“UCU’s treatment of its Jewish members over the last five years includes assaulting their identity, ignoring their harassment in the Union and refusing to investigate their resignations. Now UCU has gone further and simply redefined ‘antisemitism’ itself. UCU will actually campaign for other organisations to stop fully fighting antisemitism, and has changed its procedures so complaints from Jewish members will be treated with suspicion.

The truth is apparent: whatever the motivations of its members, we believe UCU is an institutionally racist organisation.”

For a live report of UCU’s vote on redefining antisemitism, see ENGAGE.

Fair Play wrote a letter to Moyle Council pointing out that they’d be linking to Hamas and exactly what this means. The letter was tabled at a recent Council meeting and has now been covered by the Ballymoney Times:

‘Hamas for tea’ at Moyle Council?

Published on Tuesday 19 April 2011 16:16

REACTION TO Moyle Council’s support for a twinning arrangement with Gaza has come in from the Israeli community.

The Council split on the issue but a majority did back the proposal brought forward by Independent councillor Padraig McShane who visted Gaza last year.

Cllr McShane says the ‘twinning’ will help give humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Gaza is ruled by Hamas, a group which Israelis heavily criticise.

On ‘Facebook’ many people in Gaza have welcomed the decision by Moyle to twin with Gaza but the Jewish Chronicle newspaper reported that Steven Jaffe, co-chair of Northern Ireland Friends of Israel, said: “Is Moyle District Council prepared to turn a blind eye when it invites Hamas officials to tea at the town hall?”

And the London-based pro-Israeli ‘Fair Play Campaign Group’ has contacted Moyle Council on the matter.

Arieh Kovler said the Fair Play group is an organisation created by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council, the main institutions of the British Jewish community.

The letter said: ‘I am writing to express extreme concern at media reports that Moyle District Council is proposing to twin with Gaza city. The Council should be aware that Gaza City is ruled by Hamas.

‘Hamas is recognised by the USA, UK and the Republic of Ireland as a terrorist organisation. Hamas has been linked with more than 400 terrorist attacks including more than 50 civilian-targeted suicide bombings.

‘The Hamas charter rejects all peace negotiations with Israel and calls for Israel to be obliterated. Hamas came to prominence in the 1990s by rejecting the Oslo peace process which sought to established a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

‘The manner which Hamas governs Gaza has brought widespread concern internationally relating to the killing and torture of political opponents, the treatment of women and homosexuals and the indoctrinating of children as young as eight to anti-Jewish hatred and violence.

‘A twinning between Moyle District Council and the Hamas-dominated Municipality of Gaza City would make a formal and symbolic link between your Council and an antisemitic, internationally proscribed, terrorist organisation. This has very serious ethical and legal ramifications for the Council.

‘I would be obliged if you would please bring these concerns to the attention of the councillors.

‘If Moyle District Council wishes to make a humanitarian gesture towards Palestinians who are suffering because of the conflict there are many organisations which are seeking to brihg together Palestinians and Israelis.

‘I would be delighted to provide information about appropriate initiatives which the Council would, I am sure, approve and may wish to support,’ said the letter.

There was no discussion of the letter when it was tabled in front of councillors at the main April monthly meeting of the Council.

In another development, Moyle councillors did not like the “tone” of a letter sent to them about Gaza by the head of Nenagh Council in County Tipperary.

Moyle Council has a long standing association with Nenagh but recently when the SDLP said they wanted more information on the Gaza proposals, before they finally backed it last month, Seamus Morris had been touch urging the Council to back the Gaza link.

But, at a recent meeting, Councillor Catherine McCambridge (SDLP) proposed, seconded by Councillor Willie Graham, ‘That a letter be sent to Nenagh Council to express Council’s disappointment at the tone of the letter sent by the Mayor to Moyle Council regarding the proposed twinning with Gaza.’

On a vote being taken, there were nine votes in favour of and none against the proposal which was carried.

Earlier this year Nenagh Mayor, Cllr Seamus Morris (Sinn Fein) urged Moyle Council to back Cllr McShane’s Gaza proposals

In the letter, Cllr Morris said: ‘Back in the 80s when it was not a popular thing to do Nenagh Town Council twinned with Moyle District Council.’

And in the letter Cllr Morris said it was a “mystery” to him why SDLP councillors were ‘holding up’ the plan.

Last year Moyle Independent councillor Randal McDonnell said he would rather go to ‘Outer Mongolia’ than Nenagh.

At the time, Seamus Morris said he wouldn’t allow the comment to sour relations between the two towns

We Believe in Israel will include inspirational plenary sessions with top-level speakers, and sessions that will include updates and analysis on the situation in the region, training in skills that can help you in your political activism, and sessions that will allow you to grapple with the complex ethical and philosophical challenges that underpin the Jewish state.

We Believe in Israel is a BICOM event that is supported by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council, the Zionist Federation, the Union of Jewish Students and many others. Fair Play is proud to support the Conference.

BOOK NOW – and we’ll see you there!

Bongani Masuku has made inflammatory and threatening statements against the South African Jewish community because of their support for Israel. Alana Pugh-Jones of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies says:

Specifically, Masuku had openly and repeatedly stated that COSATU would target Jewish supporters of Israel and “make their lives hell” and urged that “every Zionist must be made to drink the bitter medicine they are feeding our brothers and sisters in Palestine”.

Ami on Harry’s Place highlighted more examples of Masuku’s threats, and ENGAGE reported that South African Human Rights Commission ruled that Masuku’s comments are Hate Speech. If Masuku does not apologise within 15 days, the Human Rights Commission will take him to court. The commission found:

The comments and statements made are of an extreme nature that advocate and imply that the Jewish and Israeli community are to be despised, scorned, ridiculed and thus subjecting them to ill-treatment on the basis of their religious affiliation.  A prima facie case of hate speech is clearly established as the statements and comments by Mr. Masuku are offensive and unpalatable to society.

Fair Play can now reveal that Bongani Masuku is actually coming to Britain as a guest of UCU.

UCU is hosting a conference on Saturday to strategise on how best to boycott Israel. The agenda of the conference is a secret. The venue is a secret, as are the speakers and attendees. UCU has not told its own membership about the conference and has refused requests for further information – perhaps the conference itself was supposed to be a secret too.

However, we have learnt that Bongani Masuku is one of the invited speakers, along with Kasrils and Barghouti. The BRICUP tour is only an “spin-off” event. UCU has indicated that is paying for international visitors to the conference; this would mean that it is paying for Masuku’s visit to Britain.

We are shocked that UCU would host someone like Masuku, who incites violence against Jews in his home country, as an honoured guest. However, we are not surprised. At its annual conference this year, UCU voted not to investigate why so many of its Jewish members had resigned. One of the arguments against this proposed investigation was that it would undermine the Union’s ability to campaign for the Palestinians.

So UCU members’ subscription money is being used, we believe, to pay for Bongani Masuku to spread his incitement in the UK. UCU is trying to keep this a secret from its own members. UCU is running closed-door strategy meetings on a boycott of Israel, despite its own repeated legal advice that “making a call to boycott Israeli institutions would run a serious risk of infringing discrimination legislation“ and therefore “an academic boycott of Israel would be unlawful and cannot be implemented“. And Bongani Masuku is a key guest at this conference.

UCU no longer has any credibility as an anti-racist organisation.

Our Twitter campaign to David Miliband and Downing Street generated nearly 200 messages calling for the UK to walk out when Ahmadinejad spoke. These included many messages from Iranian democracy campaigners.

Yesterday afternoon, David Miliband responded directly to the Twitter campaign. In response to Khoshkeledoc, an Iranian tweeter who had joined the campaign, Mr. Miliband tweeted:

“You’re right the issue is very serious. Walkout depends on what he says. Massive billboard cruising ny in protest.”

Once Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began to speak, it didn’t take long for his inevitable criticism of Israel to veer into classic antisemitic themes. When he said

“It is no longer acceptable that a small minority would dominate the politics, economy and culture of major parts of the world by its complicated networks, and establish a new form of slavery, and harm the reputation of other nations, even European nations and the US, to attain its racist ambitions”

then the British delegation walked out of the General Assembly chamber. Sweden, France, Italy, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Canada, some South American countries and Israel also walked out or refused to go in at all.

A spokesman for the UK’s UN delegation explicitly said that their walkout was triggered by Ahmadinejad’s “antisemitic” rhetoric.

Well done to everyone who joined the Twitter campaign.

We will be using our twitter to tell you about relevant and interesting news and to highlight articles and comment written by others. Many of these will be things that don’t merit a full post on our website but are still relevant to the work of the Fair Play Campaign. We won’t always agree with the content of these pieces, but we’ll be sharing them for your information and interest.

If you don’t use Twitter, don’t worry; our most recent tweets appear in the toolbar on the right of this website. If you do use Twitter, then follow us at http://twitter.com/fairplaycg