Teachers’ Union In Great Britain Wants an End to Support For ‘Apartheid’ Israel

British teachers, overwhelmingly far-left, anti-Israel, and anti-American in their politics, are represented by the National Education Union (NEU). The NEU has just submitted a controversial motion — not nearly “controversial” enough —to the Trades Union Congress’s annual conference. More about this motion can be found here: “British teachers’ union pushes ‘outrageous’ anti-Israel motion amid accusations of ‘extreme hatred,’” Jerusalem Post, September 8, 2024:

Britain’s National Education Union (NEU) submitted a controversial motion to the Trades Union Congress’s annual conference seeking to cement an anti-Israel stance in policy, the Jewish Chronicle reported on Friday.

The NEU has never in the past condemned Hamas’ atrocities on October 7, and it has not done so now. It never mentions Hamas, but condemns Israel for being an “apartheid state” which practices “ethnic cleansing.” Let’s take those two charges and hold them up to the light of reason. First, this nonsense about “apartheid.” There are about two million Israeli Arabs. They enjoy full civil, religious, and political rights. Arabs sit in the Knesset, and serve on the Supreme Court. Arabs serve as diplomats, going abroad to represent their country, Israel. The director of the largest bank in Israel, Bank Leumi, is an Arab. Jews and Arabs work in the same offices and in the same factories. Jews and Arabs play on the same sports teams, and in the same orchestras. They attend the same universities. They start businesses together. They own restaurants together. In short, there is no “apartheid,” no matter how many times that charge is made by enemies of Israel, including the National Education Union of Great Britain.

What about “ethnic cleansing” by Israel — a charge which inexorably leads some to the still more terrible charge of “genocide” — the word now favored by the chanting anti-Israel nitwits and antisemites on campuses everywhere? Has there been “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza? Israel won control of Gaza in the Six-Day War of 1967. At the time, its population was less than 400,000. When Israel pulled out in 2005, the population of the Strip had more than tripled, to 1.3 million. Where was that “ethnic cleansing” of Gaza during the 38 years Israel held it? Now let’s look at Judea and Samaria, renamed the “West Bank” by Jordan in 1950. In 1967, when Israel won that territory, the Arab population was 900,000. There are three million Arabs there today. Not exactly “ethnic cleansing.” Finally there are the Israeli Arabs. In 1949, after the war ended, there were 160,000 Arabs living in Israel. There are more than two million today. What “ethnic cleansing” does the National Education Union of Great Britain have in mind? Bring forth your evidence, boys, and let’s discuss.

The union has also reportedly issued calls for other delegates to pressure the UK government into recognizing Palestinian statehood and “end the arms trade with Israel.”

As for the NEU’s call to “end the arms trade with Israel,” Israel can get along, if it must, without the arms it buys from Great Britain. But can Great Britain get along without the intelligence and advanced weaponry that it receives from Israel?

The NEU wants the government to recognize a “state of Palestine.” But where will that state be located? What will its borders be? And who will finance that “state of Palestine”? Will it be the taxpayers of the Western world, who have already poured billions of dollars into aid for the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, only to see billions being spent on a vast tunnel network in Gaza, and $11 billion going straight into the pockets of three Hamas leaders, the late Ismail Haniyeh ($4 billion), Khaled Meshaal ($4 billion) and Mousa Abu Marzouk ($3 billion), while $400 million has been squirreled away by the President-for-life of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas, and his two sons Yasser and Tarek? The rich Arab states of the Gulf could easily provide funds to the Palestinians, but so far, they have contributed almost nothing to the care and feeding and arming of the Palestinians. The sole exception is Qatar, that provides money not to “the Palestinians,” but to the terror group Hamas, which is a different thing.

How exactly would the UK enforce the creation of this “state of Palestine”? Would it send an army to force the Israelis to pull 500,000 of their citizens out of Judea and Samaria? How many citizens of Great Britain, outside the far-left precincts of the National Education Union, would support that? Who will draw the borders of the new state? And how does the NEU envision forcing the state of Israel to give up its claim, based on 3500 years of Jewish history and on the League of Nations’ Mandate for Palestine, to all of the territory “from the river to the sea”? What would be the reaction of the United States to this “recognition of a Palestinian state,” which has repeatedly said that any settlement between Israelis and Palestinians has to be the fruit of negotiation between the parties?

The NEU wants the labor union delegates to follow “the ICJ and ICC statements, impose sanctions upon individuals and entities who have made statements inciting genocide against Palestinians,” “revoke the 2030 Road Map for UK-Israel bilateral relations,” and call for a “permanent ceasefire and the release of all hostages and Palestinian political prisoners.”…

No Israelis have called for “genocide against Palestinians.” Furthermore, the Palestinians in Israeli jails are either common criminals, or terrorists. There are no “political prisoners” in the ordinary sense of that word. As for a “permanent ceasefire,” were Israel to agree now to such a demand, that would leave the terror group Hamas still standing. Hamas’ prestige in the Arab world would skyrocket — “we withstood the mighty IDF” — and its operatives would at once begin to regroup and again start smuggling in weapons from Egypt to Gaza, that is, if Israel is pressured to give up control of the Philadelphi Corridor on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt. Such a “permanent ceasefire” would deprive Israel of achieving its goal of dismantling Hamas as a fighting force.

“Apartheid.” “Ethnic cleansing.” “Holding political prisoners.” That is what Israel is being accused of by the National Education Union of Great Britain. They may be teachers, university professors even, but clearly, they need to have their heads examined.