U.N. Official Says Debate Over Israel Boycott ‘A Good Thing'

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. Human Rights commissioner, Louise Arbour, supports "public debate" on a drive by an increasing number of British organizations that have singled Israel out for boycott because of alleged wrongdoings by the Jewish state.

The largest British labor union, the 1.6 million-member UNISON, has threatened to launch a drive to boycott Israel, according to press reports yesterday, which were based on sources within the Israeli workers' union, Histadrut.

On Tuesday, the British Union of Colleges and Universities voted to promote a boycott of Israeli academics. Last month, the Union of Journalists called for a boycott of Israeli goods.

None of the unions has called for similar boycotts against Sudan, Burma, Russia, China, or other human-rights violators.

People in "academic communities" should "examine the situation of the world and participate in airing their views" in a public forum, Ms. Arbour told The New York Sun yesterday, when asked about the ban on cooperation with Israeli academics. "Public debate, particularly coming from informed communities, is, from a human rights perspective, a good thing."

However, Ms. Arbour added, she would "neither support nor denounce" the boycott drive, and she declined to answer a question on whether academic boycotts violate the right to free speech, which is enshrined in the U.N. charter.

Histadrut chairman Ofer Eini has written a letter to his British counterpart, Dave Prentis, in advance of a vote on the boycott proposal at a June 19–22 UNISON gathering in Brighton. If the proposed boycott is enacted, the union's pension funds would be barred from investing in Israel, and its members would not buy Israeli goods.

Despite Palestinian Arab aggression, "it never occurred to me to impose a boycott on Palestinian workers or employers," Mr. Eini wrote to Mr. Prentis, according to the Jerusalem Post. "The boycott against Israel will only cause the situation to deteriorate further."

British officials have denounced the boycott drives but said the government planned no action to avert them. "I can appreciate your frustration," Britain's ambassador to Israel, Tom Phillips, told Ha'aretz. "But I do not believe" these boycotts "will have any implications on bilateral relations," he said.

Like the British unions, the one-year-old U.N. Human Rights Council has failed to denounce human-rights violations anywhere in the world except Israel. Ms. Arbour, nevertheless, said yesterday the council, which last year replaced the discredited Human Rights Commission, was "not a failure."

South Africa, where a world divestment movement helped overturn the apartheid regime, is another spot where union support for singling out Israel is gaining ground. Action against Israel "must be sustained for as long as possible," the president of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, Willie Madisha, said. "COSATU will campaign among organizations of the working class around the world to support this call."