Country after country, Europe is crawling toward a boycott of Israeli settlements, including those located in large blocs, which any proponent of peace in the world knows will be part of Israel in any future peace agreement. This is not a general boycott.
Actually, commerce with Israel is still blossoming. But the European economy is slowly inching toward a comprehensive boycott of goods produced in Israeli settlements, and perhaps will soon begin marking these goods in supermarkets with a word familiar from the 20th century: Jude.
If Israel stands against the boycott endeavor, it will spill over across the Green Line, which the anti-Semitic boycotters have already done in the fields of culture and entertainment. They not only reject performances in Ariel, but in Tel Aviv first and foremost. The grumblings which preceded the official acceptance of Israel's scientific partnership with the EU's Horizon 2020 program were a gloomy harbinger.
There is reason to be angry at Europe, but why should we complain? At a peace conference sponsored by an Israeli news outlet under its own name, voices on Friday called on others to break the law and refuse to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, and no one is making a peep or complaining about it (and this deserves less tolerance than MK Hanin Zoabi's disturbing comments). Nothing being proposed by Europe in regards to the settlements is worse than the ideas raised by the leaders of Israel's radical Left. Those who champion brotherhood among nations do not promote the same principle when it comes to their own brothers.
Those leading the charge to tighten the economic noose around the settlements are EU bureaucrats. They are experiencing quite a few problems on their continent. Many countries are disappointed by the economic burden they are saddled with. They want to free themselves from the bureaucrats in Brussels. The fight being waged between Germany and Great Britain over the appointment of former Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker as European Commission president, one of the most powerful jobs in Brussels, explicitly illustrates the problems the EU is facing domestically. Yet its disjointed members always find common ground when it comes to hurting Israel through the settlements.
The consequences facing Israel are not new. Israel's leaders know the boycott movement is slowly spreading, but under pressure from Habayit Hayehudi and the right wing of the Likud, the government has preferred to ignore the matter and deal with it in a cosmetic manner. Each day reveals the depth of the damage to Israel caused by the cessation of the diplomatic process with the Palestinians.
Had Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to limit settlement construction during negotiations with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas -- who is not interested in peace anyway -- Israel would have been spared the many difficulties it must contend with now, including Palestinian initiatives in the U.N., increased pressure to release security prisoners and the added economic and cultural burden posed by the boycott and divestment movement.
When Habayit Hayehudi leader Naftali Bennett, acting of his own accord, calls Abbas an "arch-terrorist"; when Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman shoots from the hip and says the EU representative to Israel is "persona non grata" and will be expelled -- worse than the treatment received by the Turkish foreign minister following the Mavi Marmara affair -- then what we have is anarchy, under the umbrella of the government, in regard to Israel's management of its foreign affairs.
A senior Israeli who heard these comments asked how long Israel must hold back in regard to construction in the settlements. How long until the world's outrage passes? Actually, he was able to answer his own questions: Until the end of U.S. President Barack Obama's term in office. There is a target date. It requires a certain modicum of self-restraint.
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