Day of rage against Trader Joes 's Israeli couscous: June 20 : AZ IMC

I’ve reported in the past how divest-from-Israel advocates have been attempting to import some of the excesses of their European equivalents into the US, including both an academic boycott movement and campus building takeovers started in the UK. The fact that both imports have flopped has not seemed to discourage boycotters from bringing to our shores a tactic even more likely to turn the public against their cause: attacking the shelves and assaulting customers at Trader Joes.

This all began in France where a gang of Palestinian supporters took it upon themselves to enter a French supermarket where they pulled Israeli goods off the shelves in protest of the quality of couscous (whoops! I mean as a glorious and courageous “raid” into the very heart of enemy territory). This trespass and destruction of property was apparently not punished, possibly giving US-based BDS-niks the idea that they could pull off the same stunt with impunity (ignoring the fact that the French supermarket in question was in a neighborhood that had seen violent clashes between armed gangs and the police, which might have made supermarket managers a little gun shy).

Given that the threat of local armed violence over the Arab-Israeli dispute is not yet a feature of US retail (yet), the divestment crew chose to start by sending Trader Joe’s a form letter (versions of which seem to be cropping up around the divestment community lately) asking them to live up to their lofty corporate principles by refusing to sell Israeli products (including the aforementioned couscous). Ironically, the incident allowed the funky food retailer to actually live up to its principles by telling boycott advocates (and here I paraphrase) to go fuck themselves.

Bold and courageous activists in Pittsburg then turned ugly on the company they had previously tried to cajole (sound familiar?) and walked into a Trader Joe’s shop where they proceeded to pull Israeli goods and/or shove their usual misinformation into the hands of customers before being tossed out of the store for trespassing.

Undeterred, the BDS community throughout the land called for a national day of de-shelving Israeli products on June 20 (this coming Saturday). One hopes that before they get started they realize the two ways of performing such de-shelving (other than buying all the couscous for themselves) would involve (1) shoplifting, a locally prosecutable criminal offense or (2) defacing said Israeli products to make them unsellable, which turns out to be a prosecutable federal offense under the US Product Packaging Protection Act of 2002. Then again, perhaps it would be best if they didn’t realize this, but that store managers did.

Once more we have an example of what I’ve referred to in the past as “fantasy politics,” whereby people make political choices not because it will have an impact on the public or advance a particular cause, but in order to make themselves feel as though they are uniquely righteous or part of some kind of global vanguard.

By any stretch of the imagination, bothering strangers while they buy frozen dumplings in Pittsburg is not going to move the needle on American support for Israel one angstrom. It’s not going to change company policy at Trader Joe’s or anywhere else. But presuming they don’t get thrown behind bars, it will leave the boycotters able to brag to their buddies how they took on the overwhelming power of imperial Zionism at the Battle of Couscous and allow them to go to bed at night (in their parent’s basements) thinking about their unquestioned bravery and wondefulness. Never mind that all they accomplished was annoying food shoppers and getting thrown out of a store like a bunch of rowdy teens.

As an aside, I’ve always through Trader Joe’s to be a bit overrated, but last weekend I bought a box of Israeli couscous (having confused the Day of Couscous Rage by a week) along with some of their veggie sticks (to eat while watching the truly overrated Music Man on DVD with my kids). And damn if I didn’t get change (over $1 worth) from my $5 for those two items! That combined with their way-cool response to the whole boycott idiocy left me firmly in the Trader Joe’s camp. So go Joe! And by Israeli! (Especially next Saturday.)

http://www.divestthis.com/

The day of action against Trader Joes is this Saturday.

However, committed activists have turned it into "Support Democracy. Support Israel" day, and are urging people to shop Trader Joes and buy Israeli products.

The various websites and facebook pages devoted to trashing Trader Joes on the 20th remain unchanged.
Thats ok. Its been report to the authorities and is now in the hands of Homeland Security's Food and drug division.

Dunya Alwan and Kate Rafael of the San Francisco Bay area have taken credit for organizing the trash trader Joes campaign

Saturday, June 20th is National Day to Deshelve Israeli Products

So let's buy all the products before they can be deshelved (and help stimulate the economy)!

For Observant Jews: Buy as many Israel products as possible on Friday before the Sabbath.

According to blogger Bluetruth, one of the retailers targeted in this campaign is Trader Joe’s, which carries many Israeli-made products. Trader
Joe’s has resisted the call to change its policies, and so the boycott-divestment-sanctions (BDS) guys have called for a “de-shelving” of Trader Joe’s from Israeli products this Saturday, June 20. This creates an opportunity for friends of Israel to express their support while also shopping for groceries.

*GO TO YOUR LOCAL TRADER JOES AND BUY ALL THE ISRAELI PRODUCTS AND LET THEM KNOW THAT YOU SUPPORT THEM!

If you like Israeli couscous, shoplift it. Not one penny for Israel! Three billion of our tax dollars per year to that evil nation is three billion too many!

(JTA) -- A call for a boycott of Israeli products sold at Trader Joe's has backfired.

Organizers of the "Don't Buy into Apartheid Day," also known as "Day of Deshelving Israeli Products," sent a letter to Trader Joe's asking them not to sell Israeli products, such as hummus and couscous, in their stores and asked members to hand out anti-Israel leaflets in front of its stores across the United States on Saturday.

The Los Angeles Jewish Journal reported that the demonstrations failed to take place, and that Israel supporters visited the stores and insisted on buying Israeli products.

If you like Israeli couscous, shoplift it. Not one penny for Israel! Three billion of our tax dollars per year to that evil nation is three billion too many!

The main battle front in the Trader Joes wars has shifted to the San Francisco Bay area, where on any given weekend, anti-Israel leafleteers and pro-Israel leafletteers are seen in front of the local stores, duking it out for the attention of the shoppers.

We have reports from the field that Trader Joes has squared itself firmly with the pro-Israel camp, and now gives them employee discounts on their groceries.

I'd suck Arafat's corpse, and pay it for the privilege. It takes a special kind of stupid to hate Israel.

[previous droppings of zionazis ]
this is what we had to endure @ LA for years.
Now the garbage gets removed.

"Now the garbage gets removed"

"I haven't posted on LA for weeks.
You can have them. they have been infiltrated and the censorship seems personal. Fuck them."

"Look what happened when a cloistered group of deciders got closed door agendas going and couldn't brinng themselves to open the process to public view,
Promises were made and dropped. I believe the collective was infiltrated from the start when johnk started to interfere with annalysis"

"I get this page when I try to use the comment or publish function
Yet the spam and other noise gets through. Real sleezy, underhanded censorship.

e mail etc. is ignored. I gave these assholes $100 and they pulled this crap."