Trade Unions should focus on boycott of Iran, Not Israel

The decision Britain’s Trades Union Congress (TUC) took to support boycotts, sanctions and divestment targeting Israel was the wrong one.

The energetic campaign to target the most democratic and lively trade union federation in the Middle East, the Israeli Histadrut, is a disappointing case of misplaced priorities. Iran, not Israel, should have been the focus of TUC attention this year. The Iranian regime’s wholesale destruction of independent labor activity includes the imprisonment of key trade union leaders.

Iranian workers would give anything to have the political freedoms, including the right to strike, that Israelis – including Israeli Arabs – have had for decades.

That helps to explain why more than 40 North American unions as well as continental Europe’s largest trade union movement, the Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB), vehemently oppose boycotts of Israel.

Source: Letter to the Editor, by Benny Weinthal and Eric Lee.

(Guardian-UK)