| Submit your comments on this article | |
| Great White North | |
| 'Buycott' challenges Israel boycotters | |
| 2009-09-26 | |
The campaign, titled "Buycott Israel," was organized by the Canada-Israel Committee together with the Jewish federations of Vancouver and Toronto and the Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region, to counter the increasing number of boycotts in Canada over the last year. Aiming to turn a disadvantage into a strong advantage, Buycott Israel's Web site asks readers, "Are you fed up with calls to boycott Israeli goods and services? Want to do something about it?" and then calls on them to sign up for "Buycott alerts." The enterprise promises to alert users "when a boycott initiative needs to be countered," and lets subscribers know the results of every Buycott action. Over the last year, there have been three public attempts to boycott Israeli wine in Canada: two protests in Vancouver, and one in Toronto. In the Toronto boycott, protesters led by the anti-war group Not In Our Name picketed liquor store LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) to protest the sale of Israeli wine there. Dismayed and disgusted by the protest, Toronto's Jewish community rallied, and hundreds of Jews arrived at the scene to buy all the Israeli wine in the store. Activists claimed to have led LCBO to sell out of Israeli wine - over 500 cases in a just over half an hour - and to have caused the boycotters to leave in defeat not long afterward. Although there have been a number of anti-Israel boycott campaigns in Canada recently, "in each of them, it comes out of our experience that [buying the product that is being boycotted] has been effective, successful and sends out an absolutely unequivocal message," explained Saber-Freedman. "We even caused the store owners to stock up in anticipation for one of the boycotts," she recalled triumphantly. "We used our internal mail list to ask our members to specifically go and purchase Israeli wine, and as a result the wine sold out." | |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #2 Nice one. |
| Posted by: Dave UK 2009-09-26 12:36 |
| #1 Perfect! |
| Posted by: Odysseus 2009-09-26 10:45 |