Israel’s Minister for Strategic Affairs, Gilad Erdan, recommended this week to Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon that a special committee be set up to put together a blacklist of companies, organizations and individuals that call for a boycott of products made in the occupied West Bank settlements.
I, the undersigned, am neither a corporation nor an organization; I am a private individual who has personally undertaken not to buy products from the settlements. It’s written in the draft regulations sent by Erdan to Kahlon that sanctions will be placed on anyone who commits not to buy products and services from “areas under Israeli control.” It would be my honor to make the list: in my opinion, it’s a respectable white list of citizens who recognize the right of the Palestinian people to establish a state of their own alongside the State of Israel.
I don’t know what sanctions you could place on me, a citizen who is on the threshold of his ninth decade. But I guarantee you I will proudly accept any sanction that the Treasury decides to impose on me, because I am determined to continue not buying products made in the settlements.
Eitan Kalinsky
* Eitan Kalinsky is a member of the Communist Party of Israel and Hadash (The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) from Holon.
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