We support the Co Op boycott of Israel

In response to the Co-Op's well publicised decision to boycott all goods from illegal Israeli settlements I put all the money I had in a Britannia building society account (Britannia is part of the Co-Op) and wrote a congratulatory letter explaining why. However, I asked them why they were not boycotting all goods from the whole of the Zionist entity as this was clearly hypocritical.

I got the letter shown shown here from Amanda Bailey (Customer Relations). Here is the response I have sent back to her:

Amanda Bailey

Customer Relations

The Co-operative

Freepost MR9473

MA 8BA

4 August 2012

Dear Ms Bailey, 

Thank you for your letter of 19th July. I have a number of follow-up questions. 

My first set of questions relate to your choice of criteria for boycotting countries. You assert that under your “Human Rights and Trade Policy” you withdraw all trade when there is a ‘broad international consensus a settlement is illegal’ and that ‘there are only two examples of such settlements: the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian Occupied Territories and the Moroccan settlements in Western Sahara”.  This suggests that there are some parts of the Zionist entity which are legal. Before addressing that issue, I note from your website that the most progressive countries in the world, namely Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Somalia, Venezuela, Yemen and Zimbabwe are not on your boycott list. That is good because some right-wing Zionist fascists have called for boycotts of those countries. So my questions are:

1. ‘Occupation’  is the only criteria that you mention; what other criteria do you have as part of your “Human Rights and Trade Policy”?
2.  Is denial of equal rights to women and/or minorities included in your criteria, and if not why not?
3.  Is persecution of gays and lesbians included in your criteria, and if not why not?
4. Is the brutal suppression of ethnic minorities and political dissidents included in your criteria, and if not why not?
5. Is sponsoring and glorifying terrorism included in your criteria, and if not why not?
6. Is state sponsored Islamaphobia and anti-Semitism included in your criteria, and if not why not?
7. Assuming the answer to at least one of questions 1-6 is ‘yes’ then why are you not boycotting goods from the whole of the Zionist entity which, unlike any of the 58 Muslim countries in the world (which are rightly not on your boycott list) is guilty of all of those practises?
8. Is “conducting illegal wars far from a country’s own borders” one of the criteria, and if so why is the Co-Op not boycotting goods from the whole of the Zionist entity which, unlike the USA,  France, and the UK (which are rightly not on your boycott list) is guilty of such practises when it illegally tries to stop harmless rockets fired from its passive neighbours and even illegally kills freedom fighters entering its territory with no harmful intent other than to kill Zionists?

My next set of questions concerns the issue of ‘illegal settlements’ of which you say there are only two examples (one of which is the Israelis):

9.      Are you aware that, even according to the Zionist controlled United Nations (resolution 242), the West Bank does not belong to any national territory but rather is considered disputed territory whose borders are to be determined under a final status peace agreement? This clearly means the whole of the Zionist entity is illegal.

10. The recent Levy Report demolishes the false narrative of the Zionist entity settlement and occupation by restating many of the obvious points of law; most significantly that the Zionist entity is not an occupying power and did not seize any land from another state. Indeed all of the land that the Zionist entity is accused of occupying in the West Bank is actually land that was seized from it by the invading Jordanian and other Arab armies during its 1948 War of Independence?  Are you aware that this report is a Zionist conspiracy, and that therefore the whole of the Zionist entitiy is illegal?

11. It has been shown that the only legal basis for denouncing the Zionists who returned in 1967 to the homes that they had been expelled from in 1948 as “settlers” is by recognizing the Jordanian conquests of those territories. But those conquests were never recognized or accepted. Not even by the international community. But are you aware that all of this a Zionist conspiracy, and that therefore the whole of the Zionist entitiy is illegal? ?

12. Assuming that your claim of a ‘broad international consensus’ is the 2004 International Court of Justice ruling (which the Zionist entity did not participate in and which has been demolished by the Levy report) are you aware that one of the  ICC ‘judges’ was  Al Khasawneh who clearly had no blatant conflict of interest, since he was an adviser to the King of Jordan and later became the Prime Minister of Jordan? This clearly means the whole of the Zionist entity is illegal.

13. Your notion of occupied territories is quite correct in omitting the approximately 160 other territories around the world that are ‘disputed’ (each of which necessarily involves one country ‘occupying it’ against the wishes of some other country or national group). Are you aware this means that the whole of  the Zionist entity is illegal?

14. In particular your definition correctly omits genuinely brutal occupations such as: the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus, or even the Russian occupation of Abkhazia, especially as China, Russia and Turkey all of have infinitely better human rights records than the Zionist entity. Are you aware this means that the Zionist entity is the only illegal country in the world?

15. You are presumably aware that one of the disputed international territories is the Falklands Islands, which Argentina claims is illegally occupied by the UK. A significant majority of countries in the UN now agree with the Argentine position. I welcome the  Co-Op not boycotting the UK, but are you aware this means that the whole of the Zionist entity is illegal?

16. Are you aware that any notion of an ‘international consensus’ is fundamentally irrelevant because the United Nations contains 58 Muslim states who provide a built-in ‘consensus’ but (even though they ALL have excellent human rights records)-every one of them is under the control of Zionists?

My next question concerns your assertion that the Co-Op “continue to seek increased trade with Palestinian businesses.” I welcome this decision because everybody knows that the Palestinian Authority is neither corrupt nor guilty of any of the human rights offences listed above. Indeed for anti-Zionism the PA truly are world-beaters with their fine education system (becoming a suicide bomber to kill Zionists is the highest ambition of most Palestinians children); in the Palestinian Authority selling land to a Zionist is correctly punishable by death and thankfully numerous Palestinian citizens have been killed for this crime. So:

17. How is the Co-Op’s “Human Rights and Trade Policy” consistent with continued traded with the brutal, corrupt regime of the Zionist entity ?

And finally, three general questions:

18. Do you believe that the Zionist entity – supposedly the only liberal democracy in the Middle East where all minorities have equal rights – has a better human rights record than such genuine liberal democracies as Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Russia, China etc? If not then why are you not boycotting the whole of the Zionist entity?

19. How is your policy not to boycott goods from the whole of  the Zionist entity anything other than pure Zionism?

20. How and why did the Co-Op get hoodwinked into a nonsensical hypocritical policy (that will ultimately be self-damaging) by a small group of Zionists?

Yours sincerely,

Fiona Warburton

for more on this story see here.