eileen fleming

Within hours of the courageous landmark decision by Britain’s trade unions that voted overwhelmingly to commit to build a mass BDS movement on Israel as the way to negotiate for justice for Palestinians, Peter Benjamin Mandelson, Britain's current First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, President of the Board of Trade and Lord President of the Council, announced that boycotts are "unhelpful and polarize the debate." [1]

According to Wikipedia, Baron Peter Benjamin Mandelson was one of the very first people in Britain to be labeled a "spin doctor" is referred to as the "Prince of Darkness" and Tam Dalyell, while Father of the House of Commons, claimed Mandelson formed part of Blair's 'Jewish cabal' in May 2003. In response Mandelson stated, "Apart from the fact that I am not actually Jewish, I wear my father's parentage with pride." [2]

It has been written that pride always goes before a fall.

I am not 'legally' Jewish either but my grandfather was a Polish Jew who died before I could learn how many of my relatives were gassed and fried because good people did nothing for too very long. I also am in solidarity with the boycott, divestment and sanction movement of Israel on moral grounds.

During one of my seven trips to Israel and Occupied Palestine, Mohammad Alatar, film producer of “The Iron Wall” informed me:

"I am a Muslim Palestinian American and when my son asked me who my hero was I took three days to think about it. I told him my hero is Jesus, because he took a stand and he died for it.

"What really needs to be done is for the churches to be like Jesus; to challenge the Israeli occupation and address the apartheid practices as moral issues. Even if every church divested and boycotted Israel it would not harm Israel.

"After the USA and Russia, Israel is the third largest arms exporter in the world. It is a moral issue that the churches must address."

What a wonderful world it could be, if all politicians and religious leaders had the same moral backbone demonstrated on September 17, 2009, at the 2009 Trades Union Congress/TUC Annual Congress in Liverpool.

Unions representing 6.5 million workers across the UK were addressed by Hugh Lanning, chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, who stated:

"This motion is the culmination of a wave of motions passed at union conferences this year, following outrage at Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, and reflects the massive growth in support for Palestinian rights. We will be working with the TUC to develop a mass campaign to boycott Israeli goods, especially agricultural products that have been produced in illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank."

The motion also called for the TUC General Council to "put pressure on the British government to end all arms trading with Israel and support moves to suspend the EU-Israel trade agreement. Unions are also encouraged to disinvest from companies which profit from Israel’s illegal 42-year occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and condemned the Israeli trade union Histadrut’s statement supporting Israel’s war on Gaza, which killed 1,450 Palestinians in three weeks." [3]

The courageous Fire Brigades Union also called on the General Council to carry out a review of the TUC’s relationship with Histadrut. The FBU also seeks to:

Pressure their Government to encourage campaigns of disinvestment from companies who make money by continuing the occupation of Palestine

To Condemn the Israeli military aggression and end the blockade on Gaza

End all arms trading with Israel

Impose a ban on the importing of goods produced in the illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories

And to Support moves to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

Ynet quoted Baron Mandelson that "The UK does not support boycotts against Israel as they are unhelpful and polarize the debate."

This American dissident states that polarization is exactly what is needed!

Webster's defines polarity as "any tendencies to turn, grow, think, feel, etc. in a certain way or direction"

As Bob Dylan sings:

"Well I'm looking the world over, looking far off into the East…I feel a change coming on…Some people they tell me I got the blood of the land in my voice…I feel a change coming on." [2009, Together Through Life]

Most encouraging is that TUC's annual conference also called for an end to arms trading with Israel.

Israel is the largest recipient of USA military aid, and it uses it to enforce its ILLEGAL occupation and commit human rights abuses against the indigenous people of the so called holy land-which is in pieces: bantustans!

Back in 2002, White House Spokesperson Ari Fleischer described Israel’s missile strikes in Gaza City using U.S.A F-16 fighter jets as “a deliberate attack against a building in which civilians were known to be located” and that it was done with the knowledge “that innocents would be lost.”

The U.S. Arms Export Control Act (U.S. Public Law 90-829) prohibits the use of U.S. weapons against civilian targets and although Palestinians have attacked Israeli civilians with their dirty bombs, those weapons were not provided by the USA!

On September 15, 2009, the UN Fact Finding Mission led by Justice Richard Goldstone released its report on Israel's Dec/Jan. assault on Gaza and "concluded there is evidence indicating serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict, and that Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity." [4]

The 574- page report analyzed, "36 specific incidents in Gaza, as well as a number of others in the West Bank and Israel…conducted 188 individual interviews, reviewed more 10,000 pages of documentation, and viewed some 1,200 photographs, including satellite imagery, as well as 30 videos. The mission heard 38 testimonies during two separate public hearings held in Gaza and Geneva, which were webcast in their entirety. The decision to hear participants from Israel and the West Bank in Geneva rather than in situ was taken after Israel denied the Mission access to both locations. Israel also failed to respond to a comprehensive list of questions posed to it by the Mission. Palestinian authorities in both Gaza and the West Bank cooperated with the Mission.

"The Mission found that, in the lead up to the Israeli military assault on Gaza, Israel imposed a blockade amounting to collective punishment and carried out a systematic policy of progressive isolation and deprivation of the Gaza Strip. During the Israeli military operation, code-named "Operation Cast Lead," houses, factories, wells, schools, hospitals, police stations and other public buildings were destroyed. Families are still living amid the rubble of their former homes long after the attacks ended, as reconstruction has been impossible due to the continuing blockade. More than 1,400 people were killed during the military operation." [Ibid]

The report concluded "that the Israeli military operation was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole, in furtherance of an overall and continuing policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population, and in a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed at the civilian population. The destruction of food supply installations, water sanitation systems, concrete factories and residential houses was the result of a deliberate and systematic policy which has made the daily process of living, and dignified living, more difficult for the civilian population [and] that Israeli acts that deprive Palestinians in the Gaza Strip of their means of subsistence, employment, housing and water, that deny their freedom of movement and their right to leave and enter their own country [and] underlines that the loss of life and destruction caused by Israeli forces during the military operation was a result of disrespect for the fundamental principle of "distinction" in international humanitarian law that requires military forces to distinguish between military targets and civilians and civilian objects at all times." [Ibid]

On September 17, 2009, Middle East Analyst Omar Barghouti wrote: "Given that TUC represents over 6.5 million British workers…The size and political significance of the British TUC's endorsement of BDS motions will surely add qualitatively to the impressive rise of the BDS movement after the Israeli massacre in Gaza, further confirming that our South Africa moment has arrived…It is worth remembering that in the struggle against South African apartheid the British trade union movement was among the very few in the vanguard of boycotts and divestment that eventually spread to the rest of the world, helping the democracy and freedom movement in South Africa bring down the racist regime." [5]

Richard Goldstone, the former chief prosecutor for war-crime tribunals on Rwanda who headed the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, wrote for the New York Times:

"Pursuing justice in this case is essential because no state or armed group should be above the law. Western governments in particular face a challenge because they have pushed for accountability in places like Darfur, but now must do the same with Israel, an ally and a democratic state.

"Failing to pursue justice for serious violations during the fighting will have a deeply corrosive effect on international justice, and reveal an unacceptable hypocrisy. As a service to the hundreds of civilians who needlessly died and for the equal application of international justice, the perpetrators of serious violations must be held to account." [6]

Britain’s trade unions have joined those of South Africa and Ireland in voting to use a mass boycott campaign as a tool to bring Israel into line with international law, and pressure it to comply with UN resolutions that seeks justice and equality for the Palestinian people.

In paraphrase of Bob Dylan, this American dissident is calling on US senators and congressmen to wake up and heed that same call! Don't stand around like furniture for there's a battle outside and it is ragin! It's shaking your windows and rattling your walls: The times they have a-changed!

1. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3778692,00.html

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Mandelson#cite_note-independent.co.uk-4

3. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1371&Itemid=223

4. http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/docs/UNFFMGC_Report.pdf

5. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1371&Itemid=223

6. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/opinion/17goldstone.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Eileen Fleming, A Feature Correspondent for The Palestine Telegraph and Arabisto.com
Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
Author of "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
She Produced "30 Minutes with Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu" because corporate US media has been MIA all during Vanunu's FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial in the 'democracy' of Israel

-###-

Only in Solidarity do "we have it in our power to begin the world again." -Tom Paine

Eileen Fleming, A Feature Correspondent for The Palestine Telegraph and Arabisto.com
Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
Author of "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
Producer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"