Vice President Kamala Harris caused a stir among liberal activists after she served wine made in a Jewish West Bank settlement at her Passover seder on Friday, prompting her office to clarify she was not making a political statement.
The offending bottle served at Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s seder was from the Psagot Winery, a company based in a settlement north of Jerusalem that has had its fair share of headlines in recent years.
The winery challenged a 2016 European ruling that said wines produced in Israeli settlements must be labeled as such. The winery again garnered attention in 2020 when it named a wine after then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over his announcement that Israeli products made in the settlements would only need to be stamped as produced in Israel.
In October of last year, Pompeo visited the Psagot winery in the West Bank and said that the contested area, known also by its biblical name of Judea and Samaria, was the “rightful homeland for the people of Israel” and is by no means illegal.
Former United States Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who visited the winery with Pompeo, praised Harris’ unintentional move on Twitter.
Friedman post a photo of the Psagot wine named for Pompeo, quipping, “Next year I would recommend that the Second Family serve the ‘Friedman’ vintage from the Psagot Winery. I may be biased but I think it’s very good.”
Not everyone was amused.
James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, said: “Psagot’s vineyards are on stolen Palestinian land. It’s not cool. It was the Trump that ‘legitimated’ the theft.”
CEO of Psagot Yaakov Berg said in a statement that the Harris and Emhoff “have shown that they understand wine” and “have shown respect to Israeli wine.”
He went on to say that if Harris “continues in a positive direction, for example by opposing the Iran nuclear deal,” the winery would name a wine in her honor as well.
Harris’s senior adviser for communications Herbie Ziskend later tweeted that the wine choice did not reflect a change of stance on the part of the Biden administration, which is opposed to Israeli settlements.