A new Web site set up by pro-Israel Canadians seeks to defy anti-Israel boycotts by encouraging subscribers to deliberately buy Israeli products that are being boycotted.
The campaign, called “Buycott Israel,” was organized by the Canada-Israel Committee, along with the Jewish federations of Vancouver and Toronto and the Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region, to counter the increasing number of Israel boycotts in Canada over the last year.
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?” It then calls on them to sign up for “Buycott alerts” at buycottisrael.ca
The enterprise promises to alert users “when a boycott initiative needs to be countered,” and lets subscribers know the results of every Buycott action.
“These boycotts have been going on for a while, but we’ve seen a real uptick in activity lately, and as a result, members of the community decided to push back in a very serious way,” said Sara Saber-Freedman, chief operating officer of the Canada-Israel Committee.
Saber-Freedman explained that the campaign was in the process of “creating a database of people and items. The Web site is an interactive tool that will allow our subscribers to notify others when they find out about an attempt to boycott a particular [Israeli] item, and in turn the Web site will ask the subscribers to go out and buy that item.”
Saber-Freedman said the boycott effort had lately been observed in the commercial sector, in labor movements and even in churches.
“The United Church of Canada entertained a boycott notion recently, but it was defeated,” she noted. “But even though it was generally defeated, it was deferred to next year for consideration.”
Over the last year, there have been three protests against Israeli wine: two in Vancouver, and one in Toronto where protesters led by the anti-war group Not In Our Name picketed liquor store LCBO protest the sale of Israeli wine there.
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 — more than 500 cases in just over half an hour — and to have caused the boycotters to leave in defeat.
Although there have been a number of anti-Israel boycott campaigns, “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.
“In Vancouver, the second time the anti-Israeli protest happened, the store went out and stocked up on Israeli wine, because they knew that, ironically, if there was a picket, they’d do more business.”
The reversal of the boycotts appears to have galvanized the Jewish community.
“We’re very keen to see where this takes us. It’s an exciting step in citizen-based advocacy for Israel,” Saber-Freedman said.
“Ultimately, this campaign is part of what we all want — for Israel’s right to exist in peace behind internationally recognized borders and not to be challenged at every turn.”