“We are right to build the broadest and widest campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.”
Fran Heathcote spoke at Labour and Palestine’s Justice for Palestine event at Labour Conference. You can read her speech in full below.
Earlier this month in Brighton, the trade union movement sent a united message from TUC Congress. We back a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against the state of Israel.
That has long been the policy of my union – the PCS and many others – but now it is TUC policy.
I welcome the recent statements by Ed Miliband and Andy Burnham.
There have been some steps forward in recent months; we should acknowledge that – even if those steps do not go far enough (and they don’t).
But these recent, modest improvements in language and policy would not have happened without the persistent pressure put on this Labour government by us in the Palestine Solidarity movement.
Despite the smears we have faced as a movement, and the restrictions imposed on us by anti-protest laws, we are making gains.
And that should encourage us that our campaigning is moving the Government – and it’s moving them because our campaigning has highlighted the gross injustices that are being inflicted on the Palestinian people.
We meet at a time of grave challenge for the Palestinian people. An ongoing genocide in Gaza and escalating ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
Our solidarity with the Palestinian people has never been more important or more urgent.
This is a terrible time for the Palestinian people, but our main aim as British activists in solidarity with their struggle is to bring change to Government policy.
When Andy Burnham says “Labour got it wrong on Palestine” and was too slow to call for a ceasefire, that is a welcome step forward.
When Ed Miliband imposes sanctions on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, talks about the “oppression of the Palestinian people, which is continuing unabated”,
acknowledges there is “ethnic cleansing” going on, and calls out and names the “appalling settler terrorism” in the West Bank – those are all welcome steps forward.
But those steps forward are a long way short of justice, and do not represent a consistent UK Government policy on human rights and justice.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, we sanctioned Russia – not the areas they illegally occupied. The Israeli Government is fully backing the settler terrorism in the West Bank, and indeed wants to ethnically cleanse Gaza as well.
That is not conjecture but the stated policy of senior ministers in the Israeli Government:
· National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said recently “first we will expel them all from Gaza and then from the West Bank”
· Israeli defence minister Ysrael Katz says “there is no real solution for Gaza” without de-populating the territory – so that Israel can build settlements once again in Gaza
· Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler-terrorist in the West Bank, has said the 19 new settlements planned for the West Bank are about blocking a Palestinian state
And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been clear too – a Palestinian state “will not happen”, he said.
So this is not just a problem of settlers in the West Bank – whom the UK government is right to call terrorists. But the state terrorism of the Israeli Government, which is policy.
So we are right to build the broadest and widest campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.
And we must step up campaigning for the British Government to go further.
I hope you can make progress on that this week in Liverpool, linking up with the affiliated trade unions.
Solidarity.
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