Every fortnight in central London there is an absurd boycott protest outside the Israeli cosmetics shop, Ahava. I didn’t even know there was an Ahava store in London until I learned of these protests. Since then, to do my bit to counter the boycott campaign, I’ve popped into the shop to buy Ahava products when I’m in town.
We call this counter-campaign the buycott, as I have written before. Only today I bought some lovely Mineral Eye Cream. If you are interested in helping this particular buycott, you can visit the Ahava website here. Go on, treat yourself. And a friend.
Meanwhile, I’d like to thank the peculiar misguideds who picket the London Ahava shop for introducing me to some fine new cosmetics. In return, I’m sending you all some ‘ahava’ – the Hebrew word meaning ‘love’.
My favorite Israeli eye product is Dinur eye gel. Halle Berry uses it and she looks FANTASTIC!
I didn’t want to say, Chas, but I think the eye-cream is a good idea.
Blimey! You meet Shimon Peres and Mark Regev and you’re suddenly Mr Wise Guy?
haha! you have beautiful eyes really.
Too late now, ex-friend!
*Feverishly awaits Jonathan’s 37th birthday, when we’ll see how clever his so-called ‘eyes’ look*
Do Ahava make botox? I hope so, for your sake!
Haha!
Hey, if they ever do male hormones you’ll be front of the queue with your purse ready!
It is always illuminating to get another perspective. Even when I do not agree with your view, Mr N-B, I never fail to enjoy your spirit!
I bet you bought the eye cream for your mum or an aunt, Chas. You certainly don’t need it yet yourself…
Thanks!
Chas,
The peculiar misguideds that you write about will have to behave themselves in the future or face stern action from the law. Those of us who occasionally stand opposite these idiots will of course uphold the law. They, who consist of young ‘crusties’ and an assortment of eccentric anti-Israel nutters are less concerned with rules and will hopefully get themselves arrested.
Thanks to you and everyone else who comes down to participate in the buycott. It really pisses off the opposition when someone comes out of the shop holding up a bag.
Cityca We are now creating a new tradition that you don’t just hold up the bag, you do a little dance with it and we give you a big cheer! REALLY pisses them off.
See ya Saturday?
Hand out a few free string vests and some gross, over-sized, nylon Y-fronts too – they seem quite apt for this lot.
Do give them my love:-))
Sorry, I had a Aufruf last weekend and for several weekends to come, but when I’m free I’ll see you there! Believe it or not we have 6 weddings this 1/2 year!
(An aufruf is a synagogue service/celebration for a Jewish man about to get married).
Lol – enjoy the cream Chaz
I just saw the videos on Richards website – can anyone tell me how so many “intelligent, articulate, crusties etc” are all on the anti-israel bandwagon?
I mean I would have thought that they would not just blindly follow others?
About as many as jumped on the whole anti-aparteid bandwagon-everyone who isn’t a racist fucknut.
I was on the anti-apartheid “bandwagon” at University, and 45 years later, a Zionist living in Israel, after a 3-year spell in apartheid South Africa in the 70s (on work), I still believe apartheid was an evil system, so I don’t understand your comment.
He’s trying to suggest that Israel operates an Apartheid system. This is an insult to those who suffered under Apartheid, and an insult to the many Jews who fought it. Of course, it’s become a Jew-hating truism that Israel practices Apartheid, Nazism – you name it! For some reason, thinking the worst of the Jews comes easy to some people. Can’t think why.
PA operates an actual apartheid system numbnutz, try driving on PA roads with Israeli plates or walk into an estate agents and tell them you’re a jew.
Its pathetic when the best you can do is call Israel apartheid. In apartheid South Africa, blacks and coloureds were very much of dhimmi status, i.e. permitted to have limited rights, exactly as non Muslims have in many Arab states.
In Israel however, Israeli Arabs are in government, in the army, in restaurants, theatres and concert halls and the emergency services and they even occupy the primest real estate in the main part of Haifa, a gigantic hillside that is the home to the Bahai religion outside of the Arab states from whence it originated but is now mainly banned.
The difference between the status of Israeli Arabs and apartheid era South Aftican blacks and colours is so profound that only a fool or a liar would claim similarity.
Which are you, blahblahblah?
What’s a ‘crustie’? It sounds awful, whatever it is.
Scruffy, untidy, unwashed unemployed and often uneducated travelling people who are almost anarchists in their rejection of societal norms and live almost like animals sometimes, in forests, on fields etc and who seem to identify with the underprivileged.
Typically, they may be squatters who take over unoccupied homes and sometimes destroy them while in occupation – property is theft, innit?
Unfortunately, because they often have no education they often are easily led, as are the crowd who parrot anti-Israel taunts outside Ahava. They are an easy target for cynical anti-Israel types who use emotion, rather than reason to win them over.
Like you, Mr Newkey-Burden, I had never heard of this shop until the demonstrations against it. On Thursday, I duly paid a visit and bought a wonder cream for blokes’ faces.
How annoying to have missed you!
Had I bumped into you, I would have been tongue-tied, though, as I admire your blog. It is a voice for balance in a very hostile environment.
At the shop, I tried to express my disgust at the boycott to the lady who works there and is subjected to noisy bully-boy pickets every two weeks. The demonstrators, fired up with what they imagine to be “righteous” anger, remind me very much of those photographed picketing Jewish shops in the previous century.
Anyway, I’d like to tell you, in case you need it, that you are not the only non-Jew who is not taken in by the anti-Israel rhetoric and who believes in the basic decency of Israel.
And as for the little bit of Ahava on our faces, it feels jolly nice, doesn’t it!
I wish I’d seen you. Thanks for your kind words and yes, I agree that there are more of us out there than some might think. Keep it up and enjoy the bloke cream!
And by the way, Ahava hand cream is the best, and their bath salts are fantastic for anyone with eczema.
I cannot imagine how the male protestors consider themselves ‘men’.
What’s ‘manly’ about shouting and harrassing a shop which I’d imagine has a mostly (if not entirely) female staff who have relatively little connection to the source of their self-righteous stance?
Women are easy pickings,though. Perhaps these ‘men’ should go with the courage of their convictions, get on the next flight to Israel and hurl their abuse at male targets in uniform.
Look at the protestors in the article Chas helpfully linked to. They look mostly like a sexless bunch of boorish males.
Annabel – Why don’t these people ever do anything solid and practical to help the Palestinians? I’ve got a son doing the Gap year thing. The plight of the small children begging on the streets in Cambodia affected him deeply. He hasn’t gone yelling and screeching about the unscrupulous people behind this outside some irrelevant building in London ; he’s now in Australia and running the half-marathon in Melbourne for them this coming Sunday.
Penny, you make the mistake of thinking these people actually care about the Palestinians, where I’d suggest that they actually just hate Israel. As for your point about them shouting at women who happen to work in a cosmetics store, I really hope the protesters don’t think of themselves as left wing; there is nothing left wing about harassing ordinary workers trying to make a living.
I agree Neil – I’m under no illusion as to why these people pretend to care for the Palestinians. They’re actually no different from the Arab world that has used them as political pawns for decades.
Well said, Neil. The neighbouring shops are also suffering badly because of the protests. These shops have nothing to do with Israel but their livelihoods are being ruined by these boycott bullies.
Looks like these yobos gleaned their Boycott the Jewish shops idea from footage of 1930’s german newsreels.
Anybody up for a Group 43 revival.
I have used Ahava facecream for a number of years – and no-one believes my age! My favourite is the Time Line cream. Have just collected my Freedom Pass too! (just in time it seems)
Got a shock watching the anti-Israel activists in Richard’s blog, never having seen the UK species before – what a shower of freaks!
Penny at 2.54am. Duvidl believes a “crustie” is street slang for someone averse to using the cheap cosmetic products, soap and water. Soap is also available from Ahava, Duvidl suspects. It is said that failure to wash leads to the development of a crust around the orifices of the body. This has prompted Duvidl to write the following song on the subject, which Ahava shoppers might care to sing and dance to as they exit Ahava:
Crusty The Cretin
(to the tune of “Frosty The Snowman.”)
(Hat tip:Jack Rollins and Steve Nelson)
Crusty the cretin,
Has a crust upon his face,
He will not buy soap from Ahava.
He’s a crusty crap disgrace.
Crusty the cretin,
Has a crust upon his ass,
Which he fails to clean, Israel to demean.
He’s a crusty crappy farce.
(repeat first verse)
DS Al Coda
I love Ahava stuff. There are competitors sold in malls, but Ahava’s the best.
Off topic, but out of curiousity I went to a major event held Palestine Solidarity Campaign meeting in my little town five-and-a-half hours from Euston earlier this evening. An MP (Lib Dem, need you ask) intoduced proceedings.
When I asked a question about Gilad Shalit and his having been held by Hamas for four years without Red Cross visits almost the entire company burst into derisive laughter at his plight. True disgusting sickos.
Sorry – I edited but did not check before posting; hence that post looks semi-literate!
I’ve had this exact experience – the retort I receive is that 1 soldier has been captured and such a fuss is being made. On the other hand over 6000 palestinians have been killed (I dont know the source but everyone seems to parrot this number) and the Israelis want sympathy for 1 captured soldier.
Do you know the name of this MP?
Sorry – I signed off too soon!
How did the MP deal with the laughter amongst the attendees?
He dashed off to his “constituency surgery” directly after making the opening address, so wasn’t there to hear it. They’re all scumbags as far as I’m concerned!
Do we suspect that the anti-Ahava demonstrators also have an issue with beauty, and possibly with women? I don’t mean to be bitchy but they are a fairly unpleasant looking bunch.
The only issue they have is Israelis living in Peace.
The ugliness in their faces comes from Jew hatred.
Sorry Annabel – no anti beauty stuff there, they are very focused on the beauty of dead Jews and israelis.
Oh, one point abotu these “protests” – why are the shops affected by this harassment, threatening, annoying customers etc not suing these people for infringement (of whatever applies), harassment, the costs of business damage etc? Richard notes that one business has gone under due to the presence of these freaks, which is shocking.
What about an injunction etc? Surely there is some legal action these businesses including Ahava can take. Why is the local municipality putting up with this? Is it a municiPALIty (Palisupporting?) (;)
Australia is full of these freaks as well. The problem here is when they hold very large “protests” ie proterrorist demos.
I suggested to an adjoining shopkeeper that they do just that – take out an injunction banning protests outside their shops. I even suggested that if a few shops got together, the cost of legals could be shared.
The hotel opposite, which I subsequently learned costs a fortune, is also thoroughly pissed off at noisy protests right outside every other Saturday. If they all had any sense, they’d hire a decent lawyer and get it stopped.
As I said to a shopkeeper, I’ll be very happy not to have to come down every other Saturday – I do have a life outside pro-Israel demos you know!
Regarding the ‘genocide’ of the Palestinians, check out this spanking new shopping mall! http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001127.html
some very funny photo captions of the new mall here:
http://www.israellycool.com/2010/07/18/scenes-from-the-gaza-mall/
The shocking thing is that I have not seen or heard of this shopping mall anywhere!
It really does raise the issue of what people are protesting against? Its all propaganda.
It breaks my heart that everyone is jumping on the Anti Israel bandwagon and the media are just going with it
Penny asked:
“What’s a ‘crustie’? It sounds awful, whatever it is.”
Back in the 90’s it used to mean white people who wore their hair in huge matted dreadlocks so they looked as if they were wearing a mass of dead polecats on their heads, wore Para boots (a bit like DMs but thicker and chunkier), listened to the Levellers, and were either New Age Travellers or aspired to be. I didn’t realise they were still around.
The Levellers! What a blast from the past!
The hair sounds a bit like Crystal Bowersox, winner of this year’s “American Idol”. A naturally beautiful girl, and somehow the locks suit her.
i think my mum using it….. wierd…. and i think they are good… lol
Balance is found by looking to Dudley, and seeing the actions of the anti-Islam EDL.
Now pro-Israel conservative bloggers like the adorable Pamela Geller (atlas shrugs) is promoting the EDL Jewish Division (formed in june 2010).
Division is the key word here, people who are passionate about Israel and its future are being played like fools by old-school race baiters (National Front, BNP etc.). If I were an Israeli I would be disgusted by the flying of Israel flags within a crowd of rabid soccer thugs creating havok downtown, but for Mrs Geller this is a great day for her.
I am glad however that we can still demonstrate in the UK, it is just a shame the demonstrators (on all sides now) are just tools in a much bigger political game.
Oh yeah, and don`t knock the Levellers. Yes they looked like crusties, but for the most part the real long-time new-age travelers did not really ‘get into it’. At that time becoming a traveller was rather ‘in-vogue’ especially among people leaving higher education, the Levellers was just a cool beat with a fiddle that spoke of the feelings of the day.
“There`s only one way of life..and that`s your own, that`s your own, that`s your own.”
I will now resist the yooffull temptation to circle an A on an underpass…
I am not shamelessly plugging Richard Milletts blog, but I thought maybe quite fitting to share the poem I dedicated to the rent-a-cause mob outside Ahava as Richard has done a piece on this too.
http://richardmillett.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/anti-israel-activists-taunt-covent-garden-shoppers/#comments
Those hypocrites outside Ahava
Don’t use soap that lathers
They bleat and bray
In their stinky sheep way
It’s best that we call quick the farmer
Pass me a peg for my nose
The smells coming from them I suppose?
Can they not wash?
I mean, golly gosh
Somebody wash them down with a hose
A surname rhyming with Floyd
Israels existence got him annoyed
He danced an Irish jig
And took another swig
Whilst slurring along to Danny Boy