What is it about 'label' they don't understand?

Publicity produced by the opponents of the Congressional opposition to the EU demand for clear labelling of settlement products. While in reality this move depends on condumer choice, US congressmen see it simply as an antisemitic boycott of all Israeli products (see 2nd item).

EU shuts down pro-Israel congressional hawks

The EU’s top diplomat dismisses congressional attacks against its settlement labelling policy.

By Julian Pecquet, Al Monitor /Israel Pulse
January 21, 2016

The European Union’s top diplomat has made it clear to Congress that the EU has no intention of reversing its policy of labeling Israeli settlement goods.

Congressional accusations that the EU policy is akin to a boycott of Israel are “not only misleading, but also unjustified,” EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini wrote to House and Senate lawmakers in identical letters obtained by Al-Monitor. The letters, dated Dec. 23, stress that “there is no EU boycott of any product” and that trade between the EU and Israel has doubled over the past two decades.

“Allow me first to state in the clearest possible terms that the European Union is a friend of Israel and has never advocated or condoned a boycott of Israel, of its citizens, of its companies or of its products,” Mogherini wrote.

The high representative for foreign affairs goes on to assure lawmakers that she has discussed the EU’s concerns about continued Israeli settlement construction with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and remains “confident that the EU and Israel will continue to have excellent relations.”

Mogherini’s missives are a direct response to November letters from pro-Israel lawmakers in the House and Senate that compared the labelling policy to an illegal, “de facto” boycott of Israel. The congressional letters were spearheaded by Republican presidential candidate and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and by Republican Reps. Doug Lamborn of Colorado and Randy Weber of Texas.

“Faced with this reality of escalating anti-Semitism,” Lamborn and 35 of his House colleagues wrote Nov. 10, “we believe it would be ill-advised to endorse a policy that likewise singles out Israel and holds it to different standards than any other country.”

The Senate letter, for its part, opens by stating the lawmakers’ “unequivocal opposition” to the EU labeling guidelines.

While they were eager to trumpet their opposition to the EU policy, the lawmakers have not been nearly as keen to showcase their inability to effect any change, as evidenced by the month-old response. Cruz and Lamborn did not immediately respond to requests for comment about possible next steps.

The exchange is but the latest in a series of skirmishes as Israel and its allies push back against the Palestinians’ boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign. Already in June, Congress passed trade legislation that conditions a potential US-EU trade pact on Europe not discriminating against Israel, prompting the Obama administration to reiterate that it, too, has concerns with the settlements.

In her response, Mogherini largely repeats EU justifications for its labelling policy. She says it simply seeks to codify existing EU trade law that covers Israel proper but not its settlements, which the EU and a UN panel consider to be illegal.

“The EU,” she writes, “has decided to make the necessary distinction between Israeli settlements in the occupied territories on the one hand and Israel within its pre-1967 borders on the other, which has allowed the development of our bilateral relations within the framework of the 1995 Association Agreement.”

Mogherini’s response does not address accusations that the EU policy could fuel antisemitism. Nor does she respond to accusations that it is discriminatory, since it singles out Israel while the EU does not require special labelling for Moroccan products from the Western Sahara, for example.

She does, however, counter the congressional argument that labeling settlements “prejudges” the outcome of negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians by arguing that, in fact, the opposite is true.

“On the contrary, the guidelines enable the continued access to European markets of products from both Israel and Israeli settlements in territories occupied by Israel since 1967, but requires a distinction between them in terms of ensuring a correct indication of origin of those products,” Mogherini wrote.

“To do otherwise might be seen as prejudging the outcome of future negotiations on borders, which would be contrary to both European and US policy.”

US lawmakers slam EU to defend Israeli settlements

Josh Ruebner, Electronic Intifada
January 12, 2016

It’s not often that members of Congress publicly disagree with, much less condemn, the European Union.

But when it comes to protecting Israel’s illegal settlements on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, dozens of US lawmakers have shown no such compunction in doing so vociferously.

Even before the EU published its November 2015 guidelines requiring Israeli settlement products to be labelled as such, members of Congress went on the offensive in a pre-emptive bid to squash the EU initiative.

In no less than three separate letters to the EU’s foreign policy chief and to the US trade representative, members of Congress slammed the EU move as a “de-facto boycott of Israel” and accused it of implementing “restrictive and illegal trade measures.”

Last month, Representative Nita Lowey fired another salvo against the EU guidelines, introducing H.Res.567.

If passed, it would formally place the House of Representatives on record as opposing the EU’s labelling of Israeli settlement products.

Lowey, a New York Democrat and self-described “leading proponent of a strong US-Israel relationship,” is the ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, making her a pivotal figuring in ensuring Israel’s annual earmark of more than $3 billion in taxpayer-funded weapons.

To date, the resolution has been co-sponsored by eight representatives.

Action alert

The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation issued an action alert last week urging people to contact their representatives to oppose H.Res.567.

So far more than 3,000 people have done so.

In a press release “denouncing” the EU move, Lowey made outlandish claims about the impact of the EU guidelines, which flew in the face of both the EU’s stated policy and the Palestinian BDS National Committee’s response to it.

Lowey counter-intuitively claimed that labelling Israeli settlement products would “encourage and prompt consumers to boycott all Israeli goods,” even though in its guidelines, the EU explicitly renounced support for “any form of boycott or sanctions against Israel” and emphatically did not ban the actual importation of Israeli settlement goods.

Backlash

Lowey also situated her resolution squarely within the mounting legislative backlash against the Palestinian civil society-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, a coordinated initiative at the local, state and federal levels to falsely stigmatize BDS activists as antisemites and impose costs on individuals, institutions and corporations which either support BDS or accede to the demands made by BDS campaigners.

She maintained that the EU’s decision “contributes to the deeply misguided anti-Israel” BDS movement, an assertion which Omar Barghouti, the cofounder of the BDS movement, found risible.

“Labelling the illegal products of Israeli colonies instead of banning them,” he wrote in Politico, “is seen by Palestinians as yet another EU failure to uphold European and international law.”

Out of sync

Perhaps even more extraordinary than Lowey’s claims about the impact of the EU’s guidelines is the degree to which H.Res.567 is out of sync even with US policy regarding Israeli settlement products.

For more than twenty years, it has been illegal for exporters of Israeli settlement goods to market their products to US consumers under the false pretense of being “Made in Israel.”In April 1995, the US Customs Service issued a notice of policy proclaiming that settlement products “shall not” be labeled as having originated in Israel.

Customs also held that a failure by exporters of Israeli settlement products to label their goods as coming from the “West Bank” or “Gaza” (Israel dismantled its illegal settlements in the Gaza Strip ten years after this policy was introduced) would result in a 10 percent duty being imposed.

In other words, exporters of Israeli settlement products who try pass off their wares as being “Made in Israel” are supposed to be ineligible for duty-free entry to the US otherwise provided to Israeli products under the US-Israel Free Trade Agreement.

With US guidelines on Israeli settlement products being so similar to the recently adopted EU guidelines, apparently Lowey believes that what is good for the goose is not necessarily so for the gander.

Desperate

Why would a member of Congress feel emboldened to condemn the EU for adopting a policy comparable to that of the United States?

Lowey’s office repeatedly did not answer this or other questions about her resolution for this article.

Lowey’s determination to exert pressure on the EU to reverse its labelling of Israeli settlement products – part of the spate of anti-BDS legislation that is sweeping the nation – bespeaks a certain desperation on the part of Israel’s supporters to squelch the BDS movement and the goals it is pursuing.

Legislators may believe they can arrest the grassroots BDS movement with top-down legislative fixes, but they are swimming against the historical tide.

Today’s press release from United Methodist Kairos Response, announcing the United Methodist Church’s divestment from Israeli banks, is an indication that the BDS movement will not be deterred by policy elites’ efforts to silence it.

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Josh Ruebner is Policy Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and author of Shattered Hopes: Obama’s Failure to Broker Israeli-Palestinian Peace. His forthcoming book is tentatively entitled Israel: Democracy or Apartheid State? He is a former Analyst in Middle East Affairs at Congressional Research Service.