When will Ben & Jerry’s take a page from McDonald’s, and announce that its Israeli franchise, too, will refuse to sell in Jewish settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory?
So, I wrote this:
This statement needs review:
"Ariel, an illegal, Jewish-only settlement in the occupied West Bank."
a) Is it illegal?
The only crime that could be considered is ..., what ? There is a great debate whether the civilian residency of Jews in Judea and Samaria contravenes any article of the Geneva Accords but the Levy Report has resolved all those issues in line with the opinions of the former Int'l Court of Justice in Hague, Stephen Schwebel, as well as former dean of Yale Law School, Eugene Rostow and more than a dozen other leading international law scholars.
And consider: are Arab settlements in Israel "illegal" then?
b) Has this writer any idea how many Arab communities are "Arabs-only"? Or that the only genuine "apartheid-roads", for example, are those Jews are prohibited from driving on?
c) and as regards, "occupied", well, I am occupying myself with writing this comment and I ma occupying a seat to do so. Is that "illegal" or "wrong"? Not every "occupation" is necessarily bad. When Jordan illegally occupied Judea and Samaria, who complained? Now that Israel, is an act of defense against aggression, administers portions of its original League of Nations guaranteed Jewish national home, where Jews were awarded the right of "close settlement", Mark Hage's rant is quite out of line, as is his call for companies such as Ben & Jerry to cease business with Jews just because they are Jews with full rights in their homeland.
If he is truly concerned about ethics and morality, his radical progressive ideological orientation which ignores the complexities and the truths about the conflict is neither politic or just.
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