Largest British union refuses to offer support for peace talks

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/largest-refuses-support.html

Unite, Britain’s biggest trade union and the leading labor union backer of the Labour Party, voted this week to support BDS, the boycott/divestment/sanctions movement, but also to reject the peace process. The report is at Middle East Monitor:

A motion titled “Israeli-Palestinian Co-operation” was not carried, however. The motion expressed support for the stricken U.S.-led peace talks and encouraged engagement with both Israeli and Palestinian trade unions.

The vote is further evidence that the two-state paradigm is collapsing. Even as Martin Indyk and the US establishment affirm that the two-state solution is the only option, the failure of the peace process and Israel’s relentless expansion have made these declarations highly doubtful. Europe is turning increasingly to boycott measures; even Roger Cohen, a liberal Zionist, says the Green Line is “long-forgotten;” and many on the left are offering more inclusive alternatives (like Noam Chomsky’s vision of a binational alternative at our site last year).

BDS and movements like it are growing. I hope Israel takes note before it is too late.

[BillZBubb]

1. Let's hope what is now a trickle...

becomes a deluge.

[LeftishBrit]

2. In other words, a few activists voted on an issue irrelevant to the vast majority of union members

UNITE has no influence whatsoever on what happens in Israel or Palestine.

But, in the UK, the public services are under terrible threat from the privatization-mad, cuts-led Tory-led government, and even Labour, though much better than the Tories, are not as committed to public services as they should be. UNITE needs to unite in fighting THE FIGHT OF MY COUNTRY'S LIFE against the partial or complete destruction of public services including the NHS; and not let itself be deflected by useless gestures and slogans about a place 2000 miles away to which most of them have never been.

By the way, what this article does NOT say is that, on the one Israel-related issue where a union vote may actually be relevant, UNITE have voted to retain links with Histadrut.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

3. In other words more and more people

are getting tired and not tolerating Israeli policy any longer.

BDS.

[LeftishBrit]

4. In other words...

you're not really that interested in what happens to the UK's public services, and those who work for them, so long as you can use some basically extracurricular activity of some activists as an argument for the BDS movement. As if UNITE could do anything to 'support the peace talks' anyway; this is all an empty symbolic gesture.

And in 1-2-3 some of the very pro-Israel contingent will be along, saying that this shows how eeeeevil the British unions and the British Left are.

Well, understandable I suppose, on both sides. Most of you don't live in the UK. But those who do are in the midst of a war to the death for the public services!


Here is the website for UNITE, to show what they REALLY spend their time on, and need to!

http://www.unitetheunion.org/

[shaayecanaan]

5. actually, my impression of the transport union in the uk

was that its members tended to be very supportive of the palestinians, as well as being very anti apartheid (apartheid was still around when I was in the UK).

I can't speak for them but I imagine that their response would be that they are capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.

I suppose Palestine is a long way away, but so was south Africa.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

6. All I am saying is that the chorus against Israeli

apartheid is growing. It can't be ignored or waved off. BDS is growing, and Israel and its supporters had better wake up.