US ambassador sends out gifts from West Bank, Golan Heights

Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer sends out holiday presents made exclusively with products made in the West Bank and the Golan Heights.

“This holiday season, I decided to send a gift that would also help combat the latest effort by Israel’s enemies to destroy the one and only Jewish state,” Dermer writes in reference to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. “The main forces behind this movement are fanatics who actively seek to eliminate Israel. Unfortunately, they are occasionally joined by fools who naively believe that in promoting BDS, they are advancing peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”

Dermer says “the fanatics and the fools are simply promoting a new anti-Semitism. Once Jews were singled out and held to a different standard than other peoples. Today, the Jewish state is singled out and held to a different standard than other countries.”

Dermer cites Europe’s decision to label goods manufactured in the West Bank as “the most recent case of this.”

The US ambassador writes that the EU’s decision is “all the more shameful” since “Israel upholds the highest democratic values in the darkest region on earth and while facing threats faced by no other nation.”

Dermer writes that in light of this and “to cast a beacon of freedom, tolerance and decency as a pariah state, I have decided this holiday season to send you products that were made in Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights. I hope you will enjoy them.”

This year I decided to send a gift for the holiday that would also help combat BDS pic.twitter.com/43haadtzvm

— Ron Dermer – רון דרמר (@AmbDermer) December 21, 2015