“An important battle just played out in Canada at the intersection of geopolitical territorial disputes and international trade law,” writes Eugene Kontorovich. At issue was the labeling of Israeli products made in the West Bank. Earlier this month, the Canadian government summarily reversed a decision by one of its agencies that wine produced in the West Bank could no longer be given the “Made in Israel” label. To Kontorovich, this is a good opportunity for the United States to reexamine its own Customs policy, which calls for such products to be labeled “Made in the West Bank”:

The notion that “Made in Israel” labels in such a context are misleading has been rejected in recent years by the UK Supreme Court and French appellate courts. . . . Quite simply, such labels are not understood by consumers as making any statement about the importing state’s view of sovereignty in a disputed territory. The UK court noted that it would be impossible to show that the typical consumer relies on such an assumption to his or her material detriment.

That is why the European Union imports products from occupied Western Sahara labeled “Made in Morocco” despite not regarding it as Moroccan sovereign territory, as well as allowing “Made in Palestine” and “Made in Taiwan” labels on consumer goods despite not recognizing even the existence of those countries. Indeed, bottles from occupied Nagorno-Karabakh are imported into Canada and Europe with labels describing them as “Armenian” products or even products of “Artsakh,” the Armenian name for the region that the international community regards as occupied Azerbaijani territory.

In short, no one thinks the typical consumer relies on food labels to determine sovereignty issues.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.