SAJBD chair Mary Kluk said importing politics from
the M-East to SA was counter-productive. “We believe
in constructive dialogue; we don’t believe that boycotting
anything is going to be constructive,” she said.
Ivan Saltzman, the chief executive of pharmacy giant Dis-Chem, is embroiled in an ugly spat with a Durban woman over the retailer’s decision to sell Israeli-made skin care products. The Durban DAILY NEWS reported yesterday afternoon that the spat began when Fathima Moosa visited the Westwood Mall branch of Dis-Chem and noticed that they were selling Dead Sea products made in Israel.
She later submitted an online letter of complaint, asking them to remove the products on the basis that Israel’s “human rights violations replicate Hitler’s Nazism.”
After Dis-Chem’s initial response that the products were not going to be removed, Moosa demanded that her e-mail be forwarded to top management.
Twenty days later, Saltzman responded to her personally, telling her that likening Israel’s supposed human rights violations was a “a scurrilous slur that you have clearly chosen to employ in order to give maximum offence.”
The spat which has since seen the Islamic Media Review Network get involved with an open letter to Saltzman now threatens to turn into boycott of Dis-Chem by pro-Palestinian groups in SA.
Saltzman said he wrote the letter in his personal capacity and said Dis-Chem would continue selling products from Israel and from Muslim countries.
On November 24 in an online letter to Dis-Chem, Moosa wrote: “As a South African who lived under oppression, I was very upset to see that your store imports products from a country whose human rights violations replicate Hitler’s Nazism.
“Please consider removing Israeli products from your shelves.”
Dawn de Klerk, group customer consultant at Dis-Chem, wrote back telling her that a director at Dis-Chem said they would not remove the product.
Moosa wrote back saying she was disappointed with Dis-Chem and asked that her e-mail be forwarded to the director.
“It is very easy for us to rise to the defence of those who are from our brethren, but the nobler response is to do what’s right, even if it is the unpopular choice,” she wrote.
On December 14, Saltzman responded her initial letter saying that the crimes of the Nazi regime involved the deliberate mass murder of millions of civilians, largely Jews, was a matter of planned policy.
“Is this really what Israel is doing? Obviously not – in fact, it does completely the opposite. Israel goes to extraordinary lengths to minimise civilian casualties and has been extremely successful in this regard.
“Palestinian (or for that matter Lebanese) casualties have been a tiny fraction of what they would have been if Israel had truly adopted a Nazi-like extermination policy, given the massive military capability it has at its disposal,” Saltzman wrote.
“In fact, it is very easy to identify the true modern-day Nazis in the Middle East. They are found in the ranks of such murderous extremist groupings as Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestine Islamic Jihad (amongst others), all of which regard the mass murder of Israeli Jews as the noblest goal their followers can aspire to,” he said.
Saltzman said that if Moosa chose to boycott Dis-Chem it was her decision.
“However, if it is your intention to boycott Israeli products, you need to be consistent if your gesture is to have any meaning. I hope you don’t use an Intel chip in your computer with which you probably wrote your e-mail because it was invented in Israel.
“I hope that you stay in good health because if you need preventative surgery against a heart attack, you will have to boycott the procedure because guess what? The stent was invented in Israel!
“Likewise, I hope you are never prescribed any patch for diabetes, to deliver medication and other drugs. If you are an asthmatic you may have to use a new type of inhaler (Spin) invented in Israel. So please check!
“Israel has given the world the system of drip irrigation which is being widely adopted in SA with water shortages like many countries. Should you boycott all fruit and vegetables grown by this method? The list that Israel has given the world is very lengthy. Check very carefully what you boycott,” he said.
Saltzman said he would continue selling the Dead Sea range.
Salim Vally, spokesman of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in SA, said it was shocking for the chief executive of a major company to make such “outrageous statements.”
In a statement, the Media Review Network and the Muslim Judicial Council said it was “deplorable and completely unacceptable” that Saltzman justifies his company’s business ties with Israel by comparing Israel’s human rights violations with violations in other Middle Eastern countries.
Mary Kluk, chairwoman of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies, said importing politics from the Middle East to SA was counter-productive.
“We believe in constructive dialogue; we don’t believe that boycotting anything is going to be constructive,” she said.
I do recognize that it is
I do recognize that it is extremely likely that most Muslims don't seek to cause difficulties for anyone else and do not wish ill on their fellow man. This diatribe is not about them. It is about those that willfully inflict harm on others and use their religion to justify that. Just like Jews, I know Muslims also don't all deserve to be tarred with the same brush and don't deserve persecution.
Kind of sick of this Nazi comparison... it seems to come up frequently these days.
At best BDS is completely ignorant, at worst they're a bunch of idealogical, anti-civilized World, anti-Semitic fascists!
So let's unpack this intellectually dishonest, moronic comparison just a little.
In 1930's Germany Jews where fired from their jobs, beaten up on the streets, had their homes firebombed and were murdered in pogroms, were described as rats, scum and vermin, non-human and enemies of the state and were ulitmately legislated and classed as animals and life unbecoming of a life. My own grandmothers accounts from being age 11 in 1937 Karlsruhe told me first hand just how badly Jewish children were treated in schools and just how much fear they had!
That's somehow exactly the same as how Arabs are treated in Israel?
In both Israel and the West Muslims enjoy more freedoms and protections than they do in actual Arab countries.
Not only that, but the things that were done to Jews in Germany is now EXACTLY what is happening to Jews and Christians in Moslem countries. In fact it is happening to Arabs of the wrong Islamic persuasion too... so if you're a Sufi watch out, if you're a Sunni in Iran or Iraq watch out. If you're a Ba'ha'i leave immediately. It is obsolutely horrific to see the attacks, arson, and assault on human rights of Christians in Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia that is occuring daily right now and the mainstream media just ignores!!!
To top that, Europe has been a safe place for Jews since 1945 until fairly recently, where Jews are now being attacked by Islamist thugs in almost every European country they live in.
How about those no-go areas in France and the UK for non-Muslims (that police don't even enter anymore), the rape gang in Australia, or those groups grooming young white women in the UK as sex slaves, those frequent honor killings, those forced conversions in Pakistan that include kidnapping and raping Christians, female genital mutilation, turning children into suicide bombers, commiting acts of terror in their own countries and the West and that treats women as property and keeps them illiterate and subservient.
In the USA in 2011 nearly 2000 hate crimes were commited against Jews compared to nearly 200 for Muslims, but somehow the lies and victimhood have turned the focus on them specifically rather than all hate crimes against all groups. 10 times more hate crimes, and no one even cares. Why?
BDS has no legs to stand on, and they support a PA regime that is even more anti-Semitic than the Nazis where. You only need to watch the American election debates right now to hear how some of the contenders for the Republican nomination talk about how they've seen the anti-Jewish material in Palestinian text books. Yes, those textbooks include lines from the Koran and the Hadith calling Jewish descendents of pigs and swine and for the subjegation, humiliation and taxation of Jews and all non-Muslims! If that's not Nazism reborn then what is? Similar text books have been found in Saudi funded schools in te UK. They exist!
Exactly when will BDS insist on plain simple freedom of religion in Arab countries. I'm not even going so far as asking for equal rights, freedom of speech or emancipation of women. I'm just asking for other religions to be properly protected in Islamic countries as they insist Isam must be protected in te Western world. A quid pro quo of sorts!. Just that one thing would wipe the stain of hypocrisy off their faces. The only reason these morons can even be brave is because they're assualting an accountable government in a democracy. If they weren't such cowards they'd pick on Arab countries and Islam, but they're too scared because they know it would unleash a string of fatwas and death all around! In short, the Mossad will not kill them for criticizing Israel. Consider the result if they criticized Islam!
Why is it we're still debating. When Moslems tore up Christian Bibles, and an artist recently created a Piss Christ the results were horrifying... no one got attacked, no one got threated, no one died. When some Danish guy created a cartoon of Muhammad Moslems threatened his life and actually murdered each other. Time and time again we see how even in our Western countries where free speech is almost sacrosanct we dare not speak out for fear of death against this hateful religion, while they get to say the most vile things about anyone else.
BDS lives in a fantasy World. They think if Israel didn't exist all Muslim countries would suddenly become havens of democracy and human rights. It is patent nonsense and someone needs to be brave enough to expose the hypocracy of it all. When will they realize it's not about Jews, it's about Islamic domination of the entire Earth by a few power hungry megalomaniacs that hide behind their religion. They seek to subegae the World and they shield themselves behind Islam and portray themselves as victims because they know Moslems everywhere will rush to support a victim. They are not victims, they ae the most cowardly of all perpetrators shielding themselves behind innocent Muslims try work so hard to fool. They want to dominate their Mslim brethren too, but that will only she as they steal the reigns of power as is what happened in Iran and seems to be happening in Egypt.
Communists did the same. They rallied the masses. They got them engaged, ten they seized te reigns of power and changed the discourse! Nazis did t too. Fidel Castro did it. History never fails to repeat itself.
If you BDS bunny huggers need a cause, then take your focus off Israel and face up to the real elephant in the room. Cowards!
... and one last thing. I think I'll start using my company's prayer room when I want to pray, why is a "prayer room" something only Muslims get to use? I also need a quiet place to do tat without interruption! The assault on Western civilization begins in Israel and people are just to dumb to see it even as it has creeped into the rest of the World!
I'll be buying all the items
I'll be buying all the items I needed and can get there from Dischem in future. Good for Ivan Saltzman. A man with the courage to ignore populist drivel.
Well said Elisheva. I
Well said Elisheva. I always use the Dead Sea Products and will now be buying them from Dischem not only because they are made in Israel but because they are superb skin products. Mr Ivan Saltzman you are truly a man of courage
Elisheva, thank you for
Elisheva, thank you for taking the time and having the courage to state so clearly what many of us think. I too will go out of my way to support Dischem in future owing to the stance taken by Ivan Saltzman. May this inspire more people to get off the fence (of populism and assimilation) and take a stance! From a 'non-Jew'.
Yasher Koach Ivan, You've
Yasher Koach Ivan, You've made headlines in Arutz Sheva.
Israel initially bought its
Israel initially bought its buses from Britain. One day the Brits announced that it would no longer be possible to supply Israel with buses. Reason? The Arab countries had made it clear that Britain's choice was the Arabian market OR the Israeli market, not both.
Israel changed its source of supply to MAN of Germany.
The Arabian market proved a disappointment to the Brits. The Germans, on the other hand, have been laughing all the way to the bank since the Israelis signed the supply deal.
If the same holds true here, Ivan may not find the Palestinian supporters' movement such a loss!
Shtetlers have accidentally
We feel that they are worth reading: Click to SEE 2 MOVING COMMENTS