This’ll do wonders for their credibility…
The National Union of Journalists has voted at its annual meeting for a boycott of Israeli goods as part of a protest against last year’s war in Lebanon.
The Guardian
Apparently this is in response to the “savage, pre-planned attack” on Lebanon last year. Although I seem to recall reading reports prior to the conflict about Hizbollah firing rockets into Israeli villages and kidnapping two soldiers.
No doubt a journalist will be along in a minute to complain about the political bias of bloggers…
The NUJ is not boycotting China, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Burma, Turkey, Zimbabwe or any other country as far as I know.
What can it all mean?
what can it mean? I dunno, that the NUJ, like mostb unions has a lefty bias and acts on lefty causes?
I’m not really sure what the issue is here.
“Although I seem to recall reading reports prior to the conflict about Hizbollah firing rockets into Israeli villages and kidnapping two soldiers.”
yep and prior to that a palestinian family were blown up on the beach in gaza. Oh and it was a palestinians who kidnapped the soldier, not hezbollah, in response to the deaths on the beach. They made some reasonable demands – like letting palestinian children out of Israeli jails – and the IDF responded by bombing Gaza pretty indescriminately. They blew up much of the infrastructure relating to power and possibly health i think. This (of course) got the kidnapped soldier nowhere, but did provoke a surge of anger in Lebanon and a wave of attacks from Hezbollah.
guess what happened next?
the IDF bombed lebanon, much of the bombing taking place well behind areas where hezbollah were active and of course they killed mostly civilans and civilian infrastructure.
In the face of such a reasonable discourse the palestinians gave up the soldiers and hezbollah gave up their guns. No wait!
Support for islamists and nutter increased, hatred for israel across the world increased and things became ever more polarised. The point of the boycott and protests at Israel are about the fact that Israel are still the main agressor, they have the money and power to destroy any opposition – and also the ability to stop this whole thing, end the occupation of palestine and stabilise the middle east.
Instead they regularly provoke palestinians and arabs into to doing evil shit so they can turn to the world and go ‘oh we can’t negotiate with these nutters’.
5 years ago, hamas were close to tacitly accepting the state of israel; this would have lost them some support but meant they were acceptable internationally. So Israel assassinated their leader (and everybody near him at the time) and pushed Hamas back to their extreme positions.
“The NUJ is not boycotting China, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Burma, Turkey, Zimbabwe or any other country as far as I know.”
As it happens, the NUJ ADM also had motions dealing with Zimbabwe, China, Russia and Turkey, and members also condemned the detention of journos in Cuba. Israel is hardly being singled out here. And this ADM was the first since Israel’s war on Lebanon last year, so it is the first chance for the union to pass a motion regarding the subject.
Also, the union voted to support the boycott of apartheid South Africa in the 80’s, so we are actually being consistent here. (I was at the ADM)
Hopefully that clarifies things.
I hope that the journalists will all throw away their computers as the chips were made in Israel! And be careful when you have medical treatment – you wouldn’t want any Israeli technology to save your life, would you! And don’t use your mobile phone – it’s an Israeli invention.