Dayenu: Twitter Erupts as Vice President Harris Celebrates Passover With Psagot Wine

Vice President Harris, whose husband, Doug Emhoff, is Jewish, was celebrating Passover on Friday and, as is customary, included a bottle of kosher wine on the Seder table for the purpose of raising four cups. That’s when trouble began. A sharp-eyed New York-based Israeli television reporter, Yuna Leibzon, noticed that the bottle was from Psagot — a winery near Kokhav Yaakov, a small Jewish community close to Ramallah. In other words, it is what many — including some in the State Department — call an illegal settlement. After Ms. Leibzon posted her discovery on Twitter, the website erupted with detractors of Israel taking Ms. Harris to task. “It really is disgraceful,” wrote a Bloomberg columnist with a large Washington following, Hussein Ibish, adding, “But we’ve got a long way to go before settlement products are appropriately stigmatized and rejected by respectable people throughout the United States. This is a really important and worthy goal.”Psagot’s founder, Yaakov Berg, was so delighted by the Trump-era opposition to BDS and, more broadly, its approach to Jewish settlements beyond the 1949 armistice-drawn “green line” that he named a vintage red from his winery “Pompeo.” The American secretary of state of that name visited the winery in November 2020. Interviewed about L’affaire Kamala Sunday, Mr. Berg confirmed that Ms. Harris’s Seder choice was a $40 Cabernet Sauvignon from his winery. He also vowed to name a vintage after the Veep — if Ms. Harris votes against the Iran deal’s renewal. Yet, the outcry among settlement critics did not escape the vice president’s office. “The wine served at the Seder was in no way intended to be an expression of policy,” tweeted Ms. Harris’s senior adviser for communication, Herbie Ziskend. Some in Washington wondered what exactly is the unexpressed policy regarding drinking Psagot wine on a Jewish holiday. Between 2017 and 2020, the State Department was clear about a campaign to boycott products made by Jews in areas Israel calls Judea and Samaria.“The United States strongly opposes the global discriminatory boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign (Global BDS Campaign) and practices that facilitate it, such as discriminatory labeling and the publication of databases of companies that operate in Israel or Israeli-controlled areas,” according to the State Deaprtment’s website from that time.A Trump-era statement condemned “the Global BDS Campaign as a manifestation of anti-Semitism.” Under President Biden the approach to boycotts of Israel did not officially change. Addressing a decision by ice cream manufacturer Ben and Jerry to stop selling its wares in the West Bank, the State Department spokesman, Ned Price, last July said, “we firmly reject the BDS movement, which unfairly singles out Israel.” America, he added, “will be a strong partner in fighting efforts around the world that potentially seek to delegitimize Israel.” More broadly, however, the Biden administration toughened its messaging on expansion of West Bank Jewish communities. “We strongly oppose the expansion of settlements which is completely inconsistent with efforts to lower tensions and to ensure calm and it damages the prospects for a two state solution,” Mr. Price said in October. So is Ms. Harris about to be honored by naming a Psagot wine after her?During an encounter with the vice president last October a student said that Israel is committing “ethnic genocide” of Palestinians. After failing to push back, and even encouraging the student to “speak up,” Ms. Harris went on a damage-control campaign, calling American Jewish leaders to assuage their concerns. Now she seems ready to quietly attempt to shore up her credentials among Israel’s detractors.

Dayenu: Twitter Erupts as Vice President Harris Celebrates Passover With Psagot Wine

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