I’m Israeli, and I want to be blacklisted for boycotting settlement products

By +972 Magazine December 7, 2016 | Edit

I don’t know what sanctions the Israeli government can impose on me for boycotting products made in the settlements, but I’ll accept them proudly.

By Eitan Kalinski

Jewish settlers clean the newly harvested grapes at a winery in the West Bank settlement of Gush Etzion, September 8, 2014. (Gershon Elinson/Flash90)
Jewish settlers clean the newly harvested grapes at a winery in the West Bank settlement of Gush Etzion, September 8, 2014. (Gershon Elinson/Flash90)

Israel’s Minister for Strategic Affairs, Gilad Erdan, this week recommended to Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon that a special committee be set up to put together a blacklist of companies, organizations and individuals that call for a boycott of products made in West Bank settlements.

I, the undersigned, am not a limited company nor an organization; I am a private individual who has personally undertaken not to buy products from the settlements.

It’s written in the draft regulations sent by Erdan to Kahlon that sanctions will be placed on anyone who commits not to buy products and services from “areas under Israeli control.” It would be my honor to make the list: in my opinion, it’s a respectable whitelist of citizens who recognize the right of the Palestinian people to establish a state of their own alongside the State of Israel.

I don’t know which sanctions you could place on me, a citizen who is on the threshold of his ninth decade. But I guarantee you I will proudly accept any sanction that the Treasury decides to impose on me, because I am determined to continue not buying products made in the settlements.

Eitan Kalinski is a retired Bible teacher. This article was originally published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.

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