The head of the Anti-Defamation League blasted the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America for its vote last week to endorse the anti-Israel boycott movement.

ADL national director Jonathan Greenblatt wrote a letter to union president Bruce Klipple today, urging him to reconsider.

We are deeply troubled by the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) decision to endorse the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The resolution in favor of BDS, which was adopted on August 20th presents a highly distorted view of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, including the outrageous and totally unfounded claim that from 1947-1948 the Jewish State engaged in ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians.

The BDS movement in its origins is anti-Semitic. Denying solely to the Jewish people a universal right – that of self-determination – is fundamentally anti-Semitic. The BDS movement’s founders have explicitly expressed their goal of eliminating Israel as  a Jewish state. …

The organized labor movement has been a force for good in the US for generations. It has contributed to our economy and our society. It has brought people together. And yet, by joining the ranks of those who support BDS, your Union has embraced a tactic which was conceived to stoke discord, deepen divisions and make the possibility of reconciliation less likely.

Greenblatt ended his appeal by regretting that the union had “shamefully lent its support to a campaign that is bigoted in its origins and entirely counterproductive to peace efforts between Israelis and Palestinians.”

The Israeli legal NGO Shurat Hadin warned General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt in a letter Wednesday that its work with UE, with whom it has multiple contracts, “could result in severe criminal and civil liability for The General Electric Company and its officers” now that the union had endorsed a discriminatory policy.

[Photo: Chris RubberDragon / Flickr ]