Model motion: No cooperation with genocide in Palestine!

Note to trade unionists: The following text has been compiled to help those who want to submit a motion on this topic to their union branch or annual congress. Feel free to take as much or as little as you deem suitable, depending on the rules operating in your organisation, and to choose from or adapt the final demands depending on the sector in which you work. Remember that any points you leave out of the motion itself can always be brought into your speech in support of the motion.

This congress notes with horror the ongoing genocide being perpetrated against the Palestinian people by the state of Israel. This heinous crime came to the attention of the world when Israel drastically increased the tempo of its ethnic cleansing into open and flagrant genocide following the Palestinian resistance operation of 7 October 2023, although it was a process that had been underway for more than a century.

Congress notes Britain’s continued participation in this genocidal colonisation project, which includes giving diplomatic and propaganda cover to Israel, providing its army with intelligence and logistics, arming and supporting its military in a multitude of ways, including by the direct participation of British special forces.

Congress further notes Britain’s particular responsibility in orchestrating the 100+ years of suffering and injustice endured by the Palestinian people. This was motivated by British imperialism’s desire to create an armed outpost in the region, safeguarding control over its resources, in particular its oil. To this end, Britain was responsible for:

• sponsoring, creating and guiding zionism, which is a racist, supremacist ideology, as a tool for the colonisation of Palestine. This pernicious ideology has spread confusion among jewish people and created a rabid and brainwashed population in Israel that has always aimed for total control of the entire territory of historic Palestine and even parts of neighbouring Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Egypt;
• creating the basis for a zionist settler-colonial state by first signing the 1917 Balfour declaration of intent and then by providing practical assistance to zionist immigration during the period of the British colonial occupation of Palestine after WW1. During this time, zionist footholds with military capability were established and Palestinians were systematically disarmed. These zionist militias were then used to carry out the ethnic cleansing and terror operations of the Nakba in 1947-8;
• pushing through the 1948 United Nations partition of Palestine without local consultation and dividing indigenous Palestinians so zionists could more easily persecute them;
• continuing to support Israel in its oppression and occupation of Palestine in every possible way in the interests of the profits of Britain’s oil, arms and banking monopolies.

This congress notes that the persecution and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land began in earnest in 1947, with the founding of the Israeli state. Palestinians were massacred in the Nakba and evicted from their homes, and they have endured continual attacks and land theft in the 76 years since then.

Congress notes that refugees who have spent seven and a half decades penned into a shrinking territory around the formerly prosperous and cosmopolitan city of Gaza have been under a brutal siege since 2014 (collectively punished for choosing the ‘wrong’ government in an election insisted on by the USA) that has turned the Gaza Strip into the world’s largest concentration camp. The most recent attempt at non-violent resistance and protest during the Great March of Return resulted in massacres of unarmed protesters by the Israeli occupation forces.

This congress further notes that the Palestinian people have an internationally-recognised right to resist the illegal occupation of their land, as well as to resist the accompanying crimes of apartheid and genocide, and that the refugees have the right to return to their homes. The United Nations has many times stated that the Palestinian people are oppressed and occupied, that zionism is racist, that Israel is operating an apartheid system and that the Palestinians have the right of return and the right to fight to end their occupation by any means, including by armed force. As the illegally occupying power, meanwhile, Israel has no ‘rights’ other than the right to withdraw and pay reparations. Multiple UN resolutions (eg, Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949; Res. 2105 of 1965; Res. 2625 of 1970; 1974, resolution 3314 of the UNGA; resolution 37/43, dated December 3 1982) have set stated and re-stated this position over the last 75 years.

Congress notes with shame that our government and media have given their blessing and support for four long months as the Israeli zionist regime, with US and British-supplied weapons, has massacred over 30,000 civilians, 75 percent of whom were women and children, and almost all of whom were civilians, not combatants. Over 80,000 more Palestinians have been injured, many with life-changing injuries. Hundreds of thousands of homes have been demolished, the entire infrastructure of the Gaza Strip has been destroyed and every shred of Palestinian culture and heritage there has been targeted for obliteration.

This congress declares that none of these crimes can possibly be justified as the ‘natural outcome’ of warfare in the 21st century.

Congress notes in that regard the ruling by the International Court of Justice that there is good reason to believe Israel is committing genocide in Palestine. Congress further notes that the ICJ has awarded provisional measures and ordered Israel to ensure that the commissioning of genocide should end and all incitement to genocide should be punished. Despite this, Israel has declared its intention to continue, clearly believing that with the USA (and Britain) at its back, it will always be able do as it pleases with impunity.

This congress condemns utterly the cowardly, monstrous and utterly inhuman actions of zionist Israel, and in particular the military, logistical, media, political and diplomatic support from the US and British governments, without which this obscene slaughter could not continue for even one more hour.

This congress believes that British workers have a duty to act not only as fellow human beings responsible under international law for the prevention of genocide, but as citizens of countries whose active participation is making us all complicit if we do nothing.

Congress notes that on 16 October 2023, Palestinian trade unions launched a worldwide appeal for help: ‘End all complicity. Stop arming Israel.’ The appeal came from the Workers in Palestine collective, which brings together more than 30 trade unions and professional associations from across the occupied territories.

This congress fully supports this appeal by our fellow workers in Palestine, confirming that collectively, workers have the power to stop British involvement in the genocide in Palestine. The government and corporations cannot support Israel without our participation. While we may be weak as individuals, we are mighty together.

Congress therefore resolves that our members will:

1. Refuse to build weapons for Israel.
2. Refuse to transport weapons to Israel.
3. Take action against companies that are complicit in Israel’s brutal and illegal siege of Gaza.
4. Mobilise our members to force an end to all weapons sales from Britain to Gaza.

Conference further resolves that our members will:

1. Refuse to make or move any supplies that are bound for Israel.
2. Actively block any such shipments that are known to be on British roads and rails or in British ports.
3. Refuse to write, print or assist in the broadcast of information that justifies or whitewashes zionist crimes or reinforces fake zionist narratives, remembering that journalism which justifies aggressive war crimes was classified at the Nuremburg tribunals as a war crime in itself.
4. Refuse to put Israeli products or zionist-promoting newspapers and magazines on the shelves of British shops.
5. Mobilise our members to force the British government to break diplomatic ties with Israel – there must be no normalisation of genocide.

This conference resolves:

1. That it is now official union policy to organise mass non-cooperation with every activity that in any way supports, directly or indirectly, the imperialist efforts of Britain, the USA or Nato to support Israel.
2. That the union will render every support to any members victimised for taking this principled stand.