One of four Members of Congress that oppose EU labeling of Israeli goods. US House of Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce. Photo Courtesy of House of Foreign Affairs Committee website.
Four members of the US Congress have slammed as “harmful” the recommendation by the European Union to label Israeli goods as originating in the Biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank. The lawmakers from both major American political parties—Representatives Nita Lowey, Peter Roskam, Eliot Engel, and Ed Royce—didn’t just criticize the EU move, they crafted a US resolution for all of Congress to oppose it.
The resolution, which has not yet gone to a vote, would express opposition to the EU labeling program “as such actions undermine efforts to achieve a negotiated Israeli-Palestinian peace process.” The resolution would even encourage EU member states to “exert prudence” in following the guidelines—hinting at defiance of the EU labeling plan. The US lawmakers valium and generic press release condemning the EU label system—intended to highlight products made in Israeli territory claimed by the Palestinians—said it would hurt the Palestinians economically as well as the Israelis.
The lawmakers said in the statement, published on Rep. Engel’s website, that the EU guidelines will “only encourage and prompt consumers to boycott all Israeli goods. This is counterproductive to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, harmful to U.S. national security interests, and contributes to the deeply misguided anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.”
The statement noted that European efforts have been premised on the idea that peace is helped by economic prosperity, “not boycotts and isolation.”
Said the statement, “As Israel’s largest trading partner, the European Union should play a constructive role to help bring the parties back to the negotiating table and resolve their differences, not try to extract one-sided concessions and feed into politically-motivated acts to boycott Israel.”
(By Joshua Spurlock, www.themideastupdate.com, December 17, 2015)