(JNi.media) MK Stav Shaffir (Zionist Camp, a.k.a. Labor) addressed the issue of product labeling, saying “the right-wing government has long ago sold out the settlements in exchange for a long list of economic benefits from the EU.”
Writing in a Wednesday night Facebook post, Shaffir, not a friend of the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, wrote: “In the coming days, you’ll be hearing Netanyahu government ministers and the Prime Minister himself crying in front of every open microphone: ‘Settlement products labeling?! Differentiating between products on the basis of their place of manufacturing?! How can those anti-Semitic Europeans imagine such a thing!’ The general hysteria, which has already begun today, will combine—as is traditionally accepted—as many references to the Holocaust as possible.”
“So Let me tell you something,” Shaffir continues, “The State of Israel is a signatory to a variety of agreements with the EU and international organizations. Economic, scientific and technological agreements, which include a clear legal distinction between sovereign Israel and the occupied territories. And the signatory to these agreements it is not Hitler nor his friend, the Mufti, but the Israeli government and its leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. Why? Because these agreements are worth tens of billions to the Israeli economy.”
Stav Shaffir is as close to a grassroots leader as you get in Israel. She gained national attention as one of the founders and organizers, and the unofficial leader of the summer of 2011 Israeli social justice protests, in which more than half a million Israelis took to the streets in huge, persistent public demonstrations. From that moment on, her rise was truly meteoric, elected to the Knesset on the Labor list at age 27, and then placing second in the January 2015 Labor primaries. Had the Zionist Camp won that 2015 election, Shaffir would have received a major government portfolio.
She writes on: “In short, just like the right-wing minister can ramble on all day long about how bad the Oslo accords are—but will never dare to cancel them and return our soldiers to the heart of the casbah in Palestinian cities, so it is in this case: nothing but shrieks and nonsense. The purest right-wing government we’ve had in years has long since sold out the settlements for a long list of economic benefits from the EU. What the European countries are doing now is to extend this ongoing, mutual understanding to the supermarket shelves.”
In a challenging tone, as befits an opposition MK and a populist leader, Shaffir concludes: “Incidentally, last week Acting Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely stated that the [EU Commission] new guidelines are [tantamount to] ‘a yellow star and delegitimization of Israel.’ If all that is true, then, in effect, the Israeli government — which has signed these agreements — is performing self-delegitimizing, and must eliminate those agreement as soon as possible, possibly tomorrow morning. Let’s see them doing it…”
