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This Week in Boycotts

Who wants Trader Joe’s, Nokia, or Pepsi products anyway?

by
Ari M. Brostoff
June 26, 2009

It’s too late to participate in either the boycott of Trader Joe’s, organized June 20 by a group called “Don’t Buy Into Apartheid” that is critical of the supermarket chain for stocking Israeli products, or the counter-boycott, in which a series of viral emails urged Jews to buy Israeli goods at Trader Joe’s that day. But if you’re looking for something not to buy, there are still Nokia and Siemens cameras, which a bunch of scattered groups on the internet are targeting for the telecommunications companies’ alleged sale of surveillance equipment to the Iranian government. And finally, there’s Pepsi, which Egyptian cleric Sheikh Hazem Abu Ismail claims is an acronym for “Pay Every Penny Saving Israel.”

Ari M. Brostoff is Culture Editor at Jewish Currents.