Pressure grows to change ‘made in Israel’ labels on goods from West Bank settlements

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Vered Ben-Saadon likes to tell the guests who come to her tasting room that they are not just sipping vintages from hills of central Israel that produced grapes in biblical times.

They are participating in an act of Jewish religious revival, the fulfilment of the prophet Jeremiah’s call that “again you will plant vineyards on the hills of Samaria.”

“It’s more than a good wine,” Ms. Ben-Saadon says. “It’s the prophesies that have come alive.”

She and her husband began planting the malbec, sauvignon blanc, shiraz, pinot noir, chardonnay and other vines that now support the Tura Winery in 2003. They wanted “to settle the land,” she said, and the wines they now produce are exported around the world under the Mountain Peak brand, which calls itself “wines from the land of Israel.”

But the winery’s operations are situated in the West Bank, in areas where Israelis have built settlements that Canada and other Western nations consider illegal outposts. Tura’s cellars and fermentation tanks are situated in Rehelim, where last year a settler shot dead a Palestinian father who had come to pick olives with his family.

In 2015, the European Union imposed distinct labelling for products from occupied Palestinian territories, a decision upheld by the European Court of Justice in 2019.

The Joe Biden administration is now considering a similar move – which would reverse a Donald Trump policy that required a “made in Israel” label for West Bank-produced goods – as anger grows about settler violence, the Financial Times reported recently.

Palestinian groups have for years called on Canada to do likewise.

Advocates say the moment has come for such policies, arguing that anger over the war in Gaza means countries are likely to pay a lesser political price for acting and that Israel’s accelerated seizure of Palestinian lands demands a tangible form of condemnation.

“This is the time,” said Hagit Ofran, who leads a settlement monitoring project for Peace Now, an Israeli group.

“We all realize this occupation is not only bad morally, but it’s also destabilizing the whole region. You should take the measures you can to make it harder for Israel to go on with it.”

More than 600,000 people live in Israeli settlements, and the country is preparing to extend this footprint. It has already appropriated more than twice as much land in 2024 than in any previous year in the past quarter-century.

Labelling settlement-made goods creates complexities, such as differentiating between goods made by Palestinians and those made by settlers, warned Michael Bueckert, vice-president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East.

It is now a lesser objective behind calls for what he called “meaningful action – sanctions on officials who are committing war crimes, a comprehensive two-way arms embargo. Things that would put meaningful pressure on Israel to correct.”

Still, he said, allowing Canadian consumers to differentiate the source of goods is “the bare minimum policy decision” in response to the war in Gaza.

After a series of court cases about the proper labels for wines imported from Israeli settlement areas, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency held consultations last year on “labelling of imported foods from a contested territory.” They were completed on Oct. 10, three days after Hamas-led attacks killed 1,200 in Israel and sparked a war that has now killed more than 33,000 in Gaza, according to Palestinian health authorities.

The CFIA did not respond to a request for comment.

Even some Israelis struggle to avoid products made in the settlements.

Outi Bat-El Foux takes her time at the supermarket, examining labels to ensure she buys nothing made in settlement areas. “It takes me ages,” she said. Even so, she misses things. It was only after seeing a social media post that she discovered the honey already in her cupboard comes from the West Bank.

“I’m not going to throw away what I have, but I’m not going to buy it any more,” she said. “And I really like this honey.”

Ms. Bat-El Foux, an emeritus linguist at Tel Aviv University, was among 500 signatories to a 2021 letter that called for the EU to block research funding to Ariel University, whose expansion has formed a major development on settlement lands.

The school’s unusual position is underscored by a perimeter that, on a recent day, was watched by a security guard carrying an assault rifle as a groundskeeper worked nearby with a pistol strapped to his belt. Funded in part by billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the late American casino magnate, the school boasts an enrolment of 17,000.

Foreign criticism has had an ostracizing effect, said Chen Kertcher, vice-chair of the university’s department of Middle Eastern studies. European regulations mean scholars from Ariel University cannot apply for some EU research funding.

“People feel like this gives them some satisfaction, that they’ve done something,” he said. But it would be more effective, he argued, for foreign powers to use their diplomatic influence to advocate for peace.

Besides, he added, if any settlement business sees a drop in sales, “the main people who will be hurt are the Palestinian workers who are the majority in the producing lines.”

Evidence for the effectiveness of settlement-label mandates suggests, at best, mixed results. A 2019 report by the European Middle East Project, a Belgian-based policy group, found that only 10 per cent of wines from settlement areas that were sold in the EU had correct labels. (Goods from settlements form roughly 1 to 2 per cent of Israel’s exports to Europe.)

Still, “the fact that something is insufficient doesn’t mean it should be given up on but rather that the governments should do it and then go further,” said Martin Konecny, the project’s director.

Israel has sought to protect itself from foreign critics, passing a law in 2011 that makes it easier to sue anyone calling for boycotts against Israel or its settlement areas.

Ms. Ben-Saadon, the co-founder of the Tura Winery, dismisses labelling requirements as “the new antisemitism.”

Products from Tibet, she noted, don’t receive a label distinct from “made in China.” Critics just “want to hurt Israel,” she said.

Foreign criticism has done little to slow the winery’s growth. Tura started production at 1,200 barrels a year. It’s now up to 250,000; its wines have been sold in Ontario and Quebec. It has never changed its labels, which call the wine “product of Israel.”

“We do what we want,” Ms. Ben-Saadon said. “We are not ashamed of what we are doing.”