By Rabbi Yitzchok Schochet for COLlive.com
I’ve only been blogging for a short few months. In that time however some of my blog postings have made their way into national or international press.
My piece on Limmud for example was picked up by the Jewish Chronicle while my Chilean minor story featured in the Jerusalem Post and COLlive.com. But it’s my most recent blog piece that leaves me particularly chuffed.
On Friday I was alerted to a fresh off the press news story about the high street chain John Lewis allegedly boycotting certain Israeli products. Because of my previous run in with John Lewis I immediately flagged this in a blog posting giving the store one week to respond. It barely took a day:
A spokesman for John Lewis emphatically denied the claim, stating that while the retailer had stopped stocking Ahava products, it was purely a commercial decision.
“To be clear, John Lewis’s decision to no longer stock Ahava beauty products was a commercial decision based solely on the sales performance of the products.
“Our buyers regularly review the performance of all our ranges, with new products being added and less successful ones being removed throughout the year.”
“I can confirm that the PSC wrote to Andy Street to ask firstly about whether we had ceased to sell Ahava products, and secondly our stance on ethical sourcing.
In the content of his letter of response, Andy outlined John Lewis’s responsible sourcing policy. This information is entirely unrelated to the decision to cease stocking Ahava products; however the person who wrote the PSC’s press release put the two elements together to create a false and misleading quote.
We can confirm that we continue to stock products sourced from Israel.”
So the PSC lie has been exposed and I am grateful to John Lewis for responding so quickly to clarify the matter.
The pen really is mightier than the sword, or in this instance the keyboard is mightier than the malevolent anti-Israel PR machine.
it is actually possible that JL discontinued sale of Ahava products simply because they weren’t selling well. this is not the fault of the store, but it may very well be the fault of all the anti-israeli, anti-semitic propaganda so common in Btitain today. it would be nice if all our enemies finally came to understand who their true enemies are and be cured of their hatred. fat chance.
It is interesting that The Hudson Bay Company chain of stores in Canada has also discontinued Ahava products at the exact same time for the same reason.
Dovid
you might be a rabbi ,but ahava is a international product and u really think that its not a boycott
IM TELLING YOU THIS YITZCHOK SCHOCHET IS SOMETHIG UNIQUE,SO CLEVER AND SO SHARP WITH THE ABILITY TO SHARE OVER HIS HUGE WISDOM.
Didn’t want to have to boycot good ole’ John Lewis!
wow truly amazing!!!
Yitzchol schochet for chief rabbi!! He will be excellent