Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - Britain's National Union of Journalists has approved a motion to boycott Israeli goods, accusing Israel of a "savage pre-planned attack on Lebanon" last summer and the "slaughter of civilians in Gaza."

The move comes amid uncertainty over the fate of a British journalist who disappeared five weeks ago in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian militants of uncertain affiliation claim to have killed BBC journalist Alan Johnston.

The National Union of Journalists, which is also calling on the British government to impose sanctions on Israel, said it is "not telling [its] members how to report on Israel."

"This is not about journalism -- we are saying nothing about reporting the Middle East nor our members' work," NUJ spokesman Tim Gopsill told Cybercast News Service in response to an email query.

"It is effectively a gesture of solidarity as trade unionists and citizens" Gopsill said. Journalists working in the Palestinian areas "lead among the most difficult and dangerous working lives of any journalists in the world. We see Israel and its backers as responsible for that state of affairs," he said.

Asked how a boycott of Israeli products could be considered a gesture to Palestinian journalists, Gopsill said the union views Israel as responsible for having "bombarded Lebanon, is besieging Gaza and occupying parts of the West Bank."

The NUJ boycott decision was taken at its annual meeting at the weekend. Delegates at the Birmingham meeting also voted to support a campaign to free Johnston.

"The boycott call was a gesture of support for the Palestinian people -- notably those suffering in the siege of Gaza, the community Alan Johnston has been so keen to help through his reporting," the NUJ said in a statement late Tuesday.

On Sunday, the BBC reported that "a Palestinian group calling itself the Tawhid and Jihad brigades" claimed to have killed the journalist. There was no independent verification, it said.

Last week, BBC director-general Mark Thompson said Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas had told him during a meeting that he had "credible evidence that Alan was safe and well."

'Insulting intelligence'

Some members of the 40,000-strong union opposed the boycott proposal, which was approved by a delegates' vote of 66-54.

NUJ member Craig McGinty wondered "how boycotting any nation's goods, whether it's Israel, China or Umpah Lumpah Land, will help improve the lot of both staff and freelance journalists."

Another NUJ member, Toby Harnden, charged that the NUJ boycott was at the same time "inane, ineffectual, counter-productive and insulting to the intelligence."

The list of NUJ motions adopted at the annual gathering revealed "a childish fixation with trendy-Leftie causes," Harnden, the Daily Telegraph's correspondent in Washington D.C., wrote in an textopinion piece.

He noted that NUJ motions included one expressing "concern" over "the systematic violation of human rights by the U.S. military" at Guantanamo; another saying the union "applauds the advances made by the Venezuelan people and government in redistributing the country's wealth;" and one decrying the "slaughter of civilians" by Israel - but none mentioning Palestinian human rights abuses or suicide bombings.

The NUJ also cited Israel's "continued attacks inside Lebanon following the defeat of its army by Hizballah."

"What kind of language is this?" Harnden asked. "It is tendentious and politically loaded propaganda that would be rightly edited out of any news story written in a newspaper that had any pretensions of fairness."

Simon McGregor-Wood of ABC News, who chairs the Foreign Press Association in Israel, said the NUJ's statements "seem to go against some of the core ethics of journalism that we are here to protect, such as balance and objectivity."

"I don't think any representative body of journalists should be taking a side," he said.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry declined to comment on NUJ's call for a boycott.

Daniel Seaman, head of the Government Press Office - responsible for credentialing all local and foreign journalists - said the boycott call "will be treated with the seriousness it deserves."

Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, called it "stupid" to boycott Israel because Johnston is in Palestinian captivity.

"It doesn't reflect the realities of the Middle East," Zuroff said by telephone. If anyone deserves to be boycotted, it's the Palestinian side, which has "no respect for the human life or values the British journalists hold dear," he charged.

The Anti Defamation League said the boycott call violating the basic tenets of journalism and contradicted the union's own code of conduct, which calls for journalists to "eliminate distortion" and to make sure that information is handled in a "fair and accurate" manner.

"It is shocking that a group representing journalists could such a highly politicized and blatantly biased statement, which is at odds with their profession's mandate to remain objective and unbiased observers," the ADL said in a statement, which also argued that the NUJ declaration "shockingly disregards key facts of the complex Arab-Israeli conflict."

Israel has in the past accused British media organizations, including the BBC, of taking sides in reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In 2006, an independent commission set up to investigate the BBC's coverage of the conflict determined that the network needed to be more fair in its coverage.

Israel's Government Press Office also accused a reporter for Britain's liberal Guardian daily of not just anti-Israel bias but downright "lying."

See Also:
Panel Says BBC Should be More Accurate in Mideast Coverage (May 4, 2006)
BBC Removes References to Terrorists (July 13, 2005)
Israel Accuses BBC of Unethical Journalistic Practices (July 3, 2003)