Supporters of the campaign to boycott Israel are once again targeting Canadian retailers, and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) has launched a counter-campaign.
The latest call for a boycott of Israeli products is aimed at Sears Canada.
A group called Canadians for Peace and Justice in the Middle East (CPJME) has asked the retail giant to drop several Israeli-made products that it carries, including Ahava cosmetics, Keter Plastic and Stanley Israel products. The group says that many of the firms’ “products are sourced and manufactured in illegal colonies located in the occupied Palestinian territories,” it wrote in a Jan. 17 letter erroneously addressed to former Sears president and CEO Dene L. Rogers.
(Calvin McDonald, the company’s current president and CEO, replaced Rogers in June 2011.)
Sears said it would not comment on the matter, and the chain is continuing to sell the Israeli-made products.
In response CIJA, through its Buycott Israel initiative – started in 2009 to encourage consumers to support Israeli-made products in response to boycott actions – sent out an alert to its followers last week to shop en masse at Sears.
Sara Saber-Freedman, Montreal-based executive vice-president of CIJA and the lead on the Buycott file, said her organization is aware of the group and that its tactics are increasingly being marginalized.
“We’ve seen a real decrease in the overall number of boycott calls in Canada over the last year or so, largely because those calls have proven to be such consistent failures,” she said. “By acting together though programs like Buycott, we send a strong message to those who oppose a two-state solution and see boycott of Israel as a way to attain that objective.”
Saber-Freedman added: “CJPME is one, but not the only player in the Canadian BDS movement. Groups like Independent Jewish Voices and Tadamon also issue boycott calls as a way of mobilizing their own base. However, these groups are learning that… calling for a boycott can have disastrous consequences, leading to a very public defeat for the anti-Israel group.”
The “buycott” strategy has worked well for CIJA in the past.
In 2009, hundreds of pro-Israel consumers converged on a mid-town Toronto LCBO outlet to counter a call to boycott Israeli wines. Within a few hours, the store had sold out of its stock of about 150 cases of Israeli wine.
Last year, Saber-Freedman’s initiative helped dispel rumours that the Bay had removed Ahava beauty products from its shelves as part of a boycott request from CJPME.
The Bay had in fact temporarily removed the products from its stores in order to make room for a rebranded Ahava line that it continues to sell.
In related news, earlier this month CJPME also wrote to Cirque du Soleil asking the popular acrobatic troupe to cancel its scheduled August performances in Tel Aviv as part of a cultural boycott.
Cirque du Soleil will make its first trip to Israel to perform its Alegria show this summer.
The troupe did not return a request for comment by The CJN’s deadline.
Also last week, the buycott campaign called on Vancouverites to frequent local-area beauty store Lavan Body, Mind & Soap, which was also targeted by various anti-Israel boycotters who demonstrated in front of the store just prior to Valentine’s Day.