Psagot winery

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Psagot winery
legal form Ltd.
Seat Psagot settlement , West Bank
management Yaakov mountain
Branch winery
Website www.psagotwines.com

The Psagot winery is a company founded by Meir Berg in the 1979 built settlement of Psagot in the occupied West Bank . The winery achieved international fame because its CEO Yaakov Berg sued the European Court of Justice in 2019 to prevent labeling requirements for products from the territories occupied by Israel.

Psagot Winery produced approximately 400,000 bottles a year in 2019 and exports its wines to both the European Union and the United States.

history

In 2007, the American businessman Simon Falic, whose family had made a fortune with Duty Free America , a chain of duty-free shops at airports, among others , made an investment of 4.1 million shekels (about 1.07 million euros) in the winery. With the investment, the Falic family secured the majority in the company. The winery is, as confirmed by an Israeli court ruling from 2003, partly on private Palestinian land. After Falic's investment, the winery was also expanded into a popular tourist attraction.

Dror Etkes from Jesch Din commented that Falic's money also enabled the illegal appropriation of Palestinian land and helped the Psagot winery from a family business to the level of a medium-sized business. According to Etkes' research, the winery and vineyards extended over 84,000 m 2 of former Palestinian private land, about half of which the company only acquired after Falic's investment. CEO Yaakov Berg told the press that he had legally acquired the land from the Israeli military. In 2003 the army erected a fence around the hill on which the settlement and winery are located.

Litigation with the European Union

A directive of the EU Commission from 2015 pointed out that all territories occupied by Israel after 1967 are not recognized and consequently products that are produced there cannot be offered in Europe under names that suggest that the products were produced in Israel . As a result, with the help of activists from the organization Juifs et judaïsme en Europe, the French Conseil d'État objected to an instruction issued by the French Ministry of Economic Affairs in 2016, which prescribed the labeling of products from Israeli settlements. The Conseil d'État then forwarded the problem to the European Court of Justice. The winery's path to the European Court of Justice to prevent its products from being labeled was rejected by government circles in Israel because a judgment by the Court of Justice is binding and it would then become more difficult for individual European states to pass the relevant directive through national legislation of the EU Commission of 2015 and bypassing the labeling requirement. Israeli government officials apparently tried to persuade Yaakov Berg to withdraw his complaint. However, the winery lawyers denied that there were any such attempts. The European Court of Justice ruled on November 12, 2019 that the location where the wine was produced must be shown on the label.

CEO Yaakov Berg subsequently complained that the verdict was "racist, anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli". In his opinion, the EU regulation is part of the BDS movement . Referring to the judgment and Berg's remarks in the newspaper Haaretz , Gideon Levy and Alex Levacim asked whether there was anything more justified than to label this wine and to distinguish it from the wines that are not produced in such areas. And what could be more moral and noble than boycotting him completely.

The United States Department of State criticized the European Court of Justice's instruction in the Psagot case as being only useful for motivating, promoting and promoting the BDS movement. The United States would oppose any form of economic pressure to exert, isolate, or otherwise delegitimize Israel.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Gideon Levy and Alex Levac: "Gideon Levy Something's Rotten at This Settlement Winery - and We Don't Mean the Grapes" Haaretz.com of November 21, 2019
  2. ↑ a b "In Israeli settlement, bottles uncorked to toast Trump decision" france24.com from November 19, 2019
  3. ↑ a b Bel Trew: "US Duty Free magnates bankrolled expansion of Israeli settlement vineyard over Palestinian land" independent.co.uk of July 6, 2019
  4. ^ A b c Raphael Ahren: "Grapes of wrath: Israel sours on West Bank winery in spat over EU labeling" timesofisrael.com of November 11, 2019
  5. ^ "Interpretative Notice on indication of origin of goods from the territories occupied by Israel since June 1967" eeas.europa.eu of November 11, 2015
  6. ↑ "Products from illegal Israeli settlements must be labeled, EU's highest court rules" independent.co.uk of November 12, 2019
  7. ↑ Decision by the EU Court of Justice on Psagot Case state.gov of November 13, 2019

Coordinates: 31 ° 32 '4.8 "  N , 35 ° 8' 2.9"  E