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Food fight continues at Harvest Co-op

By adamg on Tue, 09/18/2012 - 7:42am

Open Media Boston alerts us that the Boston Hummus Campaign continues to try to get the board of the Harvest Co-op to let members vote on whether to ban Israeli hummus.

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Jamaica Plain
Cambridge
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Middle East
Harvest Co-op


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Comments

By JohnCostello on Tue, 09/18/2012 - 8:13am.

Isn't Tribe Hummus made in Taunton by American workers? Cedar's comes from the famous Bekka Valley town known as Haverhill.

Cambridge being Cambridge. When you're thinking you might be changing world policy all you are doing is endangering some El Salvadoran immigrant out of his job stuffing chickpeas into a vat the size of Harvest's Central Square store within the Myles Standish Industrial Park.

This all sounds like a publicity stunt for You Don't Mess With The Zohan II - Phantom's Revenge.

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By Whit on Tue, 09/18/2012 - 8:41am.

Seeing those anti-Israel campaigners outside the Co-op always reminds me that I need to buy a container of delicious Israeli hummus!

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By anon on Tue, 09/18/2012 - 9:17am.

Anti-Semites hiding behind the cloak of anti-Zionism. If they actually cared about peace through Middle East hummus they'd be pushing to get Palestinian hummus imported.

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By anon on Tue, 09/18/2012 - 10:03am.

You can despise Israel and it's aparteid policies and disrespect for the most basic human rights and still understand that these policies are not part and parcel of Judaism - in fact, are anathma to it.

I have plenty of Jewish friends who boycott Israel and its products on that account.

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By Bluto on Tue, 09/18/2012 - 10:32am.

"Why, some of my best friends are Jewish!"

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By anon on Tue, 09/18/2012 - 10:10am.

that the peace-loving hippies are raging racists, too.

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By John-W on Tue, 09/18/2012 - 10:36am.

They started it!
No they did!
We were here first!
No we were!
You're a stupidhead!
Oh yeah? You're a bigger stupidhead!

-- add extreme firepower and no hesitation to use it on anyone - military, civilian, children.

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By anon on Tue, 09/18/2012 - 11:12am.

You are talking about a region where children have been weaponized. Golda Meir was right in stating that there won't be peace until people love their children more than they hate someone else.

Heck you have entire sects of people more than happy to to die in order to take others with them. When dealing with people hateful and irrational enough to deliberately end their lives in a fashion to murder others, there is no logical path to peace beyond avoidance or physical separation.

Protesting hummus isn't going to change anything!

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By anon on Tue, 09/18/2012 - 10:55am.

Because if so, I've got some bad news:

http://www.intel.com/cd/corporate/europe/emea/heb/...

In 2005, Intel, which is among Israel's leading export companies, registered an export volume of 1.2 billion$ - 14 percent of the sum total of the exports from the country's electronics and information industry.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-made-processo...

Fassberg said that Intel Israel had hired some 700 people in 2011 and planned to hire at least 600 more in 2012. Fassberg added that Intel Israel employs nearly 8,000 workers directly, and is indirectly responsible, through suppliers and subsidiaries, for the employment of 23,000 heads of households — and altogether employs 10% of all workers in the electronics and software industry in Israel.

But something tells me you won't see these folks "divest" from their MacBooks running Intel's new Core i5 & i7 processors.

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By Ron Newman on Tue, 09/18/2012 - 11:07am.

Are either of the hummus companies exploiting Palestinian labor or doing their growing or manufacturing on occupied Palestinian land? If not, I don't really see the purpose of this boycott.

That said, I prefer to buy my hummus from Seta's Mediterranean Foods at local farmers' markets. Could Harvest stock this in addition to, or instead of, the brands that this group wants to boycott?

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By anon on Tue, 09/18/2012 - 11:53pm.

According to the Boston Hummus Campaign's website, the major complaint against Sabra Hummus is that the Israeli company (Strauss Group) which co-owns Sabra with PepsiCo provides care packages to Israeli soldiers.

Seriously. Care packages for Israeli soldiers. How many American companies support the USO or other programs that help our soldiers. I don't think that many Americans, even opponents of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, would object to buying products from a company because they sent our soldiers some free food.

Their argument against Tribe Hummus is equally weak. Tribe's parent company, Osem, which is majority-owned by Nestle apparently features the JNF on some of its product packaging. Mind you, Tribe doesn't do this, the company that owns 50.1% of tribe and is itself owned by Nestle does this. And whatever you may think about the JNF (opponents point to the development of land abandoned by Arabs after the 1948 war and the JNF's role in development in the West Bank) its also an organization that does some undeniably good things like housing for poor Jewish immigrants from Ethiopia and the Former Soviet Union.

This whole case is about guilt by association. A parent company gives some money to people we don't like therefore the US subsidiary which employs American workers should be boycotted. If we were going to start applying that standard rigorously we would probably have nothing to buy except perhaps some locally grown kale. There are plenty of reasonable arguments that can be made about Israeli policy, this boycott is just dumb.

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