EU dogma and why politics and food don't mix

The Guardian tells us that businesses will be forced to label food from 'Palestine' and Israel, so that people will know if stuff is from 'illegal West Bank settlements'.

The article is smugly entitled: "UK issues new guidance on labelling of food from illegal West Bank settlements - Stickers could read 'Israeli settlement produce' , but move is not a boycott, says Foreign Office".

As ever with life these days, if the left don't get their answers via democracy, they'll turn to the EU to make sure things are enforced properly towards their ends and that things are concreted into law. What choice doesn't achieve, threats of punishment and criminal conviction is always there to punch you into line. Rather reminiscent of the sort of thing I'm reading about at the moment in a book by Richard J. Evans called 'The Third Reich in Power'.

Here are some relevant paragraphs from the Guardian piece:

The British government recommends such food be labelled 'Palestinian produce', while that produced by Israeli settlers in the territory be labelled 'Israeli settlement produce'.

Britain has acted to increase pressure on Israel over its West Bank settlements by advising UK supermarkets on how to distinguish between foods from the settlements and Palestinian-manufactured goods.

The government's move falls short of a legal requirement but is bound to increase the prospects of a consumer boycott of products from those territories. Israeli officials and settler leaders were tonight highly critical of the decision.

EU law already requires a distinction to be made between goods originating in Israel and those from the occupied territories, though pro-Palestinian campaigners say this is not always observed.

Separately, Defra said that traders would be committing an offence if they did declare produce from the occupied territories as "Produce of Israel".

If you have any kind of heart or soul, you will never buy olives that are cultivated and sold by a particular faction in an inter-communal, historic, land and religion based dispute taking place 2,000 miles away, amongst people who speak another language, don't know you and don't give a shit about you. Because if you do, that will make you a very bad person. Do you hear me?

In other words, the left's desire for people to successfully boycott Israeli goods, for political reasons, hasn't really panned out. So this is a more round the houses way of prodding and pricking peoples' consciences, by shoving the information out there, making a song and dance about it, and by forcing businesses to label products according to what Brussels requires.

This makes my life easier, as I know exactly what to aim for next time I'm down the supermarket. As top US blogger Maddox might say to a Vegetarian: 'for every animal you don't eat, I'll eat three'. When the stickers come out and I know what's what, I'll fill my boots, courtesy of those horrid Zionist bastards out there in Stolenlandville.

I'm not particularly swayed in any one direction in the Middle East debate. I'm no dogmatic follower of either the Palestinians or the Israelis, though I certainly support Israel's right to exist and defend themselves.

But boy do I get majorly fucked off with the loony liberal left in countries like this one who go on and fucking on about Israel/Palestine without any real basis for it, other than their desire to serve their boundless piety and internal guilt-riven insecurities.

Sorry, but fuck off. The fact you care that much, and will go out of your way to avoid certain products because of what is ostensibly a land dispute between two far away peoples, actually somehow, weirdly, brings me into action.

Oh well. I was always a fan of Mediterranean olives and bread.