Critics have long suspected that the London-based “Palestine Solidarity Campaign” opposes a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians and considers the very existence of the Jewish state to be illegitimate.  (Their logo is a map of an undivided Palestine.)

Union supporters of the PSC sometimes deny that, saying that the organisation does support two states, though there is little evidence of this.

This week, the PSC once again seemed to be openly challenging not this or that Israeli policy, but the actual existence of the Jewish state.

In a letter the campaigners sent to the BBC, they criticize the television station for showing a new series on the history of the Jews.  The PSC press release about this letter includes a link to an article in the Jewish Chronicle in which the series’ presenter, Simon Schama, says that the last programme in the five part series “takes the viewer up to the present day, focusing on the impact that the Holocaust has had on the modern state of Israel.”

The PSC says “Here we have the BBC giving a platform to a Zionist to make a ‘moral case for Israel’, unopposed, unchallenged and unanalysed.”

In other words, what concerns the PSC, which is supported by many of Britain’s largest trade unions, is not so much Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, but its very existence — which needs to be “opposed, challenged and analysed”, as they put it.