Story highlights Former Israeli ambassador to U.S. says anti-Semitism is thriving in Europe

Decision to label goods Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights hurt not help Palestinians, he says

Michael B. Oren, formerly Israel's ambassador to the United States and a member of Knesset, is the author of "Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide" (Random House, 2015). The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.

(CNN) Anti-Semitism is thriving in Europe, so it was no surprise to hear the news last month of record-setting Jewish migration to Israel in 2015. It is a trend that should concern European leaders, who should be asking how they have fueled this scourge. Indeed, the issue raises an extremely troubling question -- more than 70 years after the Holocaust, has Europe really changed?

Take, for example, the European Union's recent decision to label Jewish goods from Judea, Samaria (the West Bank) and the Golan Heights.

There are more than 200 territorial disputes in the world , but Europe does not label products as made in Chinese-occupied Tibet or Turkish-occupied Cyprus. The Palestinian Authority has twice -- in 2000 and 2008 -- rejected Israeli offers of statehood in Gaza, East Jerusalem, and almost all of the West Bank. Instead, Palestinian leaders have ordered or encouraged terrorist attacks that have killed more than 1,500 Israelis and maimed many thousands more.

Michael B. Oren

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas refuses even to negotiate with Israel. Yet Europe does not label Palestinian products, only those made by Jews. And not only by Jews in Judea and Samaria, but in east Jerusalem, home to more than half of the city's Jews. Imagine punishing Jews for living in their own ancestral capital.

Most indefensibly, Europe will also label Jewish products from the Golan Heights, where there are no Palestinians at all. Rather, there is a small population of Druze, growing numbers of who are opting for Israeli citizenship . The Golan, which has been under Israel's control more than twice as long as it was under Syria's, is essential for preventing the Syrian civil war from spreading south into Jordan and Egypt. So what does Europe hope to achieve by labeling the Golan's fine Israeli wines -- and forcing Israel to effectively cede the territory to ISIS?