THE Palestine Liberation Organisation has condemned the new Tory ‘guidance’ banning councils, NHS trusts and all publicly funded organisations from boycotting goods and services from Israel and Israeli settlements.
On February 16th and 17th, PLO Executive Committee members Dr Hanan Ashrawi and Dr Saeb Erekat (Secretary General), met with the British Minister for Middle East Affairs Tobias Ellwood.
After the meetings they said: ‘We are seriously concerned at the new British “guidance” that would entail the banning of any kind of ethical procurement by local governments, public bodies and any organisation that receives public funding, including some student unions.
‘In practical terms this means that such bodies are forbidden from exercising their democratic right and freedom of choice not to be complicit in the Israeli settlement project and to take a positive, moral and legal stand in the face of such a war crime.’
In fact they are being forcibly chained to the Israeli murder machine! Said Erekat: ‘In order to accommodate the Israeli occupation, the British government is undermining British democracy and their own people’s rights. Such a law would have prevented British citizens from taking peaceful actions against the South African Apartheid. . .
‘Next year signals the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, a tragedy that continues to victimise the Palestinian people, both under occupation and in exile. The United Kingdom bears the primary responsibility for such a historical injustice in Palestine.’
Erekat said: ‘This decision is considered a reward for Israel’s ongoing settlement activities and war crimes against the unarmed Palestinian population.’ Erekat wondered how the British government allows a settler such as Israeli minister Yuli Edelstein, who lives on a west Bank settlement, to address the combined Houses of Parliament on March 2.
In fact, by this conduct the British government is first of all dancing on the graves of all of the dead Palestinian youth who have been slaughtered this year by Israeli soldiers and settlers. As well, on the eve of a new imperialist intervention against Syria, the Tories are cementing their bloody relationship with the Israeli Zionist leadership, with a bonfire of British democratic rights!
As the PLO correctly observes, the British ruling class is taking action against the basic rights won by British workers in order to further its alliance with the Zionists. It is complicit in the arming of Israel and the murder of Palestinian young people, and to continue this bloody alliance it is now hitting out at democratic rights at home!
In the 1870s Marx issued a warning about this kind of development. He warned British workers that unless they fought for the freedom of Ireland they would be fashioning the chains that the Anglo-Irish aristocracy would use to bind them.
Marx wrote in a January 1870 circular from the General Council of the International: ‘England today, is seeing a repetition of what happened on a gigantic scale in ancient Rome. A nation that enslaves another forges its own chains.’ Indeed, for English workers, he wrote in a letter in April of that same year, ‘the national emancipation of Ireland is no question of abstract justice or humanitarian sentiment but the first condition of their own social emancipation.’
Today, the UK ruling class is imposing chains for use against workers’ democratic rights in order to be able to carry out its counter-revolutionary role in the Middle East alongside Israel, to the full.
The order against the councils and other bodies is just the start. To smash the Palestinians and the Syrians, and survive the growing world crisis, it will be necessary to completely loot the NHS and the Welfare State.
Workers in the UK must respond immediately to this Tory attack. All Labour councils must boycott Israel, and its settlements, along with all trade unions and student unions. There must be a national campaign to cancel the invitation to the Zionist settler Edelstein to address both Houses of Parliament. This must be done, or else die of shame!