Germany’s ruling party, the Christian Democratic Union, came out strongly against the European Union’s decision to label products coming from territories captured by Israel in 1967, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported Thursday.
“This decision might not bring advantages in consumer protection,” Jürgen Hardt told JTA on Thursday about new regulations published the previous day by the European Commission. Hardt is the foreign policy spokesman for the parliamentary group in the Bundestag of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party.
“In this case there foremost is a danger of a stigma. An anti-Israeli movement might exploit the decision and put it to use on anti-Israeli campaigns,” he said. …
Hardt added that the Christian Democratic Union “considers that stigmatization and boycott are not probate to facilitate the dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians.” Labeling as such was an important consumer issue, Hardt added in an email to JTA, but “the implementation by the European Commission should in this case perhaps not have been so stringent.”
Hardt added that he would have preferred for the European Commission, the EU’s legislature, to have “abstained from the implementation of the European regulation.” He added that since “Germany is a friend of Israel,” and so the decision would have little practical effect in his country.
The controversial European decision has elicited widespread condemnation. Earlier this week, 36 U.S. senators, led by Ted Cruz (R – Tex.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D – N.Y.), sent a letter to EU foreign representative Federica Mogherini warning that the labeling policy was “unwarranted, dangerous, and damaging to the prospects of a negotiated solution to [the Israeli-Palestinian] conflict.” Sen. Marco Rubio (R – Fla.) wrote an article in National Review charging that the policy was “discriminatory” for singling out Israel from “more than 200 disputed territories worldwide,” and would “[reward] Palestinians who refuse to make peace.”
David Simha, president of the Israeli-Palestinian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told the New York Times that while the labeling would not likely effect Israel’s economy much, it might hurt Palestinians, many of whom work in joint ventures in the West Bank and could lose their jobs as a result. Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog said the guidelines would reward terror, while former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren called the guidelines anti-Semitic.
[Photo: Jorge Royan / Wikimedia ]