UNISON, the giant public sector union in the UK, used to play a positive role in promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace and dialogue.

It would invite representatives of Israeli and Palestinian unions to its conferences.

This is why it’s so sad to report what has happened at this year’s UNISON annual conference, where the union decided to abandon any effort to play a constructive role, instead choosing to engage in anti-Israel posturing.

The story is a strange one.

Last year, UNISON conference mandated the leadership to send a fact-finding mission to Israel and Palestine and one of the key tasks for that mission was to find out what Palestinians and Israelis thought.  A central question to be asked was - should UNISON maintain a relationship with Israel’s Histadrut, or not?

The mission talked not only to mainstream Israeli trade unionists, but to a whole range of smaller groups, including a number of groups which have long been hostile to the Histadrut.  And they talked to a range of Palestinian union groups.  And everyone told them, without exception, that it was essential for UNISON to continue to constructively engage with the Histadrut.  The Histadrut, everyone told them this, is the main organized expression of the Israeli working class and it would be wrong for unions outside of Israel to sever relations.

The UNISON NEC proposed that the conference adopt the report of the mission - but following a debate, conference delegates rejected not only the union leadership position, but that of the Palestinians as well.

As a result, the union has severed its relations with the Histadrut.

This is a massive blow - but not to the Histadrut, which will do fine with the “constructive engagement” that had been proposed.

The blow is to the credibility of UNISON, a union that once really did want to help build peace in the Middle East — and now has turned its back on the peoples of Israel and Palestine.

It is a day of shame not only for UNISON, but for the British labour movement as a whole.