BDS Backers Try to Label All Israeli Products in German Town
A team of self-styled “goods inspectors” in a German town tried to label all the Israeli products they could find as being “from illegal Israeli settlements.”
On Saturday, the proponents of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement visited businesses in downtown Bremen, in northwest Germany, checking to see that products from Israeli settlements were not marked “Made in Israel.”
Dressed in white overalls, the self-styled inspectors visited fruit stands to department stores ostensibly to enforce a European Commission rule that will soon go into effect requiring the labeling of foods and cosmetics that are made in the West Bank and the Golan Heights. But a spokesman for the group told the TAZ newspaper that the activists were making an educated guess on which products originated from those two places.
One “inspector” reportedly laughed in the face of a passer-by who accused the activists of anti-Semitism.
In one pharmacy, the activists were shown the door and barred from reentering after trying to record their actions putting little paper flags on the shelves that read “Warning: This product could come from an illegal Israeli settlement.”
They demanded that the shop manager erase the tape from the shop’s surveillance camera, offering to erase their own tape in return. The manager told TAZ that she did not approve of people entering her shop and disturbing business.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
