Vision to Reality: The Reut Blog

The UK’s Trade Union Congress (TUC), which represents 6.5 million British workers, recently launched a campaign to promote a consumer boycott of goods produced in Israeli settlements. This comes against the backdrop of a recent British government decision, which recommended specially marking settlement-produced goods. The campaign promoted by the influential TUC demonstrates the growing influence of the Boycott, Sanctions, Divestment (BDS) campaign against Israel.

The global BDS campaign aims to exert pressure against the State of Israel by means of levying boycotts against, divesting from, and imposing sanctions on Israel. It principally operates in a number of arenas – with trade unions figuring prominently among them.

 Most disturbing in the TUC’s latest action is its decision to partner with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). This organization, which is especially active on campuses and within trade and labor unions, is among the foremost elements that promotes boycotts of Israel and is identified with the BDS campaign. Formally, the organization seeks “justice” for the Palestinians, human rights, and international law. However, in practice it undermines the Jewish character of the State of Israel, as evidenced by its explicit support for Palestinian refugees’ right of return and by the map of ‘historical Palestine’ displayed as the organization’s symbol.

Thus, the PSC – which was established to campaign against “… Zionist nature of the Israeli state” and that promotes BDS in order to delegitimize Israel – partners with the TUC, which boycotts Israel seemingly in order to promote the solution of two states for two people as delineated by the Road Map.

The connection between a prominent ‘catalyst’ of delegitimization, such as the PSC, and an actor such as the TUC, is an example of the ‘big tent’ policy adopted by various elements of the Delegitimization Network, and especially within the BDS movement. This is a policy of ideological flexibility, in favor of maximally harnessing elements within the BDS movement by establishing partnerships even with those that don’t support the stated objectives of the campaign.

This policy is highlighted in the words of one of the BDS movement’s most prominent strategists. In an interview to the Forward, Omar Barghouti, described his understanding of “the tactical needs of our partners to carry out a selective boycott of settlement products… as the easiest way to rally support …”

Thus, the PSC’s support of selectively applied boycotts seemingly aimed, according to the TUC, at promoting a Two-State Solution, can show that the organization identifies the value of using BDS – even when it is implemented selectively – to advance its full agenda, which includes undermining Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state.