By Michelle Albert
A message currently circulating the Web urges Jews to buy Trader Joe’s products in response to the call by Boycott Divestment Campaign, an organization of anti-Israel groups, to boycott Trader Joe’s grocery stores because they sell Israeli goods.
The Boycott Divestment Campaign is dedicated to ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. They view Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories as apartheid and compare Israel to South Africa.
According to the Forward, the boycott was originated by the group “Don’t Buy into Apartheid,” a member of the Boycott Divestment Campaign, and set for June 20, dubbed “World Refugee Day.” Though the planned boycott has passed, the call for retaliation is still going strong. Stand With Us, an Israel advocacy group based in Los Angeles, has publicly stated their support for buying Trader Joe’s goods on their website, and the email, containing a letter from Rabbi Isaac Jeret of Congregation Ner Tamid in California, urges all readers to continue patronizing Trader Joes’s. The goal is to make it seem as if the boycott never happened.
GO, TRADER JOE!!! Love the place and everyone I know shops there. And the more goods from Israel that they carry, the more I buy!
The boycott…is pathetic. And laughable.
I heartily share Cheryl Mavrikos’ sentiments. My husband and I have gone further. We have successfully launced an international boycott of Palestinian goods and services which is costing the PA some $46 million per year in lost sales. These include cancelled tourism contracts, cancelled educational and church missions, and refusal to stock Palestinian Zaytoun olive oil, dates, figs, pitas, Cremisan wine and handicrafts.
We have been particularly effective in Canada and England and are widening are campaign in the USA.
It is pure heaven to shop there/I know the foods I buy are nothing but the best at great prices.
And what a loving staff!