Oxfam denies anti-Semitic allegation

British-based charity Oxfam today denied charges that a campaign backed by its Belgian affiliate to boycott Israeli goods produced in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights was anti-Semitic.

“We don’t accept the allegation that the boycott campaign is ethnically or racially discriminatory,” said spokesman Matt Grainger.

“It’s not a campaign against the Israeli people or Jewish people. Our objective is to contribute to peace in the Mideast.”

However, Grainger said Oxfam asked its Belgian affiliate, called Oxfam-Solidarity, to “make clear” on its own web site that the campaign was not targeted at all Israeli products.

The action came after the US-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre called the campaign “obscene” and discriminatory and compared it to Nazi calls for boycotts of Jewish businesses in the 1930s. The centre sent a protest to Oxfam International’s chairman, Ian Anderson, in England.

A poster for the campaign, which is supported by a range of church and activist groups in Belgian, pictures a blood orange dripping juice and the caption “Israeli fruit tastes bitter. Say no to the occupation of Palestine. Don’t buy any fruit from Israel.”

That poster was removed yesterday, although a link to the campaign remains. A note was added to explain the boycott targets only “agricultural products grown by Israeli settlements in the occupied territories” and exported by Israel to the EU under the brands Carmel, Jaffa, Sabra and Tival.

“We are talking basically about products of the settlements,” said Oxfam-Solidarity director Stefan Declerc.

Grainger said the campaign also was intended to ”highlight the violation of Israeli state agreements with the European Union.