Today there was a violent protest outside the Rami Levy supermarket in Sha'ar Binyamin. Ma'an reports:
Around 150 protestors demonstrated on Wednesday in front of an Israeli chain store east of Ramallah, the Popular Struggle Committee said.Actually, they broke into the store.
Four activists were detained and several injured as Israeli police and soldiers broke up the demonstration, a statement said.
Palestinian, international and Israeli protesters gathered outside of a branch of the Rami Levi store, chanting slogans and carrying banners calling for a boycott of Israeli products.
But what Ma'an doesn't report is the real reason for the protest. YNet adds:
[Activist Abir Kopty said] "This time we chose the Rami Levy store because we want to send a message to boycott the occupation and its products. As long as the Palestinians get no justice, settlers and Israelis will not lead normal lives."She repeated that on Twitter.
She added that the protest was also meant to send a message to the Palestinian people not to shop in Rami Levy. It should be noted that the retail chain has two branches in the West Bank that also serve Palestinians.
And from the signs they carries, one could see that the intended audience for the boycott call is Arabs, obviously not the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria!
Here is what is really going on:
Rami Levy markets are islands of of co-existence in the territories. Arabs and Jews shop there peacefully together. Arabs and Jews work side by side as employees. I once made a poster based on a photo taken inside a Rami Levy market:
Arab bigots cannot stand the success of Rami Levy.
A couple of years ago, the PA mounted a concerted campaign to get Arabs to boycott Rami Levy. They intimidated Arabs by saying that they were keeping track of license plates on cars at the markets. They told their people that the supermarket's entire purpose was to humiliate Arabs. They even claimed that the meat being sold there was poisoned - although how it only poisoned Arab and not Jewish customers remains a mystery. They prohibited Palestinian Arabs from working at the supermarket.
Even with all of that, Palestinian Arabs continued to shop and work there. The boycott calls were acomplete failure.
Since trying to convince Palestinian Arabs to avoid Jewish stores failed so badly, the BDSers are trying tophysically intimidate the Arab customers. They are hoping to create a gauntlet at the store that makes Arabs decide not to bother shopping there, even though they want to.
Get it? They want to force Palestinian Arabs to act in the ways they deem acceptable - in the name of freedom!
Rami Levy symbolizes everything they hate - Jews and Arabs actually living, working and shopping together. They want to create an apartheid state where only Arabs live and where Jewish products are banned. And they are willing to use force to create this situation!
Doesn't sound very liberal, does it?
The "Popular Struggle Committee" is dedicated to pushing boycott of Israeli products and stores worldwide. But they cannot even get Arabs who live in the territories to boycott a Jewish-owned store!
Rami Levy, by continuing to attract ordinary Arabs, symbolizes the failure of BDS more effectively than anything else.
