So I had this marvelous idea for a blog post where in addition to featuring The Hudson’s Bay Company (the oldest company in North America) in the Loser List for boycotting products made by Israeli cosmetics company AHAVA, I was gonna mock the decision by posting a video of myself ruining my HBC Canadian Olympic mittens with none other than some AHAVA Mineral Hand Cream (yeah, that’s odd…)
But not so fast…
At 4:37 this afternoon, HBC CEO Bonnie Brooks and Moshe Ronen, National Chair, Canada-Israel Committee released a press release denying the claim that AHAVA products were to be boycotted. In fact, boycott seems to be the completely wrong word to use in this case:
Whether or not you believe the press release (I do… for now at least), something has to be said about the quick the reaction from both sides in response to this news – The pro-Israel community with the backlash & The Bay in response to backlash. While I’ve always admired the pro-Israel community’s ability to unite in quick response to threats, it is important to actually be accurate on the claims being brought against you.
In fact even the JTA’s initial bulletin about the “boycott” has either been removed or has magically disappeared:
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/01/13/2742547/boycott-campaign-targets-israeli-goods-in-canada
Another blog – Excruciating Minutiae – also reported this story, and delivered some interesting points for us to learn regarding this whole mess. It’s a good read, so check out the link above.
Rule #1 in journalism folks: Be right before being first – or in this case before jumping on the bandwagon.
Unless you’re like me and laziness kind of kicks in before legitimately responding to the events at hand…
TevyTown v.2.0 
Thanks for the link and the great post as well! It’s important to disseminate information properly in this day and age when Internet flurries around miscommunications are so commonplace.
Keep fighting the good fight!