Former Finance Minister and Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid was interviewed by CNN’s Richard Quest on Thursday, where he talked tough about the EU decision to label Jewish goods from Judea, Samaria, eastern Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.
“First of all, after two months of Jews being stabbed in the streets of Israel, the EU has decided it’s time to reward the terrorists and not the victims with this decision,” Lapid noted. “This is not a legal issue, this is not a PR issue – this is political.”
Lapid noted that the EU is trying to twist Israel’s arm vis-a-vis a two-state solution, and “not even in the proper way.”
He referred to the fact that they included the Golan Heights in the decision, which is not part of Judea-Samaria at all – adding that “there’s not a single Palestinian living in the Golan Heights.”
Moreover, he said, even if Israel “returned” the Golan Heights – “who would we give it back to? To ISIS, which are on our border [sic]? To Hezbollah or Jabhat Al-Nusra, which is in affiliation with Al Qaeda?”
“This doesn’t make any sense.”
‘EU hypocrisy’
Lapid deflected the EU’s insistence that product labeling is not a boycott, noting that the entire decision is being orchestrated by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement – who have requested such moves for a long time.
The EU is “pretending it’s a technical issue,” he said, and added that the EU has predetermined the borders for peace talks without Israel’s consent.
“This is patronizing, trying to create a reality while bending our arm, and while doing that, pretending that this is not what they’re doing,” he fired. “This is EU hypocrisy, trying to tell us how to run our country.”
“Can you imagine a situation in which the US would say that you can’t put ‘Made in the USA’ on anything coming from Texas – just because Texas used to be part of Mexico?” he continued.
Lapid agreed with a low blow from Quest, who asked whether the many comparisons being made between the labeling decision and the yellow stars Jews were forced to wear before and during the Holocaust “helped the situation.”
Lapid affirmed that, in his view, the comparison is not appropriate, as the Holocaust “was an event which is unparalleled” to any current situation.
Despite this, he redirected the interview back to the basic fact that the global community has become unequivocally biased against Israel, including the 62 UN Human Rights Council resolutions against Israel made since 2006. “This is more than the number of resolutions they had about the entire world combined,” he noted.
“We are a sovereign country, and we will make our own decisions by ourselves.”
