UK Parliament Passes Anti-BDS Legislation Following Debate Amid Israeli Counter-Terror Op in West Bank
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by Ben Cohen
UK government minister Michael Gove introduced legislation to curb support for BDS. Photo: Reuters/ Richard Lincoln
British parliamentarians from all parties have voiced unease over new legislation that would impose fines on public bodies, such as local councils, for initiating boycotts of Israel in support of the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) campaign targeting the Jewish state for economic, political and cultural isolation.
As Israeli forces were in the midst of a counter-terror operation in the West Bank city of Jenin on Monday, members of parliament rounded on the legislation during a debate in the House of Commons. The operation, which wound down on Tuesday night, resulted in the deaths of at least 13 Palestinians, according to Palestinian sources, as well as an IDF officer, Sgt. First Class David Yehuda Yitzhak.
The legislation — formally titled the “Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill” — seeks to ban public bodies including local councils from supporting boycotts targeting foreign governments based on moral or political grounds. Speaking in support of the bill, the Conservative government’s Communities Secretary, Michael Gove, argued that the bill would guarantee that foreign policy remained a UK government matter.
The bill was eventually passed after a Labour Party amendment was defeated, with 268 MPs voting in favor and 70 voting against. A significant number of MPs abstained from the vote, including 80 representatives from the ruling Conservative Party.
Addressing the chamber, Gove said there had been an “increase in antisemitic events following on from the activities of the BDS movement.” He said that although there were “legitimate reasons to criticize the Israeli government”, the BDS movement was asking councils to “treat Israel differently from any other nation on the globe”.
“Nothing in this bill prevents or impedes the loudest of criticisms of Israel’s government and leaders,” Gove added.
Several MPs claimed that the legislation as currently drafted conflates the State of Israel with the West Bank and the Golan Heights — territories which came under Israeli control following its victory over the combined Arab armies during the Six Day War of 1967 — thus risking the contravention of international law and undermining the UK government’s backing for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“This clause drives a coach and horses through that, according the occupied territories the same protected status as Israel and in effect conflating the two,” Lisa Nandy, a senior Labour Party MP, told local media outlets.
“It contradicts established government policy, and I find it hard to believe that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has agreed to this,” she said.
Nandy also expressed concern that the bill “gives far-reaching powers to the secretary of state, and has a number of far-reaching implications, none of which appear to have anything to do with tackling BDS, the issue the government says it wants to solve, which we share.”
Veteran Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, a long-time supporter of the Arab world, slammed the legislation, claiming that it would deny Palestinians “their only legitimate way of expressing resistance to [the] occupation.”
Said Blunt: “There is desperate anger in occupied parts of Palestine, where everything is being taken away from people, but here we are attacking a movement that tries – although, of course, there are elements of unacceptable rhetoric – to stay within the limits of peaceful resistance to illegal occupation.”
The debate also heard from the former leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, who now sits as an independent MP following his ousting in February as a party election candidate after the furore over the succession of antisemitic scandals during his term at the party’s helm.
“A truly appalling piece of legislation has been put before us,” Corbyn declared. “We have to put it in that context; it is yet another attack on the civil liberties of people in this country.”
Criticism of the bill was also articulated by one of Corbyn’s most vocal opponents in the Labour Party, Dame Margaret Hodge.
Describing herself as a “proud Zionist,” Hodge accused the Conservatives of “using Jews as a pawn in the government’s political game. To debate the bill on the day that violence has flared up again in the West Bank is a solemn reminder of why this really matters.”
Hodge insisted that the bill “plays into the hands of antisemites by doing the one thing we should never, ever do: single out Israel as the one place that can never be boycotted.”
The bill was actively supported by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which represents the British Jewish community. An editorial in the London-based Jewish Chronicle expressed disappointment in “MPs – on all sides – who, while professing their loathing of antisemitism and opposition to BDS, are picking holes in the drafting of the bill to find ways to justify not supporting the bill.”
The paper continued: “The issue is binary. Either you support action against BDS or you do not. Sophistic arguments claiming otherwise fool no one.”
