I noticed this the other day. I’d been searching for information on people who were attempting to start up a boycott of Jimmy John’s restaurants because of the owner’s big-game-hunting hobby. But before I could get to “boycott jimmy john’s”, Google decided to be helpful.
Of course, if you’re an Android user, you don’t have to be left out: Google will deliver at least three different applications to help you boycott Israel. Good luck doing that, by the way; AMD and Intel both do significant amounts of research and development in Israel. Maybe you can find a Cyrix 586 computer somewhere to help you hate the Jews.
Like i need any help hating jews
*snare crash*
The problem is this is just an irresistible opportunity to grandstand and get people distracted from their local issues, here in South Africa the local communist union is trying to get the country to boycott the local equivalent of Whole Foods because they import 0.1% of produce from Israel. http://citizen.co.za/264025/57-arrested-killarney-mall-woolworths-protest/
Of course it is simply an easy opportunity, especially here, to portray the Palestinians as oppressed dark skinned Africans and the Israelis as Apartheid SA. The people protesting have never met a Jew and certainly couldn’t point Israel out on the map. But it is a good way to distract from the local credit bubble and currency collapse from the bursting of the commodity bubble. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jessecolombo/2014/03/19/a-guide-to-south-africas-economic-bubble-and-coming-crisis/
Naturally, nobody considers the fact that the two state solution cannot last much longer, and Israel has very little choice. There was an excellent doc that came out last year which interviewed all the living former heads of Shin Bet, they all unanimously concluded that there is absolutely no hope for the status quo: http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-gatekeepers
I really wish the BDS crowd would live up to their convictions and boycott anything and everything that’s the work of Israelis and Zionists. No polio vaccines (Sabin moved to Israel to work at the Weizman Institute), no cellphones, no food that was grown with drip irrigation, nothing that required the use of acetone to produce (cf Chaim Weizman), no camera based drivers’ aids (Mobileye), not the protection of U.S. Army Rangers (cf. David “Mickey” Marcus), not to mention the CPUs of most personal computers as Jack already pointed out.
As for no hope for the status quo, a look at Jewish history would indicate that at just about any point in the past 3,500 years, one could have easily concluded that there was no hope for the status quo. Israel perpetually at war is preferable to no Jewish state at all. At least now the Jews can shoot back. As Alex Bensky put it, the existence of Israel means that Jew-killing is no longer a risk-free sport.
Well I wouldn’t do the film justice trying to summarize its conclusions, but long story short perpetual war isn’t much of an option at least according to all 5 people that ran Shin Bet, but I (though not Jewish myself) would say Israel is better off trying to drive the Palestinians out once and for all than trying to live alongside them in a state of perpetual war.
Oddly, one of the more encouraging developments of the recent flareup between Israel and Hamas in Gaza was the growing number of Israeli Arabs, both Christian and Muslim, volunteers in the IDF in addition to the Druze who have always served. There are plenty of countries around the world that are constitutionally Christian or Muslim and nobody seems to have a problem with those. It’d be naive to think that Arabs don’t have civil rights issues in Israel but in general, the Israelis have done a fairly decent job of being both a Jewish state and protecting the religious and civil rights of non-Jews, both by absolute standards and certainly by what goes for normal in that part of the world.
Yes, Israeli Arabs might face discrimination in housing. In the Palestinian Authority, it’s a capital crime to sell land to a Jew.
Also, the demographics aren’t working out to what the doomsayers predicted.
those suggestions are tailored to you based on your past searches and web history. if I go to google and type “boycott,” the first two suggestions are “boycott advance mac,” “boycott,” and “boycott advance mac crash.”
These are the results delivered to an Incognito Chrome Session from a public IP.
don’t pester me with facts.
😉
I’ve never deleted my web history or past search history, nor do I surf anonymously on my computer. Typing “boycott” on Google results in “israel,” “mexico,” “nfl,” “hobby lobby” and “amazon.” My phone I rarely use the internet with is exactly the same except “amazon” is replaced with “exodus movie” for its Google suggestions. I don’t believe I’ve given any reason for Google or my computer to suggest such suggestions.
I get ………..
Boycott Israel
Boycott Mexico
Boycott NFL
Those three, in exactly that order. Evidently I don’t hunt up boycott information very often — which is probably related to the fact that I don’t think they’re very effective these days.
I got:
boycott israel
boycott nfl
boycott hobby lobby
… using ubuntu chromium incognito from home, and I’m a foaming-in-the-mouth right-leaning pro-israel libertarian nominal muslim, apathetic to the NFL, and who bought a large wooden photoframe from HL last month. Must be because I visit this site, drudge, reason, and all the usual car sites from this pc daily.
I got:
Israel
SeaWorld
Burger King
Mine:
Israel
advance
dcds
I had to look the last two up
advance - is a cross platform Game Boy emulator
dcds - Detroit Country Day School
those are odd suggestions
Jack,
R U SERIOUS.
Like really now.
Like christ.
Equating that autocomplete result to something about antisemitism? A susbstantial proportion of the best computer stuff comes out of Israel. All the big companies are in Israel, including apple, Microsoft, Google, Motorola earlier. So what?
Israel is oppressive these days. In some ways. Please do your research. Triangulate your sources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_the_apartheid_analogy
http://electronicintifada.net/content/month-pictures-september-2014/13920
Many Israelis behave in a racist manner all over the place. Some are racist. Sudanese emigrating from Sudan to escape a pile of war are especially unwelcome. Mainly because of the African thing. I hope for humanity’s sake that you, a skilled and talented writer, are not a fan of Bibi.
Know your stuff, brub.
Thank you for speaking your mind on this — but the idea that Israel is responsible for the welfare of Sudanese refugees who have traveled all the way across Egypt is ridiculous. Why can’t Egypt look after them? If there was a war in Mexico that created refugees, would Canada be responsible for their care?
The boycott must be picking up steam. I’m getting:
Israel
Israeli products
israel app
Or it knows that my desktop is eleven years old and therefore I must be boycotting the processor companies.