How to shut down the Israel Shops
Responding to a report that George Galloway called on anti-Israel protestors to “shut down Israel’s shops,” Galloway operative Rob Hoveman writes:
“The piece on page nine of the print edition of today’s Observer, and online, reporting yesterday’s pro-Palestinian demonstration in London unfortunately includes a damaging misreport of comments made by George Galloway MP.
“The par reads: ‘In one of several speeches delivered in Kensington Gardens, George Galloway, leftwing MP for the Respect party, called on protesters to go to shopping centres and “shut down Israel’s shops” in what was believed to be a reference to retailers, including Marks & Spencer, which have come under fire for selling Israeli-sourced goods.’
“1) The quote attributed is wrong. Mr Galloway spoke of “Israel shops”. The language is precise. There are in the two shopping malls he mentioned mobile retailers called “Israel Shops”, which are staffed by Israelis and promote Israeli/West Bank goods - Dead Sea skin products etc. Mr Galloway was being extremely careful to focus his comments precisely.
“2) Not only did Mr Galloway not intend to refer generally to retailers, he is on film the night before speaking in the London Muslim Centre explicitly and categorically stating that Marks & Spencer should NOT be boycotted, explaining that it is a public company owned by shareholders like any other and has nothing to do with Israel.
“This is a very sensitive area, where innuendo and mishearing can have dangerous consequences. (It is highly regrettable that the reporters seek to explicate what they think Mr Galloway meant by passively referring to what unnamed people might believe, in fact groundlessly given the misquote.)
“We are insisting on an immediate online correction to the story and a suitably prominent correction in the next edition of the Observer. In our view, this piece can be easily read to impute motives and beliefs to Mr Galloway which, if they were true, would be considered reprehensible by the right thinking public. They are not true.”
You can hear Galloway’s exact words here at about 2:45:
So it appears that Galloway was urging his audience to shut down mobile “Israel Shops” selling Israeli products and located in certain shopping malls. Perhaps he should have been more precise. Why he is willing to let Marks & Spencer off the hook, given its “continuing links” with and “ongoing support” for Israel I have no idea.
But then a question arises: how to shut down these shops. Surely Galloway would not be advocating violence or destruction of property. So what other possibilities are there?
Perhaps a sign next to the shops warning the public to avoid buying products from Israelis. There should also be a widely recognized Israeli symbol like the Magen David to make sure potential customers understand just whom they should not be buying from. And of course there would need to be someone standing nearby to explain why the shop should be shut down.
That is to say, something like this:
Update: While Galloway is always pleased to excoriate any action of the IDF, let’s remember how he celebrated Russia’s military operation against Georgia last summer:
Russia has shown the world the Yeltsin days when she could be held hostage, privatised and even dismembered are over for good.
The Russian army were an awesome sight on the march into the two breakaway Caucasus enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. All that military aid from the US and the Israelis to the Georgian army seems to have been wasted money.
The “awesome” Russian offensive cost the lives of more than 200 Georgian civilians, for whom Galloway’s heart distinctly did not bleed.
Comments
| 12 January 2009, 2:45 am |
That is the Image i imagined when i heard of Mr Galloways remarks, Well done Gene.
| 12 January 2009, 2:52 am |
Perhaps he should have been more precise. Why he is willing to let Marks & Spencer off the hook, given its “continuing links” with and “ongoing support” for Israel I have no idea.
I doubt the repellent little creep will demand a boycott of ‘Tessa Cohen’ either, for obvious reasons.
I went shopping at ASDA yesterday. Not because of an Israeli boycott, but because they had prawns going cheap.
| 12 January 2009, 2:55 am |
I am rather puzzled by the use of the English verbal phrase ’shut down’ which has exactly the same meaning as to close down.
When applied to a business it means to cease operating, to terminate, to end, to cease business, to stop or to halt.
This is strange as he is asking people, it appears, to terminate, or to stop the business from operating, rather than simply to cease their own trading with the aformentioned shops.
There are presumably a number of measures people might take that would have the consequence of reducing the volume of business of a shop such that it might contribute to them deciding to cease trading.
However if as seems to be suggested that people take active measures with the intention of causing a business to cease operating or to close down such that these measures actually result in the termination of the business, well this is quite another matter altogether.
The legality of such possible measures would no doubt have been uppermost in the mind of anyone such as George Galloway making a statement urging people to shut down the mobile ‘Israel Shops’, hence any further information we are provided with is solely for clarification purposes.
| 12 January 2009, 2:58 am |
Far off the Topic.
Distrusting the jingoistic nature of the journalism, I have shied away from the JPost, but Ha’Aretz’s reputation has caused me some pause.
Any way I saw this video on their site.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054533.html
And here is the accompanying article
Last update - 22:37 11/01/2009
WATCH: IDF uncovers booby-trapped school next to Gaza zoo
By Haaertz Service
Israel Defense Forces troops this week uncovered a school in the Gaza Strip rigged by Hamas militants with a large amount of explosives.
The school, located next to a Gaza zoo, was entirely surrounded by a fuse connecting to the explosives. Inside the abandoned classrooms, IDF troops found a number of weapons.
“We are continuing to confront a mad reality of boobytrapped tunnels, boobytrapped schools,” IDF spokeswoman Avital Leibovich said. “In one district of 150 houses, more than 30 were boobytrapped. Hamas boobytraps every house that residents leave.”
Leibovich said residential neighborhoods in Gaza are riddled with homemade bombs and booby traps, including mannequins placed at apartment entrances to simulate militants and rigged to explode if soldiers approach
| 12 January 2009, 3:57 am |
A mobile cart selling these products has already been attacked in Europe where the young Israeli Jew manning it was shot by a Muslim.
Galloway is inciting more of this. He must be aware of this incident also. Can he be prosecuted for such incitement?
| 12 January 2009, 4:16 am |
Isn’t it possible that Israel is a personal name. A Jewish name. Which coincidentally or not sells Israeli products.
Isn’t that then calling for a Jewish boycott - if he wants Mr or Mrs Israel’s shop shut down.
Isn’t the little puffed up Napoleon due a fall ? Maybe he realises legal action is the offing and that’s why we are picking up the odour of pants weighed down.
| 12 January 2009, 5:15 am |
This time they will ask politely for the Jews to leave England. They will ask politely about a block ahead of a screaming mob coming to kill you. They will even pay a stipend for you to leave. I feel I have to point this out because you’re unwilling to confront it.
| 12 January 2009, 5:34 am |
Wahahahahaahaha. Hilarious. What a lunatic.
| 12 January 2009, 5:58 am |
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LsewrH2Hvek&eurl=http://globaldayofaction.org/stopwar/index.php
Here is Galloway’s speech on Saturday. Apart from speaking in English rather than German, please tell me the difference between this speech and this one:
| 12 January 2009, 6:31 am |
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/01/417901.html
Here’s what the scum did yesterday
| 12 January 2009, 7:16 am |
whilst the ‘left’ dishonours itself so completely over here, in germany it redeems itself somewhat; much to the incredulity of our own ‘anti imperialist heroes’
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/01/417898.html
| 12 January 2009, 7:20 am |
there is one of these stalls in my local shopping mall. young enthusiastic Israeli lasses trying to push red sea mud onto the jaded palates of the thames valley. Having met many of the local anti zionists I have no doubt that the girls would kick their pasty arses if they tried to enforce Galloways pogrom.
| 12 January 2009, 7:20 am |
“Galloway knows exactly what he is doing.”
Galloway is the British Mayor Luger.
| 12 January 2009, 7:27 am |
I seem to remember from Galloway’s radio broadcasts that he suggested Georgia had brought the attack by Russia on itself by attacking Russians.
Er, maybe like firing rockets at them? Er, like Hamas?
| 12 January 2009, 7:32 am |
How about a call to boycott Talksport for whom Galloway works.
And slightly OT but I heard some Talksport tosser from 1:00am decide to argue that Israel should pay for police protection of the Israeli embassy “after all its their fault, why should we pay?”
| 12 January 2009, 7:47 am |
Can he be prosecuted for such incitement?
Yes. All it takes is a minimum of guts on the part of the DPP. Which has not been much in evidence vis-a-vis antisemitic incitement in recent years from various parties.
| 12 January 2009, 7:53 am |
Fitting that the Indymedia blogger who put up the pics (link @ 6:31 AM) in solidarity with his/her antizionist activist allies who forcibly trespassed the Ahava shop until the shop was forced to close, signed his/her post anti-ahava i.e. anti-love
| 12 January 2009, 8:22 am |
I think mettaculture has hit the nail on the head. The use of ’shut down’ as an active transitive verb in the imperative can have only one construction: do something that will stop it trading. Not ‘dissuade some people from buying from it’ or ’cause a drop in its turnover’ or ‘damage its reputation’, but terminate its commercial activities. There are only two ways to do this: (a) physically intimidate prospective customers as shown in the very apposite picture; (b) use physical force or the threat of physical force to intimidate the owner or staff.
Last time I checked, both (a) and (b) were criminal offences. Incitement to commit either (a) or (b) (or any criminal offence, of course) is a criminal offence also.
Field may well be right about the pants. imo, the careful language doesn’t help him this time.
Now, about that combination of DPP and testicles …
| 12 January 2009, 9:04 am |
It sure was nice of those people at indymedia to put all the israeli produce on one place, saves me walking round the store trying to find it :)
| 12 January 2009, 9:17 am |
George Galloway and his cheerleaders forget one tiny detail. There are arabs/muslims citizens of Israel. Boycotting Israeli shops and products is likely to have a negative impact on Israeli arabs as well, as they depend on Israel’s economy for a living.
Speaking of Israeli arabs…Tel Sheva is a bedouin village near Beer Sheva, thus in range of Haniyeh’s rockets. Haniyeh’s sisters live in Tel Sheva. They’re israeli citizens, and as such they’re also targeted by Hamas’ rockets. I wonder what would George Galloway and cheerleaders have to say about this.
Here is some background on the sisters:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3242988,00.html
| 12 January 2009, 9:18 am |
Perhaps we should give George the benefit of the doubt an presume he was bringing his personal experience of shutting down businesses to the debate.
ie, let a bent MP handle the cash and make the accounts disappear.
| 12 January 2009, 9:37 am |
“Here’s what the scum did yesterday”
So the shop that Galloway’s spokesman apparently claims he was referring to is attacked the next day by “activists” - is there a clearer example of direct incitement?
| 12 January 2009, 9:42 am |
And oh, as I asked earlier on the other thread, should I be disrupting and attacking my local Chinese Takeaway in solidarity with Tibet, or maybe we should rampage through China Town off Wardour Street in Soho?
This is really pathetic.
There’s a shop near Covent Garden that sells South African and Zimbabwean products. Should we attack hald the shop in protest of Mugabe’s policies, being careful to leave alone the South African section we would have boycotted a few years ago. Drink South African wine! Grind Zimbabwean snacks into the dirt! Forward comrades, to the shopping trolleys!
| 12 January 2009, 9:44 am |
As I understand it the Georgian action in South Ossetia was an act resistance to the occupation of its sovereign territory. No wonder George has finally been driven completely mad by his cognitive dissonance and is calling for a Kristallnacht pogrom in our shopping malls.
| 12 January 2009, 9:49 am |
Details of the New Year’s Eve attack on one of these stands in Odense, Denmark.
| 12 January 2009, 9:59 am |
j.r. -
what on earth do you mean, ‘finally’?
| 12 January 2009, 10:02 am |
the thing of it is that at 3:00 he does seem to say the word ’spencer’, doesn’t he? there’s a patch which is hard to decipher, but before reading this post i had assumed that’s what he said — and not because i knew M&S were pro-zionist entity. i had to google it.
| 12 January 2009, 10:03 am |
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=jtr-6sWgTEE
Anarchists and Jihadis trash the police and Kensington on Saturday
| 12 January 2009, 10:34 am |
Surely this is incitement to terrorism by Tamimi (In London on Saturday)
| 12 January 2009, 11:08 am |
this scum bag knows exactly what he said and we don’t need some arse licker trying to re explain his comments.Surely if any staff or property is damaged due to these comments,then he should be dragged before the courts.
However i would have him up for incitement now.
| 12 January 2009, 11:30 am |
This ‘thing’ against Marks and Sparks has a long history.
When, in the ‘eighties, I was teaching English in Paris at a school just next to the Opera, a woman in my class, an Algerian who worked for the Saudi Embassy, said this to me when I recommended buying tea and cakes from the shop (since closed I am told): “Mais c’est un truc juif, hein?” (It’s a Jew thing, eh?).
The ‘Don’t Buy Yid Campaign’ has this kind of background.
| 12 January 2009, 12:28 pm |
The ‘Don’t Buy Yid Campaign’ has this kind of background.
Hmmm, along the lines of “Yids out Quids in” … I wonder if there is much coverage of Galloway’s Shut up Israel Shop in the Iranian press, along the lines that his comments were mistranslated like Ahmadinejad’s were on wiping out Israel.
Im certain if redacted correctly what they are both trying to say is:
Buy Jewish. Its Kosher.
| 12 January 2009, 12:55 pm |
Is he really ranting about shutting down a bunch of little mobile carts? Is that really what he’s getting his knickers in a twist about?
| 12 January 2009, 2:18 pm |
What did the Jews/Israel ever do to Scotland to provoke such virulent hatred?
| 12 January 2009, 3:00 pm |
Perhaps he buys his undies at M&S.
| 12 January 2009, 7:00 pm |
Radical political violent Islam was legitimated in this country when the Government did nothing about the clear incitement to murder Salman Rushdie (indeed Iqhbal Sacranie was later enobled).
I do not doubt that there have been sporadic anti-Muslim attacks in recent years as a result of hatred.
However we have not seen anything like an orchestrated, chanting public display of demonstrations calling for this, on the contrary.
What we are seeing now is public orchestrated displays of anti-semitic hatred and violence in demonstrations and attacks throughout the UK, with prominent and well known ,if not well liked, politicians and celebritys supporting these hate fests, and national reporting bland to the point of support and encouragment.
This is how it starts we are at another crossroads. Either the Goverment respond forcefully with arrests, prosecutions and clear political multi-partisan condemnation, or they begin a process of soft collusion and soft permission granting for such shamefully gut churning dispalys of open Jew hatred that I never thought I would see in my life on my streets.
If we do not respond with zero tolerance, and I would argue that there is a prima facie case to arrest and charge the instigators and supporters of this toxic, corroding politics of hate, then we are in deep trouble.
Ordinary Muslims are the ones that are as in need of a robust government response as anyone. There has been no reall organised anti-Muslim backlash, yet.
This typical English inertia and social passivity is not from an inexhaustible source of cowardliness, but a strong sense of the right way to behave, such social tolerance has clear limits.
| 12 January 2009, 8:15 pm |
What did the Jews/Israel ever do to Scotland to provoke such virulent hatred?
Killed William Wallace.
| 13 January 2009, 1:05 am |
Ugly stuff. He sinisterly refers to Gerry Adams’ famous line about the IRA: ‘the antiwar movement haven’t gone away, you know’, then uses the most emotive possible propaganda to radicalise the crowd, instead of putting forward any political argument.
The same tactics as he used in Bethnal Green, of course.
Personally I have never heard of these “Israeli shops”. At the very least it was extremely irresponsible wording. I don’t think he would have a leg to stand on if he tried to sue anyone, which is doubtless why Rob Hoveman struggles to find the right words to threaten at the end of that explanation.
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