If you’ve been following my previous posts you will know that West Dunbartonshire Council passed a resolution/motion in 2009, during Operation Cast Lead, to boycott ALL goods from Israel.

This week the story was news again and has unleashed a Twitter tirade, emails and phone calls as well as blog articles and now online newspaper articles.

We now discover that the person who tabled the motion is Cllr James Bollan, a member of the Scottish Socialist Party and a former member of the Communist Party.

ynetnews.com has published some interesting tidbits about the Councillors response to anti-boycott activist Stephen Franklin:

following the uproar over the Scottish decision, Bollan had this to say about the Palestinian terror group: “Hamas was elected and are freedom fighters alongside the Palestinians fighting an illegal occupation of Palestine by Israel.”

There seems to something strange at play here when the first assertion which Bollan makes to back up the legitimacy of an organisation, which is classified as terrorist in Europe and the USA,  is that they were democratically elected.

Whilst I would have grave concerns about the legitimacy of that election, I wonder whether Mr  Bollan has information with regard the date of the next election in the Gaza Strip. Any offers?  Thought not.

We all know that some of the worst dictators in the world, all of whom are probably admired by Cllr Bollan, were democratically elected: Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran and Robert Mugable on Zimbabwe.

Presumably Cllr Bollan would fully support these countries in their various forms of ‘democracy’ which include, inter alia, the oppression of women and their human rights, killing gays, starving their own people, and rigging elections.

I would put it to the Councillor that an election does not afford the elected the right to fire rockets, thousands of them, into a neighbouring country, abduct that country’s citizens, send in human bombs, target school buses and demand the death of all Israelis and Jews everywhere.

I would also point out that the ‘Occupation’ that Councillor Bollan and his friends in Hamas refer to is not what you think it means. They believe that Israel is occupied Palestine and they will never desist from attacking Israel even if it where to withdraw from Judea/Samaria/West Bank.

Next statement from Bollan was this:

Scots believe in equality and justice…words unknown to Zionists

This is rather typical of the brainwashed parallel universe such people live in.

Whereas I have no doubt most Scots believe in these worthy principles, coming from the mouth of someone who casts Islamofascist antisemites as ‘freedom fighters’ who do not believe women have the same rights as men. whose idea of justice is to throw their opponents off tall buildings and hide behind their citizens and ambulances, in mosques and schools whilst firing rockets, grenades and guns at Israeli soldiers, this is a bit rich, to say the least.

Israel is the only country in the Middle East to have a judiciary that is not controlled by the government, a free press, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom to crticise the government.

Perhaps Councillor Bollan would like to point me in the direction of another country in the region which provides its citizen with these basic human rights?

And even if he doesn’t believe it, does that then justify supporting an organisation, a government in his terms, which denies all these things to its citizens.

Responding to a Ynetnews inquiry, Bollan confirmed that the statements attributed to him were accurate, and added the following: “One important point I made that strangely was not published along with my comments on the enclosed blog was that Hamas was elected with a bigger majority than the Israeli government.

He’s having  a laugh isn’t he? It’s not that difficult to get a good majority by intimidating the other side and actually killing them, as happened to Fatah supporters who ran in the only direction they knew would be safe; no, not Egypt, Israel. They fled from Hamas to save their lives and even had to let those unjust, murderous, inequal Israelis save them.

Maybe the Councillor, despite his election to the august body known as West Dunbartonshire Council (and one would hope that the Councillor did not copy the tactics of his heroes, Hamas, by tipping some Scot Nats off the top of Dumbarton Rock to muster his votes) still has no idea that absolute majorities are often difficult to come by in truly democratic parliaments, such as the Knesset, which operates a proportional representation system.

Following earlier reports of the West Dunbartonshire boycott, and the uproar over the decision to ban Israeli books as well, regional council Spokesman Malcolm Bennie said: “The municipality will not boycott Israeli books printed in Britain, only books that were printed in Israel.”

Oh, it’s that specific is it? These guys are such humanitarians.

At the time, Bennie admitted that Israel is the only country being boycotted by the council, adding that the municipality had no intention of issuing a ban on products originating from Iran, Syria or Libya.

And before you say that WDC don’t buy anything from these countries, let me remind you that Cllr McColl said in his video on his blog site this week that the boycott was symbolic.

Indeed, what a load of symbolics.

The WDC is so principled when it comes to standing up for the oppressed people of the world that its myopic vision can only see Palestinians being attacked by Israelis.

It doesn’t see the slaughter in Syria or Libya; it doesn’t see the starving millions in Darfur or or Zimbabwe; it doesn’t notice ethnic cleansing in Tibet; it didn’t utter a word about Burma and the house arrest for several years of Ang Sun Suu Kyi.

No, it only object to Israel defending itself.

Why is this.

Do you have a couple of hours? No? OK, I’ll summarise.

The (Far) Left supports Palestinians because it sees them as the victims of colonialism, oppression and confiscation. The Left needs a new victim to raise the Red Flag over, and if it can’t be red, then green will do because these people are colour blind and ideologically lobotomised.

George Galloway, a good example; he abhors and attacks anyone who dare question the Holocaust but he runs into the arms of Holocaust deniers like Hamas or Nasrallah – where’s the logic?

Although I doubt they will miss those lovely new potatoes from Tesco, let’s hope that enough pressure can be brought to symbolically overturn this decision.

The Council of Europe’s European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2009 that boycotts were illegal. Specifically of Israeli goods. So I believe that WDC are acting illegally and any other council in the UK or Europe that is so minded are also breaking the law.

If there are any Scottish advocates out there who want to take this up pro bono, I’ll be pleased to hear from you.