WIESENTHAL CENTER: BRITISH JOURNALISTS UNION CALL FOR SANCTIONS AGAINST ISRAEL “TINGED WITH ANTISEMITISM”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center strongly condemned a call by the British National Union of Journalists (NUJ) to demand that the British government impose sanctions on the State of Israel and to boycott Israeli products--measures that the Union says are “similar to those boycotts in the struggles against apartheid South Africa by trade unions…” in the 1980s. The Center was especially disturbed by a proposed motion that condemned Israel for pre-planning last year’s war in Lebanon and for causing the deaths of civilians in Gaza. The measures were endorsed with a 66 to 54 vote that was held at the Union’s annual conference in Birmingham this past weekend.

In a letter to Jeremy Dear, the General Secretary of the NUJ, Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, Founder and Dean, and Associate Dean, respectively, of the Wiesenthal Center stated, “The blatant, one-sided nature of the resolutions and motions have no place within the world of journalism, whose practitioners are supposed to base their reportage on objective and fair standards.” The Center officials noted that Israel, and not Sudan, China, North Korea and Iran, was targeted for the protest and that “such a blatantly biased initiative is tinged with antisemitism.”

Because NUJ members who voted for the initiative forfeited any pretext of basic journalistic objectivity when reporting on Israel and supporters of Israel, said Hier and Cooper, that if they are contacted by any of these members, “The Simon Wiesenthal Center has no choice but to inquire if they are functioning as journalists or advocates for a cause.”

In Europe, the Center’s Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, has been lobbying the British Press Complaints Commission and international journalist advocacy groups to sanction the NUJ for violating their duty to maintain the highest professional standards.