New European Union labeling guidelines mean that Israel will be isolated and punished like no other nation on Earth. The Europeans call it a technicality. Others see a dangerous step toward adoption of the boycott movement’s goals

T

he new European Union labeling requirement that brands Israeli products originating in “occupied territories” with the Mark of Cain may only affect a tiny fraction of the Jewish state’s exports, but that is no consolation whatsoever to Chanan Pasternak.

For most of his 40 years as a farmer, Pasternak exported 80 percent of his peppers, dates, grapes, and eggplants to Europe from his farmland on Moshav Netiv Hagedud, about 12 miles north of Jericho. He is a pioneer in the Jordan River Valley, where farmers labored to convert the salty, chemical-rich earth of this region just north of the Dead Sea into a fertile crescent. Annual agricultural exports now total NIS 700 million, or about $180 million.

It’s been a challenging year for Pasternak, who is still reeling from two major blows. Terrorists killed his business partner, Avi Ben Zion, when they ambushed him at a junction in Samaria, stole his car, and ran him over with it. Then, flooding wiped out 50 percent of his main crop, green peppers. The latest blow is the ill wind emanating from the EU’s labeling requirement, which might force a portion of his crops to rot on the vine unless he can find new markets fast. His only remaining customer is Russia, where demand is currently weak.

Standing tall amid the rows of green peppers as big as a man’s two fists, his mood was clearly somber.

“I can’t change professions at my age,” Pasternak says. “If I have to shut my operation, I’ll survive financially.”

But he can’t say the same for the 100 Palestinian workers he employs, some of whom cried at the grave of his martyred partner after Ben Zion was buried.

“Most of them have no other employment option. They’re the ones who are going to starve.”

Israeli exporters based in Yesha (Yehudah and the Shomron) and Palestinian workers both stand to lose following European Commission adoption last Wednesday of new guidelines under which exports originating in Yesha, including east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, can no longer be marked “Made in Israel.” Instead they must be labeled: “product from the Golan Heights (Israeli settlement)” or “product from West Bank (Israeli settlement).”

The European Commission termed this “an interpretative notice” whose aim is “to provide Member States, economic operators and consumers with the necessary information on the indication of origin of products when it comes to products originating in Israeli settlements beyond Israel’s 1967 borders.”

David Elhayani, mayor of Jordan Valley Regional Council, says that the new labeling requirements serve only one purpose: “To put their finger on the product and say there’s something wrong with it. Don’t buy it.”

“This is not a boycott,” said Lars Faaborg-Andersen, the European Union’s ambassador to Israel at a Jerusalem news conference. “These products are still very welcome in the European market. They just have to have the correct markings on them.”

Requirements for such markings, or “rules of origin” (ROO), have been written into European-Israeli trade agreements since 1995, and are a standard clause in European trade agreements with 35 other nations. These markings have economic benefit when used to inform consumers of a product’s origin, or even if it’s been genetically modified. Importing countries also use them to determine proper tariffs and to tabulate up-to-date trade figures.

But the new standard has a political connotation applied only to Israel and not to any other conflict zone or disputed territory in the world.

“There is no doubt that the main purpose of the measure is to exert political pressure upon Israel,” said Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in a press statement. “It is simply a distortion of justice and of logic and does not advance peace. The root of the conflict is not the territories, and the root of the conflict is not the settlements.”