Boycotters ramp it up: “put an end to Agrexco’s presence in Europe”

by on July 25, 2011 27
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The BDS movement in Europe appears to be going for a knockout.  A coalition of 23 organizations from across Europe issued a "Political declaration after the Forum against Agrexco" outlining their campaign against the Israeli agricultural giant which is half owned by the Israeli Government and responsible for 60-70% of the agricultural produce grown in Israel’s illegal settlements. Here is a press release:

Facing a bankruptcy hearing in a Tel Aviv court Tuesday, Israeli export company Agrexco has been beset by bad headlines in recent months. Now its problems look set to worsen, after Palestinian solidarity groups from across Europe joined forces to escalate a boycott campaign.

A new coalition on Thursday promised to “put an end to Agrexco’s presence in Europe”. Twenty-three groups signed a declaration saying they had established a mechanism to coordinate boycott campaigns and court actions against the exporter.

“We are putting potential buyers on notice: any company investing in Agrexco will be targeted by boycotts all over Europe,” said Saqer Nazzal who represents the Palestinian Union of Professional Associations on the secretariat of the Palestinian Boycott Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC).

The alliance of European groups such as the French Coalition contre Agrexco have set Saturday 26 November as a pan-European day of action against the company.

Campaigners have drawn attention to the exporter’s involvement with illegal Israeli settlements with stunts, pickets and direct action. Last month in Milan, activists delivered gift baskets of rotten fruit and vegetables to the company’s HQ, symbolizing Palestinian agricultural products rotting at Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank, while Agrexco freely exports to Europe.

In June, Israeli financial publication Globes reported “heavy losses” for the fresh produce company, as Agrexco struggled to manage its debt. Fruitnet.com recently reported the company owed creditors €106 million.

Shir Hever, an Israeli economist with the AIC in Jerusalem said: “many Israeli farmers are abandoning Agrexco, possibly because of the campaigns against Agrexco in France, Italy, Spain, the UK and elsewhere. Maybe the Agrexco brand is no longer as appealing to farmers as it was before. It's no coincidence in my opinion that Agrexco shows the first signs of strain.”

Agrexco has been a prime target of pro-Palestine activists calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.

Half-owned by the Israeli government, Agrexco is responsible for 60-70% of the agricultural produce grown in Israel’s illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian territories (OPT).

* Sold under brand names such as Carmel, Coral, Biotop and Eco-Fresh, Agrexco products from settlements have routinely been mislabelled and submitted with papers claiming they originate inside the Green Line. Such attempts to fraudulently qualify them for preferential customs treatment under the EU-Israel Association Agreement have led to censure in the British Parliament.

* The EU Court of Justice has ruled that settlement produce should not qualify for such preferential treatment. In February 2011, a report of the commercial court in Montpellier, France, found that Carmel Agrexco deliberately misled customs officials about the origin of their produce.

* The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) is a coalition of Palestinian civil society groups. It was formed as the Palestinian reference point in the broad campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), which resulted in the July 2005 Palestinian Call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, with the initial
endorsement of over 170 Palestinian organizations.
 

About Annie Robbins

Annie Robbins is Writer at Large for Mondoweiss, a mother, a human rights activist and a ceramic artist. She lives in the SF bay area.
Posted in Israel/Palestine

{ 27 comments... read them below or add one }

  2. Mooser says:
    July 25, 2011 at 4:12 pm

    “…Israeli agricultural giant which is half owned by the Israeli Government…”

    I’m telling you, I always suspected those Zionists were a bunch of socialists at bottom.

  3. dimadok says:
    July 25, 2011 at 6:09 pm

    “Tamar partners in talks to sell gas to Palestinians
    Delek and Noble Energy are in talks with the Palestinian Authority to sell one billion cubic meters of natural gas to three power stations due to be built”.
    link to globes.co.il
    If the BDS makes any significant progress (so far just bells and whistles,and nothing solid), who is going to provide Palestinians with the electricity?
    Are going to send it in cans or some “electric flotillas”?
    You narrow views are adorable and nothing more, when you will make any concrete suggestions how to promote co-existence between the Israel and PA, only then you will be regarded as group to listen to. So far your are the fringe and will stay there for while.

  4. ToivoS says:
    July 25, 2011 at 7:18 pm

    Way OT, but this deserves its own thread. The rent protests in Israel are an interesting political development. This is a problem that I had never heard of before.

    Though not yet made it seems only logical that the protesters should be demanding that funds for WB settlement expansion be diverted to providing affordable housing in Israel proper. We have been hearing for years that the settlements, their roads, the wall and and general occupation costs are draining the national treasury.

    These protests also reveal something else about Israeli society. The WB settlements are cheap and the leaders are still recruiting tenants. So Israel really doesn’t have a housing shortage. The problem seems to be that most Israelis do not want to live there.

    Crazy policy, build in areas where people do not want to live and financially starve those areas where there is a real demand. A real inversion of free market supply and demand principles.

    • NickJOCW says:
      July 26, 2011 at 8:27 am

      It’s not that crazy. Settlements are good places to park those extremists proper Israelis don’t want as neighbours. Plus they provide a protective buffer and, if a two-state solution is ever forced into existence, they can be abandoned, with a deal of rhetoric and hand wringing it’s true, but little real grief.

    • richb says:
      July 26, 2011 at 8:37 am

      The rent protest show that Israel is susceptible to BDS and actually get average Israelis out into the streets. Note this Haaretz commentary on the rent protests:

      link to haaretz.com

      We did not take to the streets when Golda Meir turned her back on Anwar Sadat and King Hussein. We stayed at home when Yitzhak Shamir fended off the London Agreement with the Jordanians and the Palestinians. We did not protect Yitzhak Rabin or the Oslo Accords. We stood and watched as Netanyahu rode the dark waves of Arab terrorism all the way to the prime minister’s desk. Most of us submitted to Ehud Barak’s lie of “there is no partner” and bought willingly Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, without an agreement with the Palestinians. We passed when the historic Arab peace initiative was proposed – nearly 10 years ago.

      For the past 44 years we have sent our children, and soon our grandchildren, to protect with their bodies a piece of land that is not our own. Once in a while, a few refuse to serve in the territories. In the 1970s we turned the newspaper’s pages indifferently, showing the photograph of Defense Minister Shimon Peres planting the first tree in Ofra. We listened with apathy to his decision to stick the settlement of Ariel in the Palestinians’ throats like a bone.

      Because Israel holds on to Yitzhar and Kiryat Arba, at the heart of the occupied territories, it spends more money on security, roads and public relations than it does on housing, education and health. The Haaretz report on the cost of settlements, published in September 2003, showed that the excessive civilian cost of the settlements is at least NIS 2.5 billion annually. The cost of extending the separation fence because of the settlements is expected to cost more than NIS 3 billion. The average military cost of using the Israel Defense Forces to hold the territory stands at NIS 2.5 billion per year.

      Last week, the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies reported that Israelis pay 75 percent more tax for housing than citizens of other OECD countries. This is not only a relevant figure on the situation of the people in tents on Rothschild Boulevard, it’s a blatantly political figure. Instead of investing a substantial portion of these tax revenues to develop settlements, real estate taxes could be lowered.

      The Rabin government’s decision in 1992 to divert budgets from settlements to the construction of public buildings inside Israel was a political decision, as was the Netanyahu government’s decision in 2009 to grant settlements the status of preferred development areas. For their children not to sit in protest tents in the city square in 20 years and ask – “mother, whose side were you one when they sold our country?” – Daphni Leef and her friends need to understand that politics is the name of the game.

      The Israelis sans BDS are complaining about the undue economic costs of occupation. BDS can put that discomfort on steroids because this shows that the Israeli economy is in more danger than her apologists here let on.

  5. clairseoir says:
    July 25, 2011 at 8:18 pm

    Dimdock, it gets really boring reminding you guys that it’s Palestinian civil society who are calling for the boycott, and that arguments just as fatuous as yours were used ad nauseam during the era of the South African variety of apartheid. But what is even more irksome is your appalling English. When your going learn good talk with us, we can understand you? So far, your sound like zionist without good polish, yes?

  6. dimadok says:
    July 26, 2011 at 10:49 am

    Grammatics-dramatics and grammar. And still off the subject.

  7. clairseoir says:
    July 26, 2011 at 10:50 am

    I covered the issue before I got to your illiteracy. Five, including Yiddish. Never had any interest in conlangs.

  8. tree says:
    July 26, 2011 at 2:09 pm

    Slightly OT, but another indication of the “vibrant democracy” that is Israel (or in this case, the West Bank):

    Israeli grocery store keeps Arab baggers and Jewish cashiers apart

    It appears that Rami Levi chain has given in to a demand from local rabbis at Gush Etzion branch, in wake of romance between a Palestinian bagger and Jewish cashier.

    link to haaretz.com

    • eljay says:
      July 26, 2011 at 2:41 pm

      >> Slightly OT, but another indication of the “vibrant democracy” that is Israel (or in this case, the West Bank):

      From the article:
      >> … Rabbi Gideon Perl, the rabbi of Alon Shvut, met with chain owner Levi and demanded that he take action to prevent a recurrence.
      >> “There was an affair between a cashier and a bagger that nearly resulted in her leaving home,” Perl told Haaretz. “There was a plan to take her to his village.

      Dear gawd, no!!! 8-o

      >> “I was asked to talk to Rami Levi and his staff about the problem, and told them that one of the things we had feared when the store opened a year ago was exactly this.
      >> “I’m pleased by the steps Rami Levi has taken. The Arabs don’t particularly like this … either, and it seems that Rami Levi understands the problem. The worker was fired and will not return. You need a whip to teach people a lesson after something like this happens.”

      When no one else is willing to address “the problem”, the good and brave rabbi does not hesitate to wield the “whip to teach people a lesson”! What a man! What a “humanist”!

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