Scottish council vows to boycott Israel

A county council in Scotland expressed its support for boycotting Israel.

The Clackmananshire County Council, the smallest local authority in Scotland, passed a motion in which it resolved to “resist, insofar as legislative considerations permit, any action that gives political or economic support to the State of Israel.”

The motion, passed last week without opposition and with only three abstentions, also compared Israel to apartheid South Africa and hoped that “individual and collective sanctions against the State of Israel will end apartheid and suffering in Palestine.”

Britain’s Jewish community and pro-Israel groups condemned the move.

A statement from the Fair Play campaign group, which was established in 2006 by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council, urged the council "to grow up and abandon this biased stunt of a motion.”

“The idea of Clackmannanshire Council having its own foreign policy is ridiculous," the statement said. "This misguided and offensive motion will have no impact on the real world, a fact acknowledged by the motion itself when it stresses that it will only act 'insofar as legislative considerations permit.' "

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2013/03/20/3122526/scottish-council-vows-to-boycott-israel#When:10:40:00Z