Companies making goods for export in the oPt claim their production is for the good of Palestinians who make the goods. Apartheid South Africa told the same story in the contemptous belief that the alien worker cared for nothing but earning a wage. Stephanie Westbrook (1) challenges the story and Alon Aviram (2) describes the hardship of wage-labour for Palestinians in Israel.

In the 2nd article here, Ramzy Baroud challenges the argument that settlement goods only should be boycotted; they could not be produced without huge support from Israel. In the first article, Dalia Hatuqa looks at the failure of the EU to achieve a ban on settlement products via honest labelling of provenance.

The EU has two voices on Israel and Palestine The quiet voice discreetly makes preferential trade deals with Israel. The louder, political one – including the EU consuls in the West Bank and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton – is angry that Israel has rejected all diplomatic means to establish a Palestinian state. Israel wants to sell its goods, without labelling settlement products, to a market it treats with contempt.

In this article for JfJfP, Adam Keller (Gush Shalom) looks at two issues where Israel has been censured from outside: a lack of law on incitement to hatred, and ethnic cleansing. Remembering that ethnic cleansing was a term coined in Europe he looks at instances of ethnic cleansing, beyond the pale of Fortress Europe. He doesn’t need to mention the biggest ethnic cleansing of all – of Jews from Europe 1933-45.

The Mediterranean island of Cyprus is still divided along a ‘Green Line’ between the southern Republic of Cyprus, an EU member state, and the north, invaded by Turkey in 1974 following a coup carried out by the Greek military junta. Since then southern/western Cyprus has established itself as one of the family of EU members – and joined the part which recognises Palestine as a small state that wants independence.

Gershon Baskin explores what steps Europeans might take to put their words of disapproval into action. He thinks this would make Europe more influential in Israel ( although as most Israelis associate Europe with antisemitism it is unlikely to be a favourable influence). UPDATE: Lieberman invokes Holocaust.

After all the UK/USA/German efforts to persuade the PA not to go to the UN General Assembly and their loyal acts of not supporting the PA’s resolution, all in the name of the 2-state solution, Netanyahu has done what he does best – gone off in a huff and ordered construction which destroys that EU/USA policy.

22 NGOs, Christian and secular, have taken up what EU institutions have flunked: a campaign to press the EC and EU members to practise their policies on the illegality of Israel’s settlements and what they produce. CAABU media release plus excerpt from the report Trading Away Peace.

The EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) has commissioned surveys in nine EU countries as part of its ongoing research into antisemitism today. The questionnaire is online and you can access it through this posting. It is for Jews (by any definition) aged 16 and over.

A new report from Oxfam, a leading charity for extreme deprivation in the UK and the world, takes on the impact of settlements on Palestinians in the Jordan valley. The extreme inequality enforced by the Israeli government will not be news to regular readers of this website. The news is Oxfam’s decision to make this an issue and its first recommendation: that the EU move beyond statements to take urgent action.

Palestinians for Dignity, a youth group which emerged at the beginning of this year to oppose the PA negotiating with Israel and has been active in protests since, here denounces the EU for complicity with the occupation and says it willl organise protests against the role of the EU in Palestine. Links to previous posts on the growing anger at the EU’s failure to follow its principles on international law are given at the foot of the post.

Neither the US nor Quartet will use tools to block Israeli transgressions – or rein in ‘radical factions’ – says former British ambassador Tom Philips in Prospect magazine; Arab states have been no more effective. But the EU, Israel’s greatest trading partner, has many tools it could use to press for change. It should start using them. Jonathan Cook, 1 and Akiva Eldar, 2, comment.

G4S and Israel seem made for each other, having in common a paramount concern with security. More surprising might be the contracts the company is winning in Arab countries, despite the official position of many on the oPt. Rather, says Al Akhbar, it is Europeans who are leading moves to question and boycott the company. JfJfP is at the forefront of the campaign to stop G4S winning contracts in the UK.

A meeting of the EU Council in May affirmed that EU policy was for security for both Israelis and Palestinians, and an agreement on two states. But settlements, pushing Arabs out of East Jerusalem, undermining the PA and more are making this impossible. Ireland’s Foreign Minister concludes that the EU should impose a ban on the entry to the EU of all settlement products – and of violent settlers.

Security is one of the few boom industries in these depression times and nowhere is it so booming as in the arms and ‘security’ trade between the EU and Israel – which happily has the oPt to test new products and services. Germany’s Left party MP Annette Groth explores the links.

This post contains news and comments from 2003 about anti-semitism in Europe, prompted by an EU poll on threats to peace and a speech by Ariel Sharon. The suspicion of resurgent European anti-semitism began to be voiced as the EU became more powerful, Israel occupied Palestinian territory in 1967 and a new generation entered political life.

Hamas continues to carry out the death penalty – three men were executed on 7 April – for crimes of violence, drug trafficking and collaboration with Israeli state agencies (1). Both the UN Human Rights office (2) and the EU (3) deplore the practice, especially where trial proceedings fall below accepted standards. Accurate figures on the use of the death penalty worldwide are hard to get. Known figures are given in (4).

Much of the information in this article will be familiar. Its significance is that it marks the growing disquiet in EU countries towards the prevailing racism in Israel, as well as the breaches of international law on human rights.

The failure of the EU to respond to violations of human rights in the occupied territories is a principal obstacle to peace; it is these violations the EU should focus on, not restarting peace negotiations concludes the EHMRN, a network of civil society groups from around the Mediterranean and APRODEV, a group of Christian churches. The introduction is posted here with a link to the full report.

EU members of the UN Security Council call on Israeli government to halt the devastating effects of building settlements and of escalating settler violence and asks for political leadership on both sides. Israel responds with ‘outrage’ at European assault