In violation of its core mandate, the UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO) has once again singled out Israel for politicized, differential and discriminatory treatment, with the presentation and debate of a 52-page report entitled “The situation of workers of the occupied Arab territories,” which the ILO also promoted in a media release.
Of all the reports on the ILO agenda, the report on Israel is the only country-specific report. Not even countries that have forced labor camps like North Korea, or which employ slave labor like UAE and Qatar, are addressed in a special report.
The ILO was established to improve conditions of labor, regulate work hours, fight unemployment, assure adequate living wages, and protect workers worldwide. These purposes of the ILO Constitution are twisted each year in the selective and politicized treatment of Israel.
The ILO holds its annual assembly in Geneva where the agenda contains only one report on a country-specific situation: a lengthy document charging Israel with violating the rights of Palestinian workers, and those of the Druze in the Golan Heights.
In accordance with a 1980 ILC resolution on “the implications of Israeli settlements in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories in connection with the situation of Arab workers,” the Director-General once again sent a mission to make “as full an assessment as possible of the situation of workers of the occupied Arab territories.”
As in previous years, the mission “sought to gather and assess information on the situation of the workers of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza) and the occupied Syrian Golan.”
The report included an entire section on the alleged plight of of Golan Heights Syrian suffering under Israeli rule—even though their health and security situation is far superior to that prevailing in Syria, where there is death and destruction.
The ILO report is surreal in mentioning “the conflict” in Syria, but then suggesting that the residents of the Golan would want an
“end to [Israeli] occupation and annexation”—which today would mean transferring the residents to the control of either the genocidal rule of Bashar al-Assad, or the genocidal rule of ISIS.
That the ILO report devoted so much attention to a tiny population and region that is suffering no crisis or significant violations, while turning a blind eye to the millions affected by the Syrian massacre next door, is scandalous. It highlights the selective and politicized nature of the ILO’s Arab-sponsored targeting of Israel each year.
