Israeli fury at the EU's insistence all goods from the Occupied Territories be labeled as such continues. Netanyahu has targeted the top Berlin stores KaDeWe for removing from its shelves products made in Jewish settlements. The store's management had at first insisted that the goods were being removed so that they could be relabeled, when they would be returned. The EU's reasoning is that European consumers need to know the origin of goods that are marked as being made in Israel. If they have come from one of the illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, then they are very clearly not of Israeli origin. The regulation also applies to goods produced in Syria's Golan Heights. Netanyahu has called the EU move absurd. His bluster that this is a boycott of his country's products is the real absurdity. And he has thrown the entire standard Zionist complaint catalog at this world-famous department store. KaDeWe is of course demonstrating its anti-Semitism. The removal of the produce for relabeling was an immoral demonstration of hatred for Jews. This, ranted Netanyahu, was the more terrible, because before 1933, the department store had been owned by the Jewish Tiez family. The Nazis forced the sale of the business at a knock-down price to non-Jews and the Tiez family, fortunately for themselves chose to emigrate. What Netanyahu neglected to say was that in 1949, the Supreme Restitution Court in Germany recognized the Tiez claims and awarded the family the extra value of the business and compensation for loss of earnings. This whole storm in a poisoned tea cup would be amusing were it not for the reaction of KaDeWe. It immediately apologized saying that it had acted hastily and insensitively and that the eight products it had removed would be put back. It appears that the store will allow them to be sold as "Made in Israel" even though this is untrue and the new EU regulations are due to come in force at the start of 2016. It can with confidence be expected that Zionist supporters will buy up all the eight products concerned, challenging KaDeWe managers to restock with products that have not been relabeled as Brussels now requires. What is so odd about the weak reaction on the part the Berlin store is that it has the remedy in its own hands. It could have printed small labels for the bottles or put up signage at the sales point describing them as coming from the Occupied Territories. It is about time that insidious pressure from Zionists is given international exposure. This malign influence extends from the extremely well-organized and massively-funded lobbying on Washington's Capitol Hill right down to tens of thousands of angry letter writers. These zealots monitor press and TV. Any criticism of Israel or its policies immediately produces an furious protest at imagined anti-Semitism. Thus while eight years ago, the Israel armed forces were slaughtering Palestinians in Gaza, media outlets were inundated with complaints that coverage was biased. What about murderous Hamas rockets, they bleated, which indeed continued to be fired into Israel even while war planes and artillery bombarded the Gaza ghetto? What these hypocrites willfully failed to admit was that Israel's behavior in Gaza was horrifically similar to the way the Nazi army had smashed the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw when its inhabitants rose up against the Germans.
