Michael Bookatz as he looked when first responders arrived after he was attacked.
A UK government brokered meeting has been held in London to consider labelling produce from the West Bank. The meeting involved government officials and representatives from UK food retailers.
The gathering, held in the week leading to Easter, was an initiative in part by Oxfam. It considered clearer guidelines of Produce originating from Israeli settlements. Jennifer Abrahamson, an Oxfam spokeswoman reportedly said: “We are not in support of settlements and people should know they are illegal. We believe that consumers should know where their produce comes from.”
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs explained that the meeting looked at the feasibility of implementing clearer labelling on produce from the “occupied Palestinian territories”. It examined a new draft of voluntary guidance for retailers. The department would edit the final guidelines for publication at the end of April.
A label of discrimination rather than of choice for the discriminating consumer
From a commercial branding point of view, it is one thing for the government to encourage high street retailers to feature healthy guideline labelling on food packaging or even carbon footprint labelling. However, this new move is something quite different.
Jeremy Newmark, board member of the Fair Play group, a community campaign against initiatives to boycott Israel, said: “By involving groups which campaign for a boycott and ban on all settlement goods, the (UK) government is making it harder to believe that this meeting is purely about giving consumers choice.” Despite this, remarkably, the British Government has claimed the initiative has no foreign policy implications. Thanks to the current climate of mixing politics with religious fundamentalism, others may consider it as tantamount to the beginning of state-sponsored anti-Semitism.
The Chief of the London Metropolitan Police Sir Paul Stephenson recently admitted to a rise in anti-Semitic crime. According to the Community Security Trust, a non-governmental organization that monitors anti-Semitism in the UK, during the first two months of 2009 alone, there were more than 250 assaults on Jewish targets in the United Kingdom.
Many British Jews are hiding outward signs of their beliefs. Some Jewish school children are covering up uniforms in fear of retribution from the wider community.
Perhaps the blame for the increase in hate crimes is partly due to the wider community increasingly confusing misunderstood regional political Middle Eastern issues with hitherto publicly inexpressible religious prejudices: creating a toxic mix of anti-Semitic bias against one of the UK ‘s most loyal and productive communities.
Throw in the current economic crises and you have the ingredients for a far more sinister outlook – for any UK minority group- not just Jews.
Sunday, April 12th, 2009 at 5:25 pmand is filed under Brand expert, Branding, Food Labelling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
