Unofficial boycotts of Israeli products or Israeli culture are a global issue, but if one Canadian group has its way, each new boycott will have the opposite effect. The Buycott Israel initiative, launched by the Canada–Israel Committee and their partners, is attempting to submit notices wherever a boycott of Israel is occurring, through the Internet and a global email list, so people can support Israel by purchasing the boycotted product. Sara Saber-Freedman, the executive vice president of the committee, said that the recent call to boycott the Toronto International Film Festival, due to its spotlight on Tel Aviv, was “kind of the final straw.”
“It basically is a way of saying to the boycotters, when you call a boycott on an Israeli product, the effect will be precisely the opposite to the one that you are trying to achieve. There will be more sales, and Israel will be less isolated,” said Saber-Freedman in an interview with Bridges for Peace.
Although the buycott system hasn’t been used yet outside of Canada, Saber-Freedman said a localized buycott effort in Vancouver regarding Israeli wine worked quite well. After “local anti-Israel forces” set their sights on liquor stores over the wine, Saber-Freedman said they called a “buycott action.” Saber-Freedman said that resulted in Israeli wine “being sold out of the Vancouver liquor stores that were targeted.”
Said Saber-Freedman, “It was so successful, that the second time the anti-Israel people announced a boycott, the liquor store went out and stocked-up on Israeli wine, because they knew what the response was going to be in the local pro-Israel community.”
Sara said that though the initiative is just two weeks old, they have thousands of names in their database and the Web site memberships has grown by 25% every 24 hours. In addition to their Web site, www.buycottisrael.ca, they also have pages on Facebook and Twitter.
(By Joshua Spurlock, BFP Israel Mosiac Radio, September 30, 2009)
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