Holiday gifts from the Israeli embassy in the United States this year will be deliberately sourced from settlements in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Golan Heights, the country’s US ambassador has announced.
Ron Dermer said in a letter posted to social media on Tuesday that the gesture was intended to combat the boycott, divestments and sanctions (BDS) campaign, which he described as “the latest effort by Israel’s enemies to destroy the one and only Jewish state”.
BDS, modelled on the campaign to isolate apartheid-era South Africa, calls for an end to the occupation of Palestinian territories and a “right of return” for Palestinian refugees.
“In response to this effort to cast a beacon of freedom, tolerance and decency as a pariah state, I have decided this holiday season to send you products that were made in Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights,” Dermer said in the letter. (Judea and Samaria is the official Israeli name for the West Bank.)
Critics argue the BDS movement, started in 2005 by Palestinian NGOs, entertains antisemitic elements and that its goal of allowing Palestinian refugees to return would end Israel’s status as a Jewish state.
The Israeli president, Reuven Rivlin, in May described the campaign as a “strategic threat of the first order”.
Last month the European Union issued guidelines that products produced in Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories had to be labelled as such.
Dermer said on Tuesday the EU move was “all the more shameful [because] Israel upholds the highest democratic values in the darkest region on earth and while facing threats faced by no other nation”.
This year I decided to send a gift for the holiday that would also help combat BDS pic.twitter.com/43haadtzvm
— Amb. Ron Dermer (@AmbDermer) December 21, 2015
Dermer, who formerly worked for US Republicans, has been a controversial figure in Washington since he took up the ambassador’s post in 2013.
In January he was censured by Israel’s civil service commission for publicly campaigning for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in interviews with US media.
The same month, after helping to facilitate the Israeli prime minister’s invitation to address to Congress without seeking the permission of the Obama administration, Dermer was accused by an unnamed White House official of putting Netanyahu’s political fortunes above the US-Israel relationship.
Israel has occupied the West Bank and the Golan Heights since 1967 when it seized the territories in the six-day war.
