by Giulio Meotti
Will Europe put a Yellow Star on Israeli Products?
Why not finish the job and use that handy yellow star instead of labels?
The European Union has just agreed to remove the sanctions from Iran’s anti-Semitic regime and put them on the Jewish State of Israel.
In the very same week that the EU Court of Justice based in Luxembourg relaxed the sanctions against Iran's main aluminum manufacture company (Iralco), the very same EU imposed its first sanction against Israel.
It consists of the marking of products from Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, to become effective from next month. Goods -- fruit, vegetables, cosmetics, textiles and toys -- worth €220 million - are exported to the EU from “settlements” each year.
The “settlement products” are labeled by Europe not only because these are political symbols, but also because it knows that businesses in Judea and Samaria are a very important part of the Israeli economy with companies such as Oppenheimer, Super Class and Shamir Salads, Golan Heights Dairies , Ahava, Hlavin, Beitili and Barkan Brackets.
The European blacklist not only violates international free trade, it is an obstacle to Mideast coexistence and constitutes the revival of Judeophobic racism.
Europe really just wants to inflict pain on Israel’s economy. One example? More than 80% of dates from the Jordan valley are grown for export, mainly to France, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Scandinavian countries. Label these and Israel may lose that market. And it is already happening.
In Norway, two of the main importers of vegetables, Bama and Coop, have agreements with suppliers in Israel stating that fruits and vegetables produced in Judea and Samaria shall not be supplied to them.
It is happening everywhere in the old continent.
The initiative has been advocated in a letter signed by 16 European foreign ministers - including my disgraced Italian minister – and has been voted in by a large majority at the European Parliament.
It is the first time since Hitler’s Germany that a specific stigma is put on manufactures and agricultural products of the Jewish people.
The European Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank whose daily proposals arrive on the table of European legislators, also suggested sanctioning some Israeli banks. Israeli degrees from Ariel University in Samaria will also be targeted by the European Union.
Israel can avoid tourism in distant and cold Iceland, after its capital Reykiavik approved and then retracted a boycott of all Israeli products. But Israel cannot afford a boycott of Europe. That’s why Israel and its friends must respond to this anti-Semitic policy.
It seems in fact that Hitler’s call “kauft nicht bei Juden” (Do not buy from Jews) has resurfaced in the timid Europe. We have only one answer to this anti-Semitic policy: purposely buying the Israeli products produced in Judea and Samaria.
Before Europe again places a yellow star on Jewish products.
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