The European Union is warning its citizens and companies against doing business with Israeli settlements. It says they run legal, economic and reputational risks by making deals in what the EU considers illegally occupied territory.

The Italian Foreign Ministry issued a statement Friday on behalf of the EU, the presidency of which it takes over next week. It said financial transactions, investments, purchases, contracts and tourism in Israeli settlements only benefit the settlements.

It said companies who do so should consider possible human rights violations and "the potential negative implications of such activities on their reputation or image."

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/eu-warns-business-israeli-settlements-24329341

...over Turkish settlement building in Cyprus, or the Chinese in Tibet, Russians in Ukraine.

Good thing they don't give a crap about all that!

take a long hard look at what sanctions did to SA and prepare a divestment of its population from the West Bank. The longer Israel waits it will only become that much more painful.

Perhaps it is time to hear how, after a 47 year occupation, that Israel and its policed of apartheid must be overlooked until all other human rights abuses are addressed first.

BDS is something specific. And different.

Keep on denying it as long as you want.

The Presbyterians divesting from Israel indirectly isn't BDS either but it heads in the same direction.

Live with it.

What else is the same?

One is over settlements. One is about the occupation. And BDS is over both PLUS demands for Israel to grant all palestinian refugees the right to emigrate to Israel. (Effectively ending Jewish self-determination in Israel entirely.)

Personally I don't even understand the rationale behind supporting both palestinian right of return to Israel and the expulsion of settlers as simultaneous policies. Either you support a two state solution or a single binational state. One can't demand the creation of a palestinian national state alongside policies that would effectively end the Jewish national state. Not reasonably anyway.