King Co. rejects Israeli-Gaza bus ad

In light of numerous complaints, both local and national, over a proposed anti-Israel bus ad set to run in Seattle, the King County Council has decided to pull the ad.

The outcry over a proposed bus ad to protest Israeli actions in Gaza prompted King County Executive Dow Constantine on Friday to order the county's transit system not to accept it or any other new noncommercial advertising.

A group called Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign paid $2,760 to place the ad on 12 buses, starting Monday, Metro Transit spokeswoman Linda Thielke said. The placard shows children and a demolished building with the caption, "Israeli War Crimes - Your tax dollars at work."

Read more at The Seattle Times

New Subject of Debate on Mideast: Hummus

Part of the ongoing BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) attacks on Israel, hummus had become a recent focus on several American college campuses. 

Forget Hezbollah and Hamas. The latest chapter in the Israeli-Arab conflict is all about hummus, the chickpea dip that is a staple of American college cafeterias.

At Princeton and DePaul Universities, Palestinian students and their supporters have challenged the sale of Sabra hummus in an effort to focus attention on accusations that Israeli military forces violated human rights.

Sabra is based in Queens and Virginia, and a spokeswoman said the company had never contributed “hummus or anything else” to the Israeli military. But one of Sabra’s joint owners is the Strauss Group, an Israeli food company that according to its Web site provides financial support to the Golani brigade, part of Israel’s military force. (The other joint owner is PepsiCo.) 

Read more at The New York Times

Middle East with a side of hummus

In response to a proposed referendum for Princeton students that Sabra hummus not be sold on campus, this commentary looks at who owns this company and what they support and the fallacy that buying hummus is supporting human rights violations.

You are being deceived. A thin veil (of hummus) is being pulled over your eyes. You are being told that by purchasing Sabra hummus, you are propagating the violation of human rights — that by purchasing Sabra hummus, you are enabling abuses by the Israeli army’s Golani Brigade, whose soldiers are portrayed as cruel perpetrators. This is simply not true.

The truth is that 50 percent of Sabra Dipping Company is owned by PepsiCo, and 50 percent is owned by the Strauss Group, an Israeli company. The Strauss Group sponsors a range of community outreach programs, including raising money for premature infants in Serbia and providing scholarship funds to children with cancer. The Strauss Group’s list of projects also includes a “support the troops” program, for which the company provides care packages of free hummus to Israeli soldiers in the Golani Brigade. The company has not been providing weapons or ammunition; it is simply giving the 18-year-olds in uniform free hummus and a little moral support.

 Read more at The Daily Princetonian

French minister calls Israeli boycott a ‘crime’

France's interior minister called boycotts against Israeli products in France "a crime."

The statement came in response to a report issued by the Simon Wiesenthal Center chronicling boycotts against kosher products in supermarkets and other stores in France for the 18-month period beginning in January 2009.

In a recent letter to the Wiesenthal Center, Interior Minister Hortefeux wrote, “You have called my attention to the value of punishing the agitation of the group Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions in view of the acts of its members in certain foodstores. ... Just as you, I consider the campaign led by this group and their statements made on such occasions calling for a boycott of Israeli products as, arguably, constituting a crime of racial provocation and discrimination."

Read more at JTA