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Pro-Israel Supporters Encouraged to Back Trader Joe’s as Chain Faces Pressure to Boycott Israeli Products
Bamba snacks for Trader Joe’s. Photo: Trader Joe’s.
A pro-Israel activist organization is urging the public to show support for Trader Joe’s as the chain of grocery stores faces pressure to stop stocking Israeli products in support of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against the Jewish state.
The anti-Israel activist group Code Pink recently launched a petition pressuring Trader Joe’s to stop selling Israeli products in its stores “until Israel respects international law and human rights for Palestinians.” The items mentioned in the petition include Israeli feta cheese, Bamba puffed peanut snacks, and crushed garlic and ginger cubes from the Israeli brand Dorot.
“While Trader Joe’s claims it is ‘transforming grocery shopping into a welcoming journey full of discovery and fun,’ it is certainly not fun to discover that — one year into this genocide — you are still carrying Israeli products,” the petition reads. “We urge you to be on the right side of history. Stop stocking Israeli goods in your stores until Israel ends the occupation, respects international law, and ensures full and equal rights for Palestinians.” The petition has garnered a little more than 14,000 signatures and has a goal of reaching 15,000.
In response, the pro-Israel activist organization EndJewHatred launched a counter-campaign over the weekend, calling on its supporters to “show Trader Joe’s some love” and purchase the Israel-made items from their local Trader Joe’s locations. Pro- Israel supporters are being urged to call the customer relations department at Trader Joe’s and tell the representative on the line, or leave a message, saying: “Thank you for carrying Israeli products! I’m so appreciative that I am able to buy products made in Israel.” EndJewHatred said supporters can also leave possible feedback about Israeli products on the Trader’s Joe’s website.
In mid-October, activists in support of Code Pink shared a video on social media of them visiting a Trader Joe’s store, where they sang loudly about a boycott of Israeli products and pulled Israeli items off shelves. The section of the store that carried the Israeli snack Bamba was referred to as “the apartheid aisle” and “genocide aisle” by protesters in the video. Another protester said that when she looks at the Dorot crushed garlic cubes from Israel that is sold in Trader Joe’s, it looks like the item “is dripping in blood.”
“I can see children being killed,” she claimed, while holding the frozen product. “I can’t even look at it,” another activist added.
The protesters in the clip also approached the store manager, who explained that while she “completely sympathizes” with their concerns, stores have no say in merchandising decisions. “We, as store managers, cannot do anything about this — in terms of supplies. Trader Joe’s, as a corporation, makes merchandising decisions, at a higher level,” the manager said.
The post Pro-Israel Supporters Encouraged to Back Trader Joe’s as Chain Faces Pressure to Boycott Israeli Products first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.