quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:
There's good reason to say that the guideline is virtue-signalling bullshit,...

You can call it virtue signaling, I will stick with blatant anti-Semitism.

quote:

Brooke Goldstein, a human rights lawyer and executive director of the Lawfare Project, which is involved in the legal dispute, described the EU court's initial decision as "frankly outrageous."

"The Advocate General's opinion said that goods produced by Muslims are to be labeled from ‘Palestine,' and goods produced by Jews labeled as coming from ‘Israeli colonies,' Goldstein said. "Both people are living in the same geographic location, and yet Jewish goods are being treated differently."

"Could the discrimination be any clearer?" she asked.

What do they do if it's a Muslim run business, but he's an Israeli citizen? Nearly 20% of their population are Arabs.

There's a test for if it's anti-Semitism. Article says it's based on religion, not citizenship (unless it's sloppy writing). Pretty clear to me the purpose of this legislation, and it's not consumer choice.

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:
The issue is about products labeled "Made in Israel", but actually originating in the occupied areas...Now the reasoning behind the 2015 EU guideline was that consumers should be able to make an informed choice on products they want or don't want to buy for political reasons[.]

If that were all there was to it, then it would be all too easy to simply require that labeling specify a product is made in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, etc. There's no logical reason to get into the whole value-laden nonsense of saying a product is made in a colony or in Palestine. This is just putting a respectable veneer on millennia of European bigotry. Yes, millennia - unless there's some sort of argument that Rome wasn't European?

“Israeli-occupied areas”? Yeah ok. Those are the words of an anti-Semite.

My wife's grandmother was shot by an SS officer in front of her home. When asked why he said "she looks like a Jew". She survived when the family yelled "Not Judah, Armenian". The officer then had her taken to the hospital.

quote:

Originally posted by Voshterkoff:
And they call us Nazis.

The Left throws epithets first to put people off balance and create confusion.



.

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:
.... from the Israeli-occupied areas...

Do you have a swastika tattoo and everything?

This is crazy. I cant believe its even up for debate, over there of all places. I read the article thinking it would have some sort of obscure health reason or something but nope.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
EU Council: "Let's use these 'guidelines' to tell Israel and all Jews to fuck off. He he he. They can't say anything about it, because hey, we created a law. HA HA!!"

Yeah, in the last century, Germany had lots and lots of laws about Jews. Better wake up, bubba. Europe is descending into an abyss. Cloaking antisemitism as a law fools no one.

Again, this is not about products from Israel proper, and the EU guideline is not even a law; it needs to be implemented into national legislation by the individual member states to be applied by them. To my knowledge, none but France have done so, and the suit brought by the Israeli producers challenges that law. Now the French judiciary is basically sidestepping the issue by referring it to the European Court, which will probably duely confirm that it is in step with the EU guideline issued at French behest. It's a great legal circlejerk.

Since the BDS movement which frequently crosses into anti-semitic tactics lobbied for the regulation, suspicion about the motivation is well-founded. Then again, as noted the international legal situation is quite clear and even supported by the official Israeli position on the occupied territories. And yes, even Arab-owned producers there labeling their goods "Made in Israel" would be affected, while anything labeled "Made in Palestine" isn't - even from a Jewish-owned maker based there.

To make it even more complicated, legal action against BDS can also draw ire from Israel. That happened recently when German parliament passed a resolution denouncing the movement as anti-semitic. Which promptly was criticized by Israeli left-wingers for playing to the agenda of Benjamin Netanyahu's government:

quote:

Opinion | Bundestag Members, Am I anti-Semitic?

Ilana Hammerman

24.05.2019 | 17:49

I want nothing from you, whether bad or good, Germany! That’s what I have to say, as a Jewish Israeli woman, to Germany, whose politicians have determined – under cover of opposition to the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement – that I and my colleagues in the battle against Israeli policy deserve to be called anti-Semites.

The fact that you murdered my mother’s family and millions of other members of my people doesn’t give you the right to determine who is anti-Semitic, Germany. Yet you asserted this right in the sanctimonious resolution passed by a majority of the Bundestag on May 17, 2019.

It wasn’t the issue of BDS (whose rejection wasn’t even properly explained) that stood at the heart of the resolution, not at all. The vast majority of the long text defines anti-Semitism. In so doing, German legislators produced a tortuous, garbled and confused text whose true core is the equation of anti-Semitism with criticism of Israel’s policy.

[...]

https://www.haaretz.com/opinio...ti-semitic-1.7281535

Etc.; in the end the hubub cost the director of Berlin's Jewish Museum his job merely because his spokeswoman had linked on the museum's official Twitter account to a news report about 60 Israeli intellectuals penning a joint statement against the resolution, which made it look like an endorsement. It's a damn minefield.

There's no doubt that anti-semitism is on the rise throughout the West. In Europe specifically - but then until last year the US was literally the last country on Earth where I would have expected synagogues to be attacked, yet it happened. In Germany, the Jewish community has been complaining about increasing hostility for the last two decades. That's not just leftwingers, rightwingers or Muslims, though those groups tend to be most conspicious. But it goes across all camps in society.

We know that because it has apparently become okay to sign your anti-semitic hatemail with your full name, academic grade and all. Laws are absolutely the least problem in the issue of increasing anti-semitism here, unless you want to argue there needs to be stricter legislation against hate spech. But then the ban against Holocaust denial and other public incitement in Germany and other European countries is already an impediment of free speech frequently criticized by people both in Europe and the US.

quote:

you're just as blind and misguided as the EU Council which you seem to hold in high regard.

I'm not sure either is blind or misguided. Focused, maybe

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
embedded quote removed
If that were all there was to it, then it would be all too easy to simply require that labeling specify a product is made in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, etc. There's no logical reason to get into the whole value-laden nonsense of saying a product is made in a colony or in Palestine. This is just putting a respectable veneer on millennia of European bigotry. Yes, millennia - unless there's some sort of argument that Rome wasn't European?

Thanks, these are the words I was searching for but couldn't quite put together.

I would like to know if any Muslims touched my potential purchase...........or Mexicans. It's my right to make a political judgment.

Sooner or later, Europe will eventually give birth to the next Charles Martel.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:

quote:

Originally posted by Leemur:
No matter how much I learn about history I’ll never understand the European attitude towards Jews.

Or why they are surrendering their culture to the Muslims.

After all, it was the French who stopped the Islamic empire from overrunning western Europe 1,300 years ago.

In 732 CE, at the height of the Dark Ages after the fall of Rome, Islam seemed unstoppable. Boiling out of the Arabian desert just a century before, the Muslim armies conquered North Africa, Spain, the Caucasus and the Middle East with astonishing speed in what must have seemed like a medieval blitzkrieg. The tough, bold and highly motivated desert warriors plundered the decaying corpses of the ancient empires: the Roman, the Byzantine and the Sassanid (Persian). And as the victorious armies of the Umayyad Caliphate surged out of the Iberian peninsula into southern and then central France, they must have savored the prospect of adding the Christian lands of western Europe to their domains. If they accomplished that, the Islamic empire might have become the superpower of its day, the medieval equivalent in military and economic power of the modern United States.

How France Defeated the Islamic Empire—1,300 Years Ago
https://nationalinterest.org/f...1300-years-ago-14522

King Dagobert expelled Jews in 629. Robert II persecuted Jews. There was the German Crusade in 1096, which was against Jews. Philip Augustus expelled Jews from France in 1181. And then in 1306 Philip IV expelled Jews.

If it's made in Israel, maybe the warning is:

This product will actually do what is made for.

quote:

Originally posted by PowerSurge:
“Israeli-occupied areas”? Yeah ok. Those are the words of an anti-Semite.

There isn't a muslim country in the world that isn't occupied territory.

quote:

Originally posted by Micropterus:

quote:

Originally posted by PowerSurge:
“Israeli-occupied areas”? Yeah ok. Those are the words of an anti-Semite.

There isn't a muslim country in the world that isn't occupied territory.

Okay. I gotta hear this one.

quote:

Originally posted by UpTheIrons:
Sooner or later, Europe will eventually give birth to the next Charles Martel.

What about Duke Odo of Aquitaine? The one who defeated the Muslims at the Battle of Toulouse, who Charles was campaigning against?

Anybody who has issues with the term "occupied territories" in this context should raise them with the Israeli supreme court, which has based numerous rulings on this position over the decades. Here's one from 2005:

quote:

Israel High Court Ruling Docket H.C.J. 7957/04

International Legality of the Security Fence and Sections near Alfei Menashe

September 15, 2005

[...]

B. The Normative Outline in the Supreme Court's Caselaw

1. Belligerent Occupation

14. The Judea and Samaria areas are held by the State of Israel in belligerent occupation. The long arm of the state in the area is the military commander. He is not the sovereign in the territory held in belligerent occupation (see The Beit Sourik Case, at p. 832). His power is granted him by public international law regarding belligerent occupation. The legal meaning of this view is twofold: first, Israeli law does not apply in these areas. They have not been "annexed" to Israel. Second, the legal regime which applies in these areas is determined by public international law regarding belligerent occupation (see HCJ 1661/05 The Gaza Coast Regional Council v. The Knesset et al. (yet unpublished, paragraph 3 of the opinion of the Court; hereinafter – The Gaza Coast Regional Council Case). In the center of this public international law stand the Regulations Concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land, The Hague, 18 October 1907 (hereinafter – The Hague Regulations). These regulations are a reflection of customary international law. The law of belligerent occupation is also laid out in IV Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War 1949 (hereinafter – the Fourth Geneva Convention). The State of Israel has declared that it practices the humanitarian parts of this convention. In light of that declaration on the part of the government of Israel, we see no need to reexamine the government's position. [...]

http://www.zionism-israel.com/...High_Court_Fence.htm

The Israeli government prefers to speak of "disputed territories". They do have a point when they state that the West Bank wasn't under any legitimate rule in the first place when they occupied it in 1967. This part of the previous British Palestinian Mandate was of course supposed to become part of the proposed Arab state under the 1947 UN Partition Plan, but seized by Jordan in the War of Israeli Independence after the Arabs rejected the plan.

Then in 1988, Jordan formally rescinded its annexation of the area and grant of citizenship to its inhabitants when it recognized the PLO (which in turn had previously tried to take over all of Jordan, but was defeated and expelled to Lebanon in the Black September of 1970) as the representative of the Palestinian Arabs. Merely an empty "fuck you" gesture to Israel since it was not theirs to give away, but it did nothing to improve the confused legal situation. Some Israeli sources hold that the occupied territories can no longer be called that after the 1993 Oslo Accords started the processed of transferring authority to the Palestinians; but the current Israeli government has declared the Oslo process all but dead anyway, and it never reflected in the supreme court's jurisprudence.

Facts on the ground suggest that any eventual permanent solution would see those Israeli settlements already included by the security wall officially annexed to Israel, preferably in a mutual agreement that would see some un- or Arab-inhabited Israeli territory swapped for them. But judging from the current situation, political forces on either side will preclude that for the foreseeable future. So the status quo will continue.