Luxembourg's financial regulator has refused to renew the approval Israel needs to sell bonds inside the European Union, and that approval runs out on Monday, 31 August. Diaspora Jews and pro-Israel organizations bought most of the $2.5 billion that market took last year, and no other member state has picked the work up. No parliament voted on any of it.
Andy Burnham, Britain's new Prime Minister, is preparing a ban on trade with Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria. He wants it out before Labour's conference next month. He has been in Downing Street five weeks. Bloomberg had his government weighing a sanctions regime to do it on 21 August. By this week the Times of Israel had him poised to announce one, reaching import, sale, purchase and brokerage. What set it off is a tender. Israel's Housing Ministry has 1,234 homes on the market at E1, the ground east of Jerusalem that runs up to the Israeli city of Maale Adumim, and bids close on 19 October. The ask has not changed: withdraw the tender, stop building. Ed Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, put his own name to the measures last week. And 140 Labour MPs, about a third of the Commons benches, have signed a letter asking him for more. Burnham's own officials have told him the ban cannot be policed. They cannot tell the goods apart. Bank Hapoalim and Teva, two of Israel's largest companies, both operate in eastern Jerusalem, banks over-comply with anything shaped like a boycott, and Israel sells Britain something in the region of $2 billion of goods a year.
Below the line: the week's deployable language — what to say when a reporter asks whether a settlement trade ban is a boycott, how to answer the donor whose federation holds Israel Bonds, the claims you'll field on genocide and on "Death to Zionism," and the traps that lose the room. Members read the full brief.
The Jewish State — Mitzpe's eight-session live course on Israeli history from the Mandate to October 7, taught the way the brief reads. Cohort 1: eight Sundays from Oct 11. mitzpe.org/the-jewish-state