[lbo-talk] Palestine Think Tank: Jeff Blankfort - Chomsky and Palestine: Asset or Liability?

Joel Schalit jschalit at gmail.com
Thu Jul 22 09:56:53 PDT 2010


Israel's largest trading partner, if I am correct, is the EU, or to be more precise, European Union member states. European boycotts of Israeli products pose a larger threat than US boycotts of Israeli products. In Italy, two national supermarket chains decided to stop carrying goods made in the settlements, in May. It was a significant victory for Italian anti-occupation activists.

Milan, where I lived for most of the last year (until the end of this spring) was a site of heavy street campaigning for boycotts. It was very interesting to take stock of the flyers and stickers, as they advised of action both ways: boycotting Israeli products in Italy, like citurs exports, and, Italian companies, like Lavazza, the coffee company, that export food products to Israel.

Joel

On Jul 22, 2010, at 6:17 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:


>
> On Jul 22, 2010, at 11:52 AM, SA wrote:
>
>> I don't know all the particulars about M&S, but virtually every mass retailer sells products made in Israel, including the settlements.
>
> By the way, U.S. trade with Israel is pretty insignificant - imports are on the order of $18-20 billion a year. Over a quarter of the imports are diamonds. About 20% are pharmaceuticals (Israelis are major makers of generic drugs), and another 15% are electronics & telecoms. Then the numbers get very insignificant. Cosmetics are under 1% of the total, just over $100 million. Apparel is about the same. Food barely registers.
>
> Doug
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