Israeli officials and indignant Internet users poured fury upon on a major German department store over its decision to boycott Israeli settlement goods without special labels marking their origin.

Facebook users over the weekend launched a shaming campaign against KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens), accusing it of anti-Semitism, and torpedoed its online ranking.

The store pulled several Israeli goods from its shelves following a recent European Union rule outlawing “Made in Israel” tags on products made in West Bank Jewish settlements, East Jerusalem or the Golan Heights. New guidelines call for the products to be labeled indicating that they are made over the Green Line.

Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized KaDeWe and called on the German government to step in and put an end to what he said was a “total boycott.”

“This department store was under Jewish ownership, the Nazis took it,” Netanyahu said at the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. “In an absurd way, now this department store is marking products from settlements in Judah, Samaria [the West Bank] and the Golan. It started with marking products, and now we have been told that they removed the products — a total boycott.”

“We protest this unacceptable step — unacceptable from an ethical point of view, substantively improper and historically invalid. We expect the German government, which came out against the labeling of products, to take action in this serious matter.”

Earlier this month the Bundestag faction of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU party [link in German] rejected the EU’s initiative as “wrong,” arguing that it would likely be misused by Israel’s enemies and does not promote Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation. But the government in Berlin has so far not announced whether it will implement or disregard the union’s directives.

An Israeli government source called the KaDeWa move “outrageous” and demanded that the Berlin store take measures to correct any damage caused by its decision, Israel Radio reported. The source, who was not identified in the report, noted that once the labeling of products is put in place it could lead anywhere, a veiled reference to the German boycott of Jewish stores that preceded the Holocaust.

Israeli officials have lambasted the labeling guidelines, published earlier this month, as anti-Semitic, though European official have defended the decision as a technical measure meant to streamline rules for the bloc’s 28 countries.

Last week, EU envoy to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen said comparison’s to World War II era anti-Semitism were unwarranted and cheapened the memory of the Holocaust.

KAdeWe is apparently the first major store to comply with the guidelines, which are not mandatory.

On the KADeWe store official Facebook page hundreds of users left comments in German condemning the decision to remove the products and called for shoppers to boycott the premises.

The official page also includes a review section where users can provide feedback on the shop. By Sunday morning there were some 2,400 one-star ratings on the page, along with comments in English and German that recalled the Nazi era. The store also still had 6,400 five-star ratings.

Many of those who left comments appeared to be under the impression that KaDeWe had banned all Israeli products from its shelves.

According to Channel 2, the action taken by the store only applies to eight wines produced by Israeli vintners over the Green Line.

A spokesperson for KaDeWe said the goods would once again be sold by the store after they were labeled in accordance with the new EU guidelines.

“We have taken the corresponding [Israeli] products out from our line of goods,” KaDeWe spokeswoman Petra Fladenhofer told German newspaper Der Spiegel. “We will, after appropriate labeling, put them back in our product line.”

KaDeWe, established in 1907 by a Jewish businessman, is the largest department store in continental Europe, serving tens of thousands of customers each day. In 1927, KaDeWe was purchased by a Jewish family business enterprise and was later boycotted by the Nazis, who finally seized the store in 1933. The department store reopened after World War II and changed hands several times. It is currently owned by a Thai company.

According to Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, one recent owner was Israeli businessman Benny Steinmetz.

The economic impact of the labeling move is expected to be minimal. While the EU is Israel’s largest trade partner, settlement products account for less than 2 percent of Israel’s 13 billion euro ($14 billion) exports to Europe each year.

Once the ruling is implemented, European consumers will be able to read on the label of most products — including agricultural goods, olive oil, cosmetics and wines — if they were produced in Israeli settlements.

Israel captured the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War. It extended sovereignty to East Jerusalem, and extended Israeli law to the Golan Heights in the early 1980s, but did neither in the West Bank.