The Germans are angry with the Greeks for retiring at age 50 and counting on Germans to keep working until they are 65 so as to have enough cash to lend to Greece. The French are angry with the Germans for demanding such harsh and humiliating terms from the Greeks in return for a few billion more euros. The Greeks are angry with the Germans for once again in effect telling them how to levy taxes and to organize their economy. Italy is angry with every other EU country for refusing to relieve it of the flood of refugees fleeing Africa. Britain is angry with the entire EU for denying it the right to control its borders and snatching from it large portions of its sovereignty. There’s more, lots more. But on one thing they all, or almost all, agree: products made in “occupied Palestinian land” must be labeled as such, rather than as “made in Israel.” Nothing to do with any anti-Israel attitude, of course. And horrors at the thought that the rule might have anything to do with anti-Semitism. Merely a clarification of existing rules, which are along the lines of those already issued by Denmark, Belgium and Britain—yes, Britain, home of the Balfour Declaration, but that was long before the Muslim population soared and academics began their drumbeat of criticism of Israel.

“It clarifies certain elements linked to the interpretation and effective implementation of existing EU legislation,” European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis told reporters in Brussels. “This is a technical issue, not a political stance.”