The Transport and General Workers’ Union is, unfortunately, the latest UK union to endorse a boycott of Israel.
Perhaps uncoincidentally, Stop the War Coalition leader Andrew Murray is the T&GWU’s communications director. The STWC has organized a number of small demonstrations against Israel, in which many participants expressed support for the reactionary Hezbollah and Hamas.
I can’t help wondering whether Communist Party member Murray, had he been around and following the Party line in the late 1940s, would have organized pro-Israel demonstrations back then. After all the Soviet Union and its satellites voted to support the United Nations’ two-state partition plan in 1947. And the Soviets approved client-state Czechoslovakia’s arms shipments to the new Israeli army in 1948’s War of Independence against the invading Arab forces.
It was only when the Soviets decided it was to their advantage to cultivate the Arab regimes that the line changed and people like Murray became ardent anti-Zionists.
On a related note: Don’t forget Engage’s anti-boycott meeting July 11.
Update: See modernity’s excellent comment of July 5, 2007, 7:41 PM.
