ECJ: Products from Israeli settlements must be labeled
November 12, 2019
Foods from Israeli settlements must be specially labeled, allowing consumers to mull ethical considerations while shopping, the ECJ has ruled. A Jewish association slammed the ruling as "purely discriminatory."
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/J. Hollander
Advertisement
Foodstuffs originating from Israeli settlements must be marked as such, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled on Tuesday.
The European Union's top court ruled that member states must oblige retailers to identify products made in Israeli settlements with special labels.
The issue has been politically divisive — Israel considers the labeling of settler products to be discriminatory and takes a highly critical view of it.
France's top tribunal sought clarification from the ECJ after the country published guidelines in 2016 that products from Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Golan Heights must carry labels making their precise origin clear. The guidelines were challenged by the Organisation Juive Europeene (European Jewish Organization) and Psagot, a company that runs vineyards in occupied territories.
Palestinian Liberation Organization Secretary-General Saeb Erekat called the ruling a "legal and political obligation."
Trump town in the Golan Heights
02:43
This browser does not support the video element.
Ethical considerations
The ECJ found that simply indicating that goods originate in the state of Israel, as opposed to occupied territory, could mislead consumers about the fact that Israel "is present in the territories concerned as an occupying power and not as a sovereign entity," it said in a statement.
It said product information must allow consumers to make informed choices relating "not only to health, economic, environmental and social considerations, but also to ethical considerations," as well as the observance of international law.
The regions affected include the West Bank, annexed east Jerusalem, internationally accepted as occupied Palestinian land, and the Golan Heights, taken from Syria in 1967.
The EU does not accept these territories as belonging to Israeli territory.
'Purely discriminatory'
Erekat welcomed the ruling and called for a complete ban of settlement products. "Our demand is not only for the correct labeling reflecting the certificate of origin of products coming from illegal colonial settlements, but for the banning of those products from international markets," he said in a statement.
European Jewish Association chief Rabbi Menachem Margolin said such labeling was "purely discriminatory against the world's only Jewish state." He said the timing was "particularly galling," as it came amid retaliatory rocket strikes from Palestinian militants following airstrikes targeting two senior Islamic Jihad leaders in Gaza and Syria.
The European Commission defended its stance. "The EU considers settlements and occupied territories illegal under international law," commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said, noting that the ruling does not affect products from Israel, which has a privileged trading relationship with the bloc. "The EU does not support any form of boycott or sanctions against Israel," Andreeva said.
Promised land, enemy land: Israel 70 years after independence
Triumph or catastrophe? The state of Israel was declared 70 years ago this week, according to the Hebrew calendar — a turning point for Jews after the Holocaust. DW looks back at events that have shaped Israeli history.
Image: Imago/W. Rothermel
Long-held hope is victorious
On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, future first prime minister of Israel, declares the state's independence, outlining the Jewish story: "The people kept faith with (the land) throughout their dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom." It was the birth of an internationally recognized Jewish homeland.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
The darkest hour
While the controversial idea of a God-given land for Jews has biblical roots, the Holocaust was a close, powerful backdrop for the significance of Israel's founding. Nazi Germany murdered six million Jews across Europe, and those who survived the concentration camps endured expulsion and forced labor. The above photo shows survivors of the Auschwitz camp following liberation.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/akg-images
'Nakba': Arabic for 'catastrophe'
Directly after Israel's founding, it was attacked by troops from Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq - among others. Israel pushed back and expanded its control over 77% of Palestinian territory. Some 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes. "Nakba" is what Palestinians call this event. The war encapsulated the still unresolved Mideast conflict sparked in 1917 with the Balfour Declaration.
Image: picture-alliance/CPA Media
Life on a kibbutz
These land collectives, known as kibbutzim in the plural, were established across Israel following independence. Many were run by secular or socialist Jews in an effort to realize their vision of society.
Image: G. Pickow/Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
A state at war
Tensions with its Arab neighbors erupted in the Six-Day War in June 1967. With a surprise attack, Israel is able to swiftly defeat Egypt, Jordan and Syria, bringing the Arab-populated areas of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights under Israeli control. Victory leads to occupation — and more tension and conflict.
Image: Keystone/ZUMA/IMAGO
Settlements on disputed territory
Israel's settlement policy worsens the conflict with Palestinians. Due to development and expansion of Jewish areas on occupied Palestinian land, the Palestinian Authority accuses Israel of making a future Palestinian state untenable. Israel has largely ignored the international community's criticism of its settlement policy, arguing new construction is either legal or necessary for security.
Image: picture-alliance/newscom/D. Hill
Anger, hate and stones: The first intifada
In winter 1987, Palestinians begin mass protests of Israel's ongoing occupation. Unrest spreads from Gaza to East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The uprising eventually wound down and led to the 1993 Oslo Accords — the first face-to-face agreement between the government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the representative body of the Palestinian people.
Image: picture-alliance/AFP/E. Baitel
Peace at last?
With former US President Bill Clinton as a mediator, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (left) and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat hold peace talks. The result, the Oslo I Accord, is each side's recognition of the other. The agreement leads many to hope that an end to the Israel-Palestine conflict is not far off, but peace initiatives suffer a major setback when Rabin is assassinated two years later.
Image: picture-alliance/CPA Media
A void to fill
A right-wing Jewish fanatic shoots and kills Rabin on November 4, 1995, while he is leaving a peace rally in Tel Aviv. Rabin's assassination throws the spotlight on Israel's internal social strife. The divide is growing between centrist and extremist, secular and religious. The photo shows Israel's then-acting prime minister, Shimon Peres, next to the empty chair of his murdered colleague.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/J. Delay
Addressing the unspeakable
Nazi Germany's mass murder of Jews weighs on German-Israeli relations to this day. In February 2000, Germany's then-President Johannes Rau addresses the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in German. It is a tremendous emotional challenge for both sides, especially for Holocaust survivors and their descendants, but also a step towards closer relations after unforgettable crimes.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
The Israeli wall
In 2002, amid the violence and terror of the Second Intifada, Israel starts building a 107-kilometer-long (67-mile-long) barrier of barbed wire, concrete wall and guard towers between itself and Palestinian areas of the West Bank. It suppresses the violence but does not solve the larger political conflict. The wall grows in length over the years and is projected to reach around 700 kilometers.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/dpaweb/S. Nackstrand
A gesture to the dead
Germany's current foreign minister, Heiko Maas, steps decisively into an ever closer German-Israeli relationship. His first trip abroad as the country's top diplomat is to Israel in March 2018. At the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem, he lays a wreath in memory of Holocaust victims.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/I. Yefimovich
12 images1 | 12
Consumer protection or foreign policy?
Israel's ambassador to Germany, Jeremy Issacharoff, said that EU member states should "ignore" the ruling.
"I think that everyone should make up their own mind when they're purchasing perfectly legitimate goods — whether they want to buy it or not. I don't think you need to inject politics into everything and definitely not into the European court," he told DW.
"The verdict is not the problem," he told DW. "The problem is the politics of the European Commission. What is presented as consumer protection is actually foreign policy."
"And the European Commission is apparently only applying international law when the issue is about Israel," added the noted pro-Israeli politician. "That is really one-sided and it matches the definition of anti-Semitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance."
Klaus Ernst, a German Left party MP and the head of the parliamentary committee for economy and energy, praised the court's decision and disagreed that the ruling was anti-Semitic.
The ruling clears up legal questions over the issue, "namely that Israel also has to take the United Nations seriously and to implement the relevant [UN] resolutions," Ernst told DW. "Israel is not doing so, and to criticize that is not anti-Semitism."
