The online travel agency Booking.com on Monday announced plans to add warnings to listings for properties located in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, the Associated Press reported.
According to the report, Booking.com will caution customers reserving such accommodations that they are traveling to a “disputed, conflict-affected” area that “may pose greater risks.”
The company told the AP that it was still finalizing the language of the warnings and did not say when they would take effect.
In a statement, Eugene Kontorovich director of the international law department at the Kohelet Policy Forum, called the disclaimer “ridiculous and inaccurate.” “It shows the failure of BDS campaigners to convince the company to drop its business in Israel - as they have been doing for over a decade. It shows Booking.com has paid attention to the massive damage Airbnb and Ben & Jerry’s did to themselves when they adopted a boycott of Israeli-controlled territories. At the same time, they want to throw a bone to anti-Israel activists.
The news comes on the backdrop of an ongoing battle between the Ben and Jerry’s corporation and its parent company, Unilever, which is trying to prevent the ice cream maker from discontinuing sales in Judea and Samaria.
Ben & Jerry’s in July filed a U.S. federal lawsuit against Unilever, in a bid to torpedo the latter’s deal with Israeli businessman Avi Zinger that gave him total independence to manufacture and continue selling ice cream in Judea and Samaria with the Ben & Jerry’s logos appearing only in Hebrew and Arabic and not English.
