LONDON — Britain’s newly elected Conservative government plans to ban local authorities from taking part in the boycott-Israel movement, a British official said, following the lead of American officials who have also sought to clamp down on the campaign to pressure Israel to change its policies toward the Palestinians.
In his party’s pre-election manifesto last month, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain mentioned the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or B.D.S., as one of a number of things that “undermine community cohesion.”
As a result, the manifesto said, “We will ban public bodies from imposing their own direct or indirect boycotts, disinvestment or sanctions campaigns against foreign countries.”
Mr. Johnson is expected to announce the anti-boycott proposal during the ceremonial launch of his agenda on Thursday, when Queen Elizabeth II will read a speech prepared by his government as part of the formal opening of Parliament, British news outlets reported this week.
Lord Eric Pickles, Britain’s special envoy for post-Holocaust issues, said at a conference in Jerusalem on Sunday that the law would bar public bodies from working with groups that boycott Israel, news outlets in Israel reported.
“B.D.S. is anti-Semitic, and should be treated as such,” Lord Pickles said.
The boycott-Israel movement has become a contentious issue on both sides of the Atlantic.
It is intended to pressure Israel into ending the occupation of the West Bank, granting equal rights to Palestinians and assuring a right of return to Israel for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
Opponents and supporters say that these measures would lead to the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, and some consider it a thinly disguised expression of anti-Semitism.
The British government issued rules to prevent local governments from boycotting Israel three years ago, but a High Court ruled them unlawful because the matter fell outside of the government’s statutory powers. After the ruling, boycott opponents called for new anti-boycott legislation.
The Leicester City Council began a boycott of products from Israeli settlements in the West Bank in 2014 because it said it opposed “continuing illegal occupation” of Palestinian territory. A Jewish group asked a judge to review the boycott, calling it discriminatory, but a court dismissed the challenge last year.
Disputes over the boycott movement have driven a wedge between students on some American college campuses. President Trump, responding in part to the boycott movement, signed an executive order last week empowering the Education Department to take action against colleges that it believed were discriminating against Jewish students.
The definition of anti-Semitism used in the order includes certain criticism of Israel that could be interpreted to prohibit support for B.D.S.
The United States House of Representatives adopted a resolution in July condemning B.D.S. A number of American states have also adopted legislation denying state contracts to or barring state investments in people or groups that support boycotts of Israel.
In Britain, Mr. Johnson’s Conservative Party has tried to capitalize on accusations that the opposition Labour Party has turned a blind eye to anti-Semitism, courting Jews angered by Labour’s stance.
The accusations against Labour’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, contributed to an enormous crumbling of public support for his parliamentary campaign. The Conservatives won a commanding majority in Parliament in the election last week.
But the Conservative leadership is already facing questions about two of its newly elected lawmakers’ connections to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. One lawmaker, Sally-Ann Hart, had previously shared a video implying that George Soros controlled the European Union, and liked a comment beneath the video using a Nazi slogan, a matter that Michael Gove, a minister in Mr. Johnson’s Conservative cabinet, said this weekend was “cause for concern.”
Lee Anderson, the other lawmaker, was discovered to have been an active member of a Facebook group that circulated conspiracy theories about Mr. Soros, a Jewish billionaire philanthropist.
Source : Nytimes
