Parallel universe. The Zionist Organization of America is threatening to boycott Coca-Cola because it bought land in Egypt for a bottling plant that was once owned by a Jewish family, the Bigios, and that was stolen from them in 1964 during an anti-Semitic campaign. The Bigios have sued to get their land back. Coke is indifferent, says the ZOA. The company has acted "cavalierly" and "despicably" and is profiting from antisemitism, says the ZOA.
Well I'm all for the Bigios. But interesting that the ZOA is opening this door on confiscation of property. Confiscation is neverending in the West Bank and Israel. Why not use the boycott power there too?
Better to use law if it is available, and to work to make law the available path rather than only agitation.
This reminds me of the removal of the Gaza settlers. one of them wanted to challenge his removal in court, claiming that the specific plot he lived on was legally owned by a Jew before the establishment of the state of Israel. The PA was very keen for him to sue and have an Israeli court establish the principle that people who legally owned land before 1948 didn't lose the right to what they owned when the state of Israel was established. Israeli govt wasn't so enthusiastic.
The tragic present of eviction, destruction of property and the effects of the Wall on Palestinians is continually being unaddressed.
Anti semitism accusations continually marginalize the debate.
I thought that the Palestinians were Semites.
If that is so, why are we focused on one family who have a dispute with Egypt and Coca Cola?
There are still thousands of Semitic people who are living in tents and Israel will not let building materials and concrete cross into Gaza.
The ZOA, like all of us, shoud be concerned with the bewildered, lonely and abandoned Semites of Gaza.
Most of all, we don't want no "agitation". Any "agitation" may disturb the reveries of American ZIonist supporters.
I say: let the ZOA open that can of worms.
There is no law available to Palestinians on the westbank. No law in the sense that land claims are not subject to an impartial, just tribunal.
Let's see, the inverse of this would be any multi-national that set up shop in Israel on land stolen by Zionists from Palestinians getting sued or boycotted by Palestinians and their supporters. That's not a bad idea. Virtually no multi-nationals would be able to do business in Israel, given that most of the land there was stolen.
The problem is that Palestinians don't have an elite fifth column in the West and throughout Western institutions that could enforce or support such actions, as the Zionists do. On the other hand, they do have support throughout the Arab and Islamic world.
So why don't they employ that leverage?
Is that the same Zionist Organization of America that refused to register as a Foreign agent back when the DOJ under RFK ordered it?
*They* are the new standard bearers of legal compliance? Maybe Coke will throw the ZOA's 1962 dodge back in their face:
"The request for registration contained in your letter raises many questions of fact and of relationships which first must be resolved by us before compliance can be made. Therefore, it is requested that you be good enough to grant us a delay of 120 days…"
http://irmep.org/ILA/AZCDOJ/p6100125/default.asp
Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto can hardly blame the Germans if they lacked the proper paperwork establishing their land and citizenship rights.
–rykart channeling richard witty
All thieves have the same ethics: I can steal from you but you can't steal from me.
zoa wants to boycott a corporation… the whole world can boycott a country based on the same principle…
A Norwegian report on www.fafo.no./indexenglish.htm will reveal the conditions of Gaza now six weeks after Israel's attack.
Here is a video montage of the gaza war that google keeps deleting but it keeps resurfacing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QXWhSzatR4
yet at the same time, the idf youtube videos remain untouched.
Long ago, Coca Cola was on the Arab Boycott's list of companies doing business in, or with, Israel, and you couldn't buy a Coke in any Arab country.
You couldn't buy a Ford car, or a Columbia record, either, for the same reason.
That worked well until the US made it a crime to conform to the Boycott.
Now the Zionists want to revive the same idea? Chutzpah!
Phil writes: "The Bigios have sued to get their land back. Coke is indifferent, says the ZOA." And so, ZOA is now threatening to boycott Coca-Cola.
To which Witty responds:
"Better to use law if it is available, and to work to make law the available path rather than only agitation."
Obviously the law was available, and its being used by the Bigios family; it's just (directly implied) that Coca-Cola is so big and rich the law is as a practical matter ineffective. Coke is cavalier, dismissive of the Bigios allegations. Hence the resort to boycott (or at least the threat of it) by ZOA. So, I ask, why did Witty use the phrase "rather than only agitation"?
Phil makes the connection in view of AIPAC POV dominance over Uncle Sam (hence all of us):
"Well I'm all for the Bigios. But interesting that the ZOA is opening this door on confiscation of property. Confiscation is never-ending in the West Bank and Israel. Why not use the boycott power there too?"
It worked with apartheid S Africa, didn't it?
Witty's use of the word "agitation" is a red-herring tactically, is very disingenuous. A lawsuit is by nature a form of agitation. Phil's article makes it clear ZOA thinks the court is not sufficient
to remedy the wrong, as is usually the case when one side is much stronger than the other as a practical matter. Thus Phil's article agrees with ZOA, and says the same tactics should be used
against the AIPAC POV forces.
Witty's worried about that–as usual, he attempts to ignore great power differences, icing that
absent cake with a ladle of sham moderation. His goal: avoid the obvious.
Anti semitism accusations continually marginalize the debate.
I thought that the Palestinians were Semites.
Posted by: John | April 14, 2009 at 04:09 PM
Antisemitism is a coined word having little to do with 'semite' as there is no such thing as semitism, at least not when the word was coined by a german social scientist in the 1800s (1870?) to describe hatred of the Jews as a people.
So why do so many Jews use the term, Berel? They so love the Germans? You can't use anti-semitism sans use of semitism. The hatred of jews as a people, that is, because they were born
from a jewish vagina in most cases, is exactly how different from the jewish distinction between
jews & gentiles?
Why? The same reason the law of return is based on Hitler's definition of a Jew.