Eugene Kontorovich: Canada corrects its ‘Made in Israel’ policy. Now it is time for the U.S. to do the same.
What makes the CFIA reversal significant is it explicitly says that if the product can be considered Israeli for customs purposes, it is not misleading to the consumer to label it as such. This is somewhat consistent with the EU position — which denies both Israel customs and labeling status to West Bank products and gives both Moroccan customs and labeling status to Western Saharan products.Shmuley Boteach: Canada attacks Israeli wines while exploiting occupied Tibet
It is, however, inconsistent with U.S. labeling policy. Under a 1996 piece of trade legislation, the president is authorized to give Israeli products from the West Bank Israeli customs treatment, which President Clinton immediately did. Since then, such goods are considered “articles of Israel” for trade purposes. It certainly cannot be misleading to label them “Made in Israel” if they are legally called “articles of Israel.”
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Yet soon after, the Customs Service issued a notice that such products must be labeled “Made in the West Bank.” This is particularly strange because the labeling of goods does not imply any sovereignty recognition — as evident by the fact that Customs had instructed such products to be labeled “Made in Israel” for decades before that, without any suggestion that this amounted to a recognition of Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza.
This Customs guidance has gone entirely unenforced for decades, but it was reissued — perhaps to keep it from desuetude — by the Obama administration in its final years.
The Customs directive flies in the face of the 1996 Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act and other laws. The Clinton/Obama regulations were a mistake, which helps explain why they have never been enforced (though they do have a chilling effect on importers). Yet they may be used by future administrations. Similarly, anti-Israel activists in Canada are already planning lawsuits over the revised directive.
Ottawa’s quick realization that products with Israeli customs status can and should be labeled “Made in Israel” is a wake-up call to the Trump administration to quickly revise the Clinton/Obama policies, which can be done through a simple executive action. Congress could also exercise its Foreign Commerce power to make clear in law that such goods can be labeled “Made in Israel.”
Certainly it would be incongruous for the Trump administration to find itself with a less pro-Israel policy than the Trudeau government has.
For example, Canadian mining giant Hunter Dickinson sold Continental Mineral Processing, and with it the rights to its Tibetan mine, for almost half a billion dollars – the largest asset sale in its 30 years of operation.'There was no massacre at Deir Yassin'
Far worse than being complicit in theft from the Tibetan people, Canadian mining companies caused irreversible, often deadly, damage.
In 2011, the Chinese minister of land and resources warned that the ecology of the Tibetan plateau is “extremely fragile.” His warnings, however, were ignored by Canadian and Chinese companies alike, with tragic consequences. In March of 2013, a landslide at the Jiama copper and gold mine killed 83 miners. That mine was controlled by China Gold International Resources, another Canadian-based company.
This mine, it should also be mentioned, is in the Gyama valley – which the Tibetan people revere as one of their most sacred sites. They have tried, in the past, to protest the desecration and devastation caused to these sacred lands by Canadian mining companies, with similarly tragic consequences.
In 2010, four Tibetans were murdered and 30 others hurt when Chinese mining officials opened fire on crowds protesting the expansion of mine operations in their sacred homeland. In 2013, further protests saw another Tibetan activist shot to death by police.
And that’s not the end of Canadian involvement in the exploitation of Tibet; the creation of these mines was only made possible in 2006 with the opening of the Qinghai-Tibet Rail Line, which allowed for the import of mining materials and machinery into Tibet. That rail line was made possible largely through the Bombardier Sifang Power Transportation company, a joint venture of three entities – two of which are Canadian.
Canadian companies seem knee-deep in some pretty serious exploitation of an occupied territory in the world today.
Yet, Canada didn’t seem nearly as worried about that as with checking the labels on Israeli wine.
While they might have failed this time around, those behind this bizarre action are likely to be back.
In his new book, Deir Yassin: The End of the Myth, Prof. Eliezer Tauber, head of the Institute for the Study of Underground Movements at Bar-Ilan University and former Dean of the Faculty of Jewish Studies at the University, examines the events of that day in April 1948 when the Arab village of Deir Yassin was attacked by Lehi and Etzel (Irgun or IZL) fighters, and reveals step by step the origin of the myth that a massacre was committed against the villagers.
Prof. Tauber opened his recent interview with Arutz Sheva by highlighting the central conclusion of his book.
"Basically there was no massacre in Deir Yassin."
In explaining what led him to that conclusion, Tauber noted that, since the Israeli-Arab conflict by definition consists of both Israelis and Arabs, it is not possible to reach real conclusions regarding the issues related to it without carefully examining the claims of both sides. This is in contrast to previous writers who examined the Deir Yassin affair by investigating only one side of those involved in the incident.
To write his book, Tauber thus turned to both Jewish and Arab sources, to the testimonies of Etzel (Irgun) and Lehi fighters, and to the testimonies of the Arabs at the scene. Not surprisingly, he said, the testimonies sound similar and express the same conclusion: There was no massacre at Deir Yassin.
The data collection process for the book included locating documents and recorded interviews conducted by the parties over the years, as well as interviews with some of those involved in the affair who are still alive.