British journalists boycott Israel

By · April 15, 2007

Britain’s National Union of
Journalists voted to boycott Israeli goods. The boycott, passed last Friday in a 66-54 vote at the union’s annual meeting in Birmingham, was declared because of
Israel’s “aggression” in the Palestinian territories. It calls for the union
to “condemn the savage, pre-planned attack on Lebanon” last summer and the “slaughter of civilians in Gaza” over the past few years.The Lebanon conflict was sparked by Hezbollah’s July 12 cross-border raid in which the Lebanese group’s guerrillas killed eight Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two. The boycott’s text also demands that
sanctions be imposed on Israel by the British government.Reaction on several
journalist blogs condemned the boycott. One wanted to know why the union didn’t boycott notorious human rights abusers
Saudi Arabia or China.Union member Tony Harnden, the Telegraph’s Washington
correspondent, called the move “inane” and “insulting to the intelligence,”
adding “this kind of thing is what gives British trade unions their loony left
image.”