Reply to Workers Liberty

Report by Anna Weekes
Published: 05/06/07

To whom it may concern:

I read your article on LabourStart below. It is a complete misrepresentation to say that UNISON will not support projects run by Jews or that Eric Lee is being boycotted because he is Jewish. Many of the people who signed the original open letter to LabourStart in 2004, which called on Eric Lee to cover the Palestinian workers’ stories and not only Israeli stories, are Jewish themselves. Half of my family is Jewish and I am a signatory to that letter. Israelis have signed on too.

Note that Eric Lee only began to start doing this after many people signed onto the letter. He also removed his link to the IDF website after getting the petition.

I am posting the original letter below so that you can see it has nothing to do with anti-semitism. I really question your motives for calling a huge public sector union like UNISON anti-Jewish.

regards,

Anna Weekes
Trade Unionist
South Africa


Subject: [DEBATE] : Please sign this letter against LabourStart website’s veto of Palestinian Worker News
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 06:52:50 -0800 (PST)
From: anna weekes
annaweekes2004@yahoo.com
Reply-To: debate: SA discussion list debate@lists.kabissa.org
To: Patrick Bond pbond@sn.apc.org, “debate: SA discussion list ” debate@lists.kabissa.org
**Please sign on to this letter by emailing me. Many thanks!**

Against LabourStart’s veto of Palestinian worker news

A group of concerned labour and social movement activists from different countries have initiated this petition, against the shutdown of Palestinian worker news on the major labour news website, LabourStart (www.labourstart.org)

An Open Letter to LabourStart

The international trade union news website LabourStart systematically under-reports Palestinian labour news. Until very recently, the website unbelievably carried a link to the “Israeli Defense Forces” - the military wing of the State of Israel. This was only removed after a group of activists initiated a complaint.

LabourStart is a site that has marketed itself to trade unions all over the world, whose media officers and activists spend time gathering news from their countries to upload to LabourStart. They do this on the basis that LabourStart is the place “where trade unionists start their days on the web” - on the basis that LabourStart is supposed to be the main international source of labour news, and an important tool for international worker solidarity.

The open letter below calls on trade unionists to ask LabourStart to clarify, and in the absence of a credible explanation, to review their relationship with LabourStart.

The current news from Palestine on LabourStart amounts to 3 items for September 2004:

  • A letter from the ICFTU to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan complaining of low wages and poor working conditions amongst UNRWA staff
  • A letter from the IFJ (International Federation of Journalists) headlined by LabourStart as “IFJ Calls on Palestinians and Arafat to Act over Kidnapping Terror of Journalists” (though the letter itself called on all sides in the Palestinian conflict, and made clear that the CNN journalist had been kidnapped by unknown assailants).
  • An article exposing the Mayor of Jericho’s failure to abide by a Palestinian Authority decision supporting the rights of municipal employees to organise in the union of their choice.

However valid each of these items may be, they omit the central fact confronting Palestinian workers in Gaza and the West Bank: life under military Occupation.

When it comes to Israel, however, LabourStart has 148 articles for September 2004 alone.

The imbalance between Palestinian and Israeli labour coverage - and the systematic omission of material on the Occupation (as it affects workers) - amounts to bias against Palestinian labour.

Some recent Palestinian labour stories, none of which appeared on LabourStart, are reproduced in the Background to this letter.

Except for occasional, and valuable, material from the Workers Advice Centre, LabourStart readers rarely hear from Palestinians. But they do hear from Editor Eric Lee. His autobiographical notes page http://www.labourstart.org/ericlee/ currently (3 Oct. 2004) includes a link to the IDF website.

Why should a trade union news site carry a link to an army, let alone an army rampaging through territory occupied in defiance of the UN?

Indeed, trade unionists might be a lot more interested in material from Refusniks like Haggai Matar, who told a military court last December “We say a truth that most of the public does not know, and that many choose not to know, and that’s why we are being punished. They do war crimes and they expect us to keep silent. But we will not be silent. We will speak out against the occupation, even when we pay a price. ”

Those old enough to remember the 1980s should recall how another generation of trade unionists responded to another apartheid society - by sanctions against the regime and direct solidarity with workers under its heel.

We ask you to

1) write to LabourStart asking them to clarify their criteria for including or excluding Palestinian labour news. Write to ericlee@labourstart.org

2) ask them to explain why a link to the IDF website is appropriate.

3) let us know what they say

4) Depending on the replies, you may wish to reconsider your organisation’s relationship with LabourStart.

Signed so far:

  • PatchA, Korean Progressive Network ‘Jinbonet’
  • Roland Rance - Chair, Amicus – Central London (0692); Secretary, Waltham Forest Trades Council
  • Moshe’ Machover, Israeli Socialist
  • Dorothy Naor, New Profile anti-militarism group, Israel
  • Farid Taamallah, Palestinian Activist
  • Anti-Privatisation Forum, South Africa
  • Dave Parks, Exeter Socialists, England
  • Frances Kelly, British trade unionist
  • Walton Pantland, South African union activist
  • Els Hendricks, X Minus Y Solidarity Fund, Netherlands
  • Na’eem Jeenah - President, Muslim Youth Movement of South Africa and spokesperson, Palestine Solidarity Committee - South Africa
  • Wits University Palestine Solidarity Committee, South Africa
  • Anna Weekes, South African labour and social movement activist
  • Greg Dropkin, UK activist
  • Jim Gladwin, New Zealand labour activist
  • Dr Jeff Rudin, Researcher at South African Municipal Workers Union
  • Woody Aroun, South African Trade Unionist
  • Kim Jurgensen, South African activist
  • Dr Dale T McKinley, South African labour and social movement activist
  • Anne Candlin, One World Centre, annecandlin@hotmail. com
  • Khwezi Gule, South African activist

http://www.workersliberty.org/node/8555
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Boycott Israel? " Unison: Boycott Before The Boycott
Unison: boycott before the boycott
Submitted on 30 May, 2007 - 15:01 :: Boycott Israel? | UNISON

The Executive of the public services Unison has rejected a proposal from the relevant union committee to give money to the international trade-union news website Labourstart, on the grounds that one of the people involved in running Labourstart is a “Zionist”.

It is a sort of “boycott before the boycott”, a pre-emptive application of motion 54 to Unison conference, which proposes a boycott of all Israeli institutions.

Labourstart provides an unparalleled breadth of information on workers’ struggles and workers’ organisations worldwide, including in the Occupied Territories.

At the Executive no-one objected to Labourstart’s coverage. The objection was to its founding editor, Eric Lee. Eric is now only one of 79 contributors world-wide to Labourstart.

But - and that was enough to damn the whole project in the eyes of the Executive - Eric is a Zionist. He has been associated with left-Zionist parties in Israel such as Mapam and Meretz.

Nobody proposed checking out the other 78 Labourstart correspondents for their views.

The basic argument is that the union cannot support projects, however worthwhile, if the people running them are Jewish. Supporters of “boycotting” Labourstart will reply that the objection is not that people like Eric Lee are Jewish, but that they are “Zionists”. But to brand left Zionists like Eric as outside the range of people whom we can work with is to “boycott” almost all Jews around the world.