Arab News Blog

Lengthy efforts by those trying to get targeted sanctions imposed against products made in Israel’s illegal settlements have won a great victory in the European High Court. It ruled today that setlement products cannot benefit from the free trade agreement the EU has with Israel.

Hurrah!

The case in question involved water-carbonating machines and syrup made by Soda-Club, which is based in the nasty, sprawling settlement of Maale Adumim. The German company Brita objected to paying import duty on these items. The Hamburg Finance Court had earlier ruled that Brita should indeed pay such duties. Brita appealed to the High Court– and the BDS forces won!

The court’s decision also noted that “the Israeli authorities are obliged to provide sufficient information to enable the real origin of products to be determined.” That is also important, given the misleading labeling many settlement-based manufacturers have engaged in.

Locating businesses inside the settlements has been important to Israel’s powerful pro-settlement forces because (1) they enable the settlers to work close to home, (2) they generate some tax revenues to help administer the settlements– in addition to the vast subsidies from central government, that is, and (3) they help “normalize” the whole idea and reality of settlements within the socio-economic life of Israel and its trading partners.

But now the EU, which is Israel’s largest trading partner, is saying a resounding NO! to that normalization.

(I should note that though I called this a victory for the ’sanctions’ part of the BDS movement, strictly speaking it is not a sanction/punishment to make the settlers pay normal import duties on products exported to Europe. In truth, it is the withholding of a benefit/reward. But why on earth should Israel– or its settlers– get rewarded for anything??)

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As part of the 50th Anniversary of the Aswan High Dam the Egyptian media has been writing a lot about the period. Here’s an interesting interview in Al-Masry Al-Youm’s English pages with a Nubian displaced by the High Dam, remembering the lost villages of Nubia and showing distinctly mixed views of Nasser.

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The High Priest of the Samaritans, Elazar ben Tzedaka, has died at age 83. His official obituary at an English-language Samaritan site is here. That site identifies the new high priest (kohen gadol) as Aharon ben Ab-Hisda.

The Samaritans are one of the smallest of the Middle East’s many small relic minorities, groups that once flourished but today hold on tenuously. Divided from Judaism since the Babylonian exile and still claiming to be the rightful heirs of ancient Israel, and familiar to most people from the New Testament (the Good Samaritan, Jesus and the Samaritan woman), they live mostly either on their historic Mount Gerizim, which rises above Nablus in the West Bank, or in Holon near Tel Aviv. The Wikipedia article says they numbered only 712 in 2007.

Unlike mainstream Judaism, they have retained the institution of the High Priest, who claims direct descent from Aaron, as well as animal sacrifices and an archaic version of the Hebrew alphabet.

Like many other Middle Eastern minorities — Mandaeans, Yazidis, to name a couple — they retain their own identity despite the small size of their community.

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