Haaretz : EU's Labeling Policy Is Not anti-Semitism, but a Warning
The government is impervious to warnings from friendly countries, which feel that Israel is losing its place among them.
haaretz.com
The European Union’s decision to distinguish between products
manufactured in the settlements and those made in Israel is a warning
call by friends who are trying to extend a hand to a country that is
sinking in the quagmire of occupation and moving further away from
Western values and democracy. The impact on the Israeli economy of the
EU’s new labelling policy will be negligible; the importance of the
European decision is in its diplomatic message – that the occupied
territories are not part of Israel and the enlightened world is strongly
opposed to the settlements.
The Israeli response to the
European decision is predictable and worrisome. Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, along with a chorus of ministers and supposed opposition
leaders, Isaac Herzog and Yair Lapid, hastened to accuse the Europeans
of hypocrisy and anti-Semitism. The Foreign Ministry made sure to punish
the EU by cancelling a low-level meeting, which had been intended to
move ahead on aid to the Palestinians.
The extreme right took
advantage of the opportunity to promote two bills, which immediately
received government support: Branding associations and organizations
that receive European funding, most of which work for peace and against
the occupation, and the new initiative to prohibit entry to Israel of
anyone who supports a boycott of the state or the settlements.
The
government is impervious to warnings from friendly countries, which
feel that Israel is losing its place among them. Its ministers and
supporters respond by entrenching themselves and turning inward, which
will only distance Israel further from its democratic roots. Regarding
Europe as an anti-Semitic enemy, branding human rights activists as
collaborators and creating blacklists of critics of the government and
the settlements bring Israel closer to North Korea and Iran. That is the
price of mortgaging the state and its welfare to the interests of the
settlements and devotees of annexation.
Instead of dealing with what
is important, the prime minister is waging rearguard public diplomacy
battles that persuade no one in the international community. His declaration that the issue of Jerusalem is “unsolvable” and his strange call to prepare for the annexation of the Golan
as Israel’s spoils from the war in Syria, indicate a disassociation
from the storm in which Israel placed itself due to its refusal of any
compromise or reasonable agreement to end the occupation. Netanyahu’s
position ensures that the precedent-setting decision in Europe will be
only the first in a series.
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