Irish Unions Boycott Israeli Goods

London, Feb 11 – Irish trade unionists are launching a boycott of Israeli goods as part of a major campaign to secure a peaceful settlement in the Middle East.

At an event hosted by the Northern Ireland Assembly in Belfast Wednesday, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) announced it would be holding a major conference this year as a springboard for their boycott campaign.

In a new report compiled by senior members who visited the occupied territories more than a year ago, union leaders said that they were deeply shocked by the conditions from which the Palestinians have been suffering for over thre years.

"I didn't expect the denial of human rights and the discrimination to be so evident and to be an obvious part of daily life,” said ICTU president Patricia McKeown (pictured), who led the delegation.

"To see the unemployment rate on the West Bank rising to 80%, to see the people having to get up at three in the morning, and virtually sleep outside the army controlled crossings in order to get into work - that's something we didn't expect to see," McKeown said.

The ICTU, representing trade unions across Ireland including 36 in Northern Ireland with 250,948 members, called for the ending of the Euro-Med Agreement with Israel last October as a consequence of its failure to abide by the conditions on human rights.

“Israel has demonstrated that it will not abide by the international opinion, the international law or the UN conventions and resolutions. It leaves no option but the exercise of sanctions,” it said.

The boycott of Israeli goods represents a marked step-up in gear by Irish unions in their campaign while details are being finalized ahead of the conference.
The campaign is being supported by Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams, who told the meeting that since the visit by the 11-member ICTU delegation, Gaza has been the “target of an all-out military assault by Israeli forces.”

“Unless the international community -- and that includes the Irish government, the British government, the EU and the US government -- exercises its considerable influence and authority, any relaxation of the current assault on Gaza will only bring a short respite,” Adams warned.

He said over 1,300 Palestinians were killed, many of them children and that a “sustained international effort” was needed to secure a durable settlement. "If the conflict here taught us anything, is that no conflict is intractable,” he said.
The Irish nationalist SDLP's Carmel Hanna also said that the experiences of the Northern Ireland should inspire support for peace in the Middle East.

"We have learned from the conflict here that violence does not work and creates bitterness," said Hanna, a former employment and learning minister.
But the report was criticized as “unbalanced” by the Democratic Unionists (DUP), which has voiced support for Israel and suggested that the ICTU would be better to concentrate on local issues.

McKeown suggested that the DUP’s rejection was due to “an absence of knowledge” as well as political interests, emphasizing that even former South African president Nelson Mandela described the Middle East conflict “as the most important problem on this planet."

Source : IRNA