Motion no: 55
This conference applauds the ICTU Executive Council and Congress af liates, as well as Trade Union Friends of Palestine, for the wide range of actions taken to highlight the injustices suffered by the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation, colonisation and apartheid. We applaud in particular the leadership role played by Congress in supporting the establishment of the European Trade Union Network for Justice in Palestine. Conference calls on all af liates to endorse, to publicise and actively support the work of the European network in challenging EU complicity, corporate complicity and the arms trade with Israel.
Conference also notes the support for ICTU BDS policy (adopted at 2007 BDC) by the recent UN report of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) titled 'Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid'. The primary and unequivocal conclusion of this document is: 'This report establishes, on the basis of scholarly inquiry and overwhelming evidence, that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid.' The recommendations of the report include that 'National Governments should support boycott, divestment and sanctions activities and respond positively to calls for such initiatives.' The recommendations for civil society and private sector actors are particularly relevant. These are:
Civil society actors should be invited to submit to the Human Rights Council reactions to this report. A special meeting should be convened to consider those reactions and to plan appropriate next steps, including recommendations to the Human Rights Council and to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
Efforts should be made to broaden support for boycott, divestment and sanctions initiatives among civil society actors.
Private sector actors should be made aware of the ndings of this report and requested to act accordingly, including by informing the public about the criminality of the apartheid regime, and urging Governments to ful l their obligations under the Apartheid Convention and to propose initiatives that could be undertaken by civil society. Private sector actors should also be reminded of their legal, moral and political responsibility to sever ties with commercial ventures and projects that directly or indirectly aid and abet the apartheid regime imposed.Given the extreme gravity of this finding, and the high standing of the UN body that produced the report, conference authorises ICTU to circulate the report to all affiliates with the recommendation that it be widely disseminated throughout the membership. The report should be highlighted on the ICTU website. Conference also mandates the incoming Executive Council to submit to the UN Human Rights Council the response of ICTU to the report, including a call for the appropriate UN bodies to take the remedial action recommended by the report. Conference furthermore recognises that the moral and civil imperative to support BDS against Israel until it complies with international law is now being actively suppressed by Israel. The Israeli government and its allies in the West prompted by the doctrine of Israeli exceptionalism, permitting it to be exempt from international law - are attempting to criminalise the BDS movement and to accuse its supporters of being anti-Semitic. Israeli government ministers have publically called for a campaign of civil assassination against BDS activists. Israel, the so-called only democracy in the middle east now openly proclaims its sectarian and racist character by declaring itself a Jewish state. BDS activists are now legally prohibited from entering Israel. A tarnishing unit has been created by the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs tasked with undermining the credibility of BDS activists. We have recently seen the outworking of this in the arrest and interrogation for 12 days of Omar Barghouti, the leading spokesperson for the BDS movement. Barghouti has since April 2016 been subjected to a travel ban, now extended, and which is timed to prevent him from travelling to the USA to receive the Ghandi Peace Award. Conference also expresses grave concern at the proposed collaboration between the Ministry for Strategic Affairs and the Israeli trade union federation Histadrut. As reported in the respected Israeli newspaper Haaretz: Last September, the ministry also stated its intent to launch a cooperative effort with the Histadrut through a Histadrut NGO called the International Leadership Institute, at a cost of 22 million shekels. The program's purpose would be to work among labor unions and professional associations abroad to root out the ability of BDS entities to in uence the unions. (http://www. haaretz.com/israel-news/1.779434
