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Sunday 2 March 2014

Should the advertising world boycott Israel?

Near silence emerges from the advertising community when questioned about potential boycotts of Israel.
If actress Scarlett Johansson achieved anything by choosing SodaStream over her ambassadorial role with Oxfam, it was to increase global awareness of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
As BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti told The Guardian at the end of last month: “Oxfam is a human rights organisation. They cannot maintain an ambassador if they are involved in a complicit Israeli company built in a settlement.”
Since then the BDS movement has hit headlines around the world and rattled Israelis fearful of economic isolation. A report in The Economist noted that Norway’s finance ministry has “excluded Africa Israel Investments and its subsidiary, Danya Cebus, from a government pension fund”, while Dutch pension fund PGGM had previously withdrawn tens of millions of dollars worth of investments from five Israeli banks, citing the “banks’ unethical and illegal practices in the West Bank”. All of which followed on from the American Studies Association’s decision to boycott Israeli academic institutions.
To read full article click  here.
Originally published by: Campaign Middle East