Europe: Defeating European hypocrisy

Another example of European double standards concerns the fisheries agreement betwen the EU and Morocco which affects the occupied Western Sahara. Hans Corell, Former Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and the Legal Counsel of the United Nations wrote: “A very serious question in this context is the fisheries agreement between the EU and Morocco which does not contain one word – apart from the cryptic “sovereignty or jurisdiction” in Article 2 (a) – about the fact that Morocco’s ‘jurisdiction’ in the waters of Western Sahara is limited by the international rules on self-determination. Instead, the agreement and its protocols are replete with references to the “Moroccan fishing zones”.  European consumers are not informed and human rights NGO keep mum about the situation.  So convenient for everybody!

Judith Berman writes @ Israel Hayom:

[...] Many Europeans proudly describe themselves as "political consumers," yet their politics are extremely ‎limited in scope. While nothing on earth makes their blood pressure soar quite so much as encountering ‎Israeli produce in their local supermarket, they happily stuff themselves with Iranian dates and ‎pomegranates, Egyptian carrots and green beans and Turkish cherries and grapes. They dress themselves ‎in cheap clothes produced by overexploited, underpaid children working under slave-like conditions in ‎Bangladesh and Pakistan, and they do not give it a second thought if young women on death row in China ‎sewed their jeans, as long as they get their money's worth. If North Korea produced anything other than grief ‎and nuclear weapons, they would rush to consume its produce, as well. ‎

In a letter to EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, 16 of the EU's 28 foreign ministers recently ‎asked her to push forward the process of labeling goods produced in Israeli settlements. "We would like ‎to draw your attention to the letter dated 13th April 2013 sent to your predecessor on EU-wide guidelines ‎on the labeling of settlement produce/products. ... We remain of the view that this is an important step in ‎the full implementation of EU long-standing policy, in relation to the preservation of the two-state ‎solution." Austria, Belgium, Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Malta, Ireland, Portugal, Slovenia, Croatia, ‎Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were all signatories to the letter.‎

‎"[The] continued expansion of Israeli illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and other ‎territories occupied by Israel since 1967, threatens the prospect of a just and final peace agreement," the ‎letter further reads. ‎

What this means in plain language is that the continued Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria bothers ‎the postcolonial European so much that the issue is pushed to the very top of the EU foreign policy ‎agenda.‎

Yet, one has to marvel at the timing of this openly hostile EU initiative. More than 500,000 people, among ‎them thousands of children, have been ruthlessly murdered in Syria; Yezidis and Christians, among them ‎countless women and children, are being murdered, raped, mutilated, tortured, beheaded and sold into ‎slavery from Syria and Iraq to Nigeria and Kenya. ‎

Now, what could possibly be more important, at this point in time, than preventing an Israeli orange from ‎the "wrong" side of the Green Line from ending up in the politically sensitive belly of a squeamish, "peace-‎loving" European?‎

The call for economic warfare against Israel by the 16 EU foreign ministers certainly emboldens and ‎encourages the rabid hatred of Israel among Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement activists across Europe. More.