Ex-Foreign Ministry director backs cultural boycott of Israel

A former top Foreign Ministry official has endorsed South Africa’s plan to ban “Made in Israel” labels for imported products from the West Bank, protesting what he calls Israeli complacency about the occupation.

Alon Liel, a former Foreign Ministry director-general and ex-ambassador to South Africa, told The Times of Israel that he also personally boycotts products from West Bank settlements and supports cultural boycotts of Israel to protest the lack of progress in the peace process.

Liel said his stance, which includes supporting author Alice Walker’s refusal to have her book “The Color Purple” translated into Hebrew, also aims to call attention to the urgent need for Jerusalem to ensure the near future brings “Palestinian independence, not an Israeli apartheid state.”

“I can understand the desire, by people of conscience, to reassert an agenda of justice, to remind Israelis that Palestinians exist,” Liel wrote in an article that appeared Sunday in the South African BusinessDay newspaper. Similar versions of the article also appeared in various European newspapers, including the French Liberation.

“I can understand small but symbolic acts of protest that hold a mirror up to Israeli society. As such, I cannot condemn the move to prevent goods made in the occupied Palestinian territory from being falsely classified as ‘Made in Israel.’ I support the South African government’s insistence on this distinction between Israel and its occupation,” Liel wrote. more

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