This week marks the UN General Assembly deadline for Israel to end its illegal occupation and apartheid. Israel has not only utterly failed to end the occupation, it has in fact escalated its depraved genocidal violence in Gaza, including against UN staff and facilities, and dramatically increased land theft, settlement expansion, and attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.
The official number (and most likely huge under-estimate) of Palestinians killed in Gaza since 7th October 2023 stands at around 64,500 people. The UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) initiative has recently confirmed that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in northern Gaza are suffering from famine.
Congress is a longtime supporter of the BDS campaign and are now in the process of stepping up these actions in line with a motion to our Biennial Delegate Conference in Belfast in July (Link). We are declaring ourselves an apartheid free zone – reviewing all of our procurement and pension investments to ensure that we are not inadvertently complicit in Israel’s horrific actions. Many affiliates have also been doing similar work.
