue of Palestine. We have local pressure points here in Scotland to oppose and isolate Israel until it ceases its ethnic cleansing. But we have to work at it, all together.
Mick Napier, Chair, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign
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