Friday, June 20, 2003

A call for Israelis to ban Belgian chocolate has been doing the rounds in Israeli e-mail boxes. It is an answer to an advertisement that has been appearing in Belgian newspapers calling for a ban on Israeli goods. Take a look.

[The Hebrew says: "Belgian chocolate has an anti-Semitic taste. The Belgians are calling for a ban on Israeli produce. Don't put their chocolate in your mouth."]

I would like to point out that I am not endorsing the ban, or the Hebrew comment. I'm not crazy about such bans or such generalizations, although I do personally refrain from buying stuff that I associate with people who I feel hate my guts. I also try not to buy toiletries from companies that I hear test their products on animals. I posted the link to the image mainly because I thought the original Belgian advertisement interesting.

Update: Micol wrote to me: "living in belgium i'd have a hard time boycotting belgian things, but i would like to pint out that the nasty boycott israeli products isn't a "belgian" boycott on israeli brands, it's a boycott made by a (worldwide) chain of stores called OXFAM. this boycott isn't new, this oxfam organisation has a store on my campus and they're really really annoying. so we stuck "boycotting israel is boycotting peace. 70% of palestinian GNP comes from economic interactions with israel" stickers on their door, but they don't really care :p "