Human Rights Watch celebrated the UNHRC releasing a database of Israeli businesses in Judea and Samaria, so the world could boycott them.
We welcome the long-awaited release this session of the database of businesses contributing to illegal Israeli settlements. Settlements are at the root of serious, systematic violations of Palestinian rights, undermining their livelihoods and economy. Transfer of an occupying power’s civilian population to an occupied territory violates the Fourth Geneva Convention and is a war crime. Business activities in the settlements contribute to entrenching them–and the serious rights abuses and the severe discriminatory system that they embody.
Even if you consider the settlements to be illegal, no lawyer in the world claims that businesses are not allowed to operate in occupied territories. But because of the seething hate that the UN and HRW have for Israel, they decided that businesses should be boycotted for where they choose to do business.
But their outrage only extends to Israeli businesses.
Here are photos from a McDonald’s in Laayoune, Western Sahara. (It is Halal.)
This is territory occupied by Morocco. But the McDonald’s there has no fear of being boycotted by the UN or being shamed by Human Rights Watch.
They only care if they can blame the Jewish state.
Laayoune also has a Hyundai service center. It many branches of Moroccan banks like Banque Du Maroc and international banks like Banque Populaire. It has pharmacies, mobile phone stores, shopping malls, hotels.
And no one is making a list of these businesses that support occupation. No one is holding signs outside McDonald’s headquarters insisting that they close their store in Western Sahara.
No one would even consider such a thing. Just like they don’t write threatening letters to HSBC and others over operating banks in Northern Cyprus.
But when it comes to the Jewish state, suddenly everything must be boycotted.
Interesting how that always seems to happen.
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