Don’t Boycott—BUYcott

December 14, 2009

Sara Saber-Freedman, the executive vice president of the committee, said, “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.”

Although the buycott system hasn’t been used yet outside of Canada, a localized buycott effort in Vancouver worked quite well. After “local anti-Israel forces” set their sights on liquor stores over the wine, they called a “buycott action.” That resulted in Israeli wine “being sold out of the Vancouver liquor stores that were targeted. 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.”

When the initiative was just two weeks old, they had thousands of names in their database, and the Web site memberships was growing by 25% every 24 hours. (Go to www.buycottisrael.ca, Facebook, or Twitter.)

By Joshua Spurlock, BFP Israel Mosiac Radio

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