Bremen – A team of self-styled “goods inspectors” in a German
town tried to label all the Israeli products they could find as being “from
illegal Israeli settlements.”
On Saturday, the proponents of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions movement visited businesses in downtown Bremen, in northwest Germany,
checking to see that products from Israeli settlements were not marked “Made in
Israel.”
Dressed in white overalls, the self-styled inspectors visited fruit
stands to department stores ostensibly to enforce a European Commission rule
that will soon go into effect requiring the labeling of foods and cosmetics
that are made in the West Bank and the Golan Heights. But a spokesman for the
group told the TAZ newspaper that the activists were making an educated guess
on which products originated from those two places.
One “inspector” reportedly laughed in the face of a passer-by who
accused the activists of antisemitism.
In one pharmacy, the activists were shown the door and barred from
reentering after trying to record their actions putting little paper flags on
the shelves that read “Warning: This product could come from an illegal Israeli
settlement.”
They demanded that the shop manager erase the tape from the shop’s
surveillance camera, offering to erase their own tape in return. The manager
told TAZ that she did not approve of people entering her shop and disturbing
business.
