Screen shot from The Truth About the West Bank Israeli Foreign Ministry 2011
South African Government News Agency:
“Cabinet approved that a notice, in terms of the Consumer Protection Act, 2008, be issued by the Minister of Trade and Industry requiring the labelling of goods or products emanating from Israeli occupied territories to prevent consumers being led to believe that such goods come from Israel,” said Cabinet spokesperson Jimmy Manyi on Wednesday.
Israel accused South Africa on Thursday of behaving like an apartheid state by requiring Israeli goods made by West Bank settlers to be labelled as originating from occupied Palestinian territory.
…
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said it would summon South Africa’s ambassador to lodge a protest over the decision on labelling goods from Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
“Unfortunately it turns out the change that has begun in South Africa over the years has not brought about any basic change in the country, and it remains an apartheid state,” Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said in response to Pretoria’s move.
“At the moment South Africa’s apartheid is aimed at Israel,” added Ayalon, a nationalist hardliner in right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition.
Ayalon did not elaborate on what he meant by associating the labelling decision with apartheid.
This is a super article but it is sub only
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/oct/28/alliance-dared-not-speak-its-name/
The book under review is
The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa
by Sasha Polakow-Suransky
Pantheon, 324 pp., $27.95
the money shot :
(Shimon Peres) assured the president of Cameroon that “a Jew who accepts apartheid ceases to be a Jew. A Jew and racism do not go together”
Israel and apartheid SA worked hand in hand in the 70s and 80s. Israel detonated a nuke off SA sometime in the late 70s.
In public the two faced Peres would slate aparthid but in private he’d do anything for the business.
Israel has always been run by chancers
I guess the relevant question is whether the goods come from territories that are deemed “occupied” under international law. That’s what the Israeli government should focus about: is there misrepresentation by the S.A. government?
But we know the answer…
Ayalon may have been infuriated by this:
The Guardian fleshes the story out a bit more, including that the South African ambassador has been summoned over this incident:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/23/israel-south-africa-west-bank-label
I found the Israelis (and their SA support group) indignant squawks laughable. “Discrimination”, “exclusion”, “single out” – what have we not heard before!
Ayalon doesn’t seem to have a clue what the term apartheid actually means. He appears to think labelling goods in accordance with where they come from is some sort of terrible discrimination. Always happy to play the victim card, no doubt. In fact he is just using it as a cheap shot to smear SA. If the goods come from Israel, then clearly there is apartheid in Israel, since the WB has two legal systems, no free passage for indigenous people, total control of their movement and no civil or democratic rights for the people with the wrong parentage. If the territories are in dispute, and therefore not in Israel, then SA is quite right to indicate that in the packaging. Ayalon, like many others, is in complete denial of what is happening, wants it both ways, doesn’t like it when people point it out, and other countries ask Israel to stick to the law. I guess they just hate people pointing out the blindingly obvious, despite the care they take to not see it themselves. What an utter idiot he makes of himself. Nothing new there.