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[Boycott - Economic - World] South African trade unions call for boycott of Israeli apartheid
Joyce Chediac, Workers World 16 June 2010  The South African Transport and
Allied Workers’ Union, refuses to
handle Israeli goods at South
African ports
Israel and its apologists bristle when Israel is called an apartheid state. Most loudly shouting, “Israeli apartheid,” however, are those who know the best — the workers of South Africa, who suffered the most under South African apartheid. South African trade unions have denounced the siege of Gaza and the apartheid wall on the West Bank, and have urged forward the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign (BDS).
Adding their voices to the call to boycott goods from Israel are UNITE, the biggest trade union in Britain, and the Swedish Portworkers’ Union, which called a boycott of all Israeli ships and cargo from June 15 through June 24.
The South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union, which refuses to handle Israeli goods at South African ports, called the Swedish boycott “the kind of powerful workers’ action that was used during the fight against the South African apartheid regime and helped bring it down. It must be used again today against this criminal apartheid regime in Israel.”
 South African Municipal Workers Union
will "engage every single municipality
to ensure that there are no commercial,
academic, cultural, sporting or other
linkages whatsoever with the Israeli
regime"
The South African Municipal Workers Union announced June 4 that it would “engage every single municipality to ensure that there are no commercial, academic, cultural, sporting or other linkages whatsoever with the Israeli regime. ... Every SAMWU branch will immediately approach municipal and water authorities to become part of the BDS campaign, and to publicly declare their solidarity with the Palestinian people.”
The Congress of South African Trade Unions expressed outrage at the May 31 killing of activists by Israeli commandos, and in a statement urged “all South Africans to refuse to buy or handle any goods from Israel or have any dealings with Israeli businesses.” This umbrella group of unions supports “the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to national sovereignty” and demands “the immediate end to the Israeli siege and the illegal occupation of the sovereign territory which has been violently seized from the Palestinian nation.”
Biggest Britain union joins boycott
 Congress of South African Trade Unions
urges "all South Africans to refuse to
buy or handle any goods from Israel or
have any dealings with Israeli businesses." UNITE, Britain’s biggest trade union, just voted for a complete boycott of Israeli goods and services at its annual conference in Manchester. The 2-million-member union called Israel a “terror” state, with “a policy of ethnic cleansing.” UNITE said it would “actively and vigorously” promote a boycott of Israeli goods and services “similar to the boycott of South Africa during the apartheid era,” and also pursue a policy of divestment from Israeli companies.
Other labor groups protesting the May 31 Israeli commando raid on the Freedom Flotilla are the International Dockworkers Council, the International Transport Workers Federation, the International Trade Union Confederation, the South African National Union of Mineworkers, the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the British Trade Union Congress. The British University and College Union broke ties with the Histradrut, a Zionist so-called labor organization. UCU spokesperson Tom Hickey said the Histradrut “supported the Israeli assault on civilians in Gaza” and “did not deserve the name of a trade union.”
Source: http://www.workers.org/2010/world/south_african_0624/
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Featured MP3 Podcast "1763 in the Ohio river valley you got Lord Jeffrey Amherst committing to written order an instruction to his subordinate Henry Bouquet, having been defeated by Pontiac Ottawa confederacy in the field. The order essentially says that they have been defeated militarily and is therefore necessary for Amherst forces to request a peace, to sue for peace from Pontiacs people. He instructs Bouquet to convene a parlay with the Indian leadership for that purpose. And as is the custom, as is common courtesy among native populations as was known to the Brits at that time, it would be necessary for those who requested the council to give gifts to those requested to attend. Make those gifts, Amherst says, items taken from a smallpox infirmary in order, I'm going to quote directly now, this isn't a paraphrase: 'in order that we may extirpate this execrable race'. Now key is on this last word, had he said that we might eradicate the opposing combatants, their military capacity, their warriors.. what ever term he wanted to use, it would have been biological warefare. But he didn't say anything about that, he said the 'race'. His intent was to use biological means, to use disease, quite explicitly so, to eradicate an entire population group. And Bouquet was also kind enough to commit to writing in his response the next day, I have done as instructed, dispersing three blankets, two handkerchiefs and sundry other items, hopefully, he says, they will have the desired result. They did.. the lowest estimate of the number of people who died of smallpox as a result of that little gesture of friendship and goodwill is a 100,000!" American Indian scholar, activist in the struggle for liberation of Indigenous Peoples in America On the publication of the book 'A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present', 1997 [29min / 10Mb] [need flash]

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