Benjamin Netanyahu will hardly have noticed that Edinburgh City Council has voted to boycott Israel. Last week, Edinburgh councillors passed a motion proposed by a Scottish Green member that aims to align Scotland’s capital city with the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
The motion condemns the “Israeli government’s genocidal regime in Palestine” and follows the vote earlier this month by the Scottish Parliament for an “immediate package of boycotts, disinvestment and sanctions targeted at the state of Israel”. The First Minister, John Swinney, has promised to halt any involvement of public money in companies operating in Scotland with links to the Israeli military.
But do the councillors who backed this BDS motion know quite what they are boycotting? Are they intending to frustrate the operation of some of Edinburgh and Scotland’s largest firms? One of the city’s biggest financial institutions, investment manager Baillie Gifford, has investments in a number of companies, including Amazon, Nvidia and Meta, which, according to activist group Fossil Free Books, have “commercial dealings with the state of Israel”. Indeed, it was FFB which forced the Edinburgh International Book Festival to cut its lucrative links with the firm two years ago.
Then there is the Royal Bank of Scotland, which, trading as NatWest, has been involved in underwriting a £500 million bond issuance by Ithaca Energy, a subsidiary of the Israeli-owned Delek Group. Castle Precision Engineering, another firm allegedly involved in laser-targeting systems for F-35 jets, has offices in Glasgow and Edinburgh. It has been targeted recently by pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
Swinney’s recent promise to boycott companies linked to Israeli defence was similarly misconceived. Ithaca Energy is based in Aberdeen. Babcock International, which owns Rosyth Dockyard in Fife, has worked in partnership with Israeli arms companies. So have Leonardo, Thales, Raytheon and BAE Systems, which all have operations in Scotland and together account for a large proportion of the country’s ever-declining industry. In fact, it is sometimes hard to find companies which have not, in some way or other, had links with firms in Israel. Even the Church of Scotland owns hotels in Tiberias and Jerusalem.
But the ignorant blackballing of Scottish companies is not the real problem with BDS. The campaign is very specifically aligned with the objectives of Hamas, a terrorist organisation responsible for the worst pogrom suffered by Jews since the Holocaust — in October 2023. It seeks to use economic attrition to force Israel not only to withdraw from the occupied territories and cease the war against Hamas in Gaza, but also to explicitly promote “the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties”. This right of return is incompatible, in the eyes of many Jewish organisations, with the very existence of the state of Israel.
Moreover, since the founders of BDS regard Israel as an “apartheid state”, it arguably conflicts with the working definition of antisemitism promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. This was formally adopted by the Scottish Government in 2017. It means that by adopting BDS, both the Scottish Government and Edinburgh Council are promoting an antisemitic organisation.
Edinburgh City Council has a minority Labour administration coexisting with a large number of Green and SNP councillors. Like the rest of Scotland it tends to be more progressive than the rest of the UK on issues of human rights, though the difference should not be exaggerated. Immigration is emerging as a key political issue in Scotland as indicated by the rise of Reform UK, which is expected to elect a raft of MSPs in next year’s Holyrood elections.
So while the councillors are being emboldened by a progressive SNP government in Holyrood, that may not be the case next year. A more cautious Scottish Labour government in Holyrood would be nervous about such acts, as has been the case in Westminster.
It is not for councillors to take sides in foreign wars, however horrific and abominable the human suffering caused. Edinburgh’s boycott of Israel is an empty exercise in gesture politics from a council that would be better advised to stick to emptying bins and filling potholes.