For three years now the European Union has been threatening to publicize guidelines on the consumer labeling of Israeli products produced over the pre-1967 lines in parts of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and the Golan Heights.
This week sources in Jerusalem said they had received signals the Europeans would soon make good on this threat – possibly within days.
The Europeans for their part have in the past attempted to play down the issue, claiming that labeling does not constitute a boycott. As EU spokesman in Israel David Kriss told Bloomberg in June, “The main principle here is simply that consumers in Europe should not be misled about the origin of products.”
Kriss and other European officials would like us to believe that labeling is just a way of providing European consumers with information and has nothing whatsoever to do with nasty boycotts.
Such attempts to dissemble are hardly convincing. After all, what precisely will be written on the labels? “Made by Israeli settlers in Occupied Palestinian Territory”? Even the more innocuous “Produce of the West Bank (Israeli settlement produce)” that already appears on products in some British supermarkets is enough to deter European consumers already prejudiced by slanted news media.
