Hugh Lanning, the deputy general secretary of the PCS civil servants union, is also the Chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). In an article last month for the Communist daily Morning Star, now highlighted on the PSC website, he attacks recent Israeli legislation which he considers to be racist.

Fair enough - many of us would agree with that evaluation. But just to prove that it is not Israeli policies Lanning doesn’t like, but the very existence of the Jewish state, he drags out the Palestinian ‘right of return’ argument.

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) on whose behalf he appears to be speaking, did not actually support this non-existent ‘right’ for the simple reason that were it to become real, it would mean the end of the Jewish state of Israel, with Jews becoming once again a small minority in an Arab Muslim society.

Lanning doesn’t explicitly say that this is the view of the British TUC but he does seem to fold this argument neatly into a piece where he appears to be advocating the TUC line. (The TUC resolutions passed in 2011 make no mention of this ‘right of return’.)

The problem with Lanning’s mention of the UN-mandated Palestinian ‘right of return’ is that it’s a fiction. Lanning writes:

“Israel’s 1950 Law of Return welcomes any Jew immigrating to Israel. But Palestinian refugees have never been allowed to return, in violation of UN Resolution 194, which has repeatedly asserted the refugees’ right to do so.”

He neglects to mention that UN Resolution 194 is not a Security Council resolution (which would be binding) but a General Assembly recommendation, of which there have been plenty denouncing the Jewish state. His reference to the resolution “repeatedly” asserting this right shows that he has not read it.

The resolution makes no mention of ‘rights’ or a ‘right of return’. It is not even specific to the Palestinians, so it can be construed to refer as well to the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were driven out of Arab countries at the same time. And it contains the interesting qualifier that it only refers to refugees who are prepared to live at peace with their neighbours.

Back in 1948, and for many years thereafter, this hardly described the attitude of the Palestinians or at least their leadership, who continued to deny the right of Israel to exist. In fact, every Arab country that belonged to the United Nations back in 1948 — all of which were busy trying to annihilate the Jewish state — every one of them voted against this resolution.

Serious trade unionists who want to contribute to genuine peace and reconciliation in the Middle East shouldn’t be so casual with their facts. The call for a ‘right of return’ for all Palestinians refugees and their descendants is a call for the destruction of the state of Israel.