Israeli Blood Dates - Leeds Inspectors - UPDATE!

Icon_article Star-blue1 Published: August 25, 2010 15:51 by Leeds Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Tagged as: anti-militarism apartheid dates israel palestine
Neighbourhoods: israel leeds palestine

Israeli Blood Dates - Leeds Inspector's Report - UPDATE 22nd August 2010!!!

After an excellent report from the Inspector's on Israeli Blood Dates being sold in Leeds, we have an update on what's been happening and their recent visits to other stores...

King-solomon-dates-thumb Medjool-caifornia-thumb

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On Monday, Leeds PSC dates inspectors made the third visit to shops in Harehills. We are glad to report that we did not find the Israeli dates in shop "B" where the ‘country of origin sticker' had previously been ripped off the boxes. We again visited shop "A" where the manager had been absent on our last visit. Again, the same staff said the manager is not in.

On Saturday August 21 Leeds PSC had a stall at the Unity Day festival in Hyde Park, then with our "Free Palestine" badges and boycott leaflets we headed out to visit the local shops. Once more, we found that the smaller shops were less likely to be selling Israeli dates and were more willing to discuss the dates boycott.

Larger stores were more likely to be culprits selling Israeli dates. One of them was selling dates with confusing labelling. The box stated "King Solomon Dates", "Jordan River International" and "Produce of South Africa". These are Israeli brand/companies. When we approached the manager, the poor guy was taken by surprise by our interest in his dates while we explained who we were! We pointed out the Israeli dates and gave him a list of Israeli dates brands and logos. Some of the customers were intrigued at the sight of us taking photos.

In another large store, we found boxes of medjoul dates labelled as from California, USA. When we approached the manager to congratulate him for not selling Israeli dates, we were shocked to hear him say, he and his wholesaler believes these are also from Israel but packaged in USA. He was very amicable and said he also stocks Palestinian produce and would be happy to sell Zaytoun Palestinian medjoul dates.

Boycott of Israeli blood dates is being felt in Israel. This is evident by the fact that boxes are mis-labelled, not labelled at all or being exported for processing in other countries. We question why majority of medjoul dates we came across were marked as "Produce of South Africa" yet with Israeli brand names? Why do the majority of medjoul dates boxes look so similar, even though they have different Israeli brand logos? We wonder if this is because these Israeli dates companies belong to Hadiklaim - the Israeli dates growers cooperative?

ACTIONS TO BE TAKEN:
The clever Israeli mislabelling is confusing to us, never mind ordinary shoppers. We have several options now. We could lodge a formal complaint to Trading Standards about the ambiguous labelling of these dates and also how some shops are concealing the origin of produce in order to mislead consumers. We could also consider naming and shaming the shops. The culprits may heed the message once shoppers put pressure on them or even boycott their shops entirely until they remove all Israeli blood dates.

Links:

Link_go Leeds Palestinian Solidarity Campaign

Email Contact email: info@leedspsc.org.uk

Additions

Seems that ...

Comment Published: August 25, 2010 16:46 by H

I had never heard of medjoul dates, so i googled it, where they originate from I don't know but it seems they are grown in California, they might be part of a wider israeli plot, but it means they might not be grown by Palasitian slaves on stolen land. perhaps you'll look into it and put us in the picture. here's a link that seems to be relevant ..
http://www.medjooldates.com/default.asp

What are medjool dates?

Comment Published: August 25, 2010 21:03 by nika

'Medjool' is not a brand that dates are sold under, or a company, but a type of date that are particularly large and sweet and so often favoured by those eating them!
Just like a 'Cox' apple and a 'Braeburn' apple are different types of apple, but the words 'Cox' and 'Braeburn are not brands or companies themselves, and they could come from any country and still be called 'Cox' or 'Braeburn'. And so, dates labelled 'Medjool' are not necessarily from Israel, or California, or any other place, although there may be a trend in where they come from. It may be that Israel and California have both the financial climate and the environmental factors which make it easy to grow this species of date. You'll have to find that out yourselves!

Dates, shoots and leaves.

Comment Published: August 26, 2010 14:03 by Pedantosaurus maximus

The grocer's apostrophe in the title is highly amusing. I assume this is a subtle jibe at the shop-keepers mentioned in the piece?

Possible -- but likely?

Comment Published: August 26, 2010 16:25 by Mike Novack

Not unusual for you folks to have misconceptions about the size of US states.

Take out a map of the US. Look on the east coast for the state of New Jersey. Then on the west coast for the state of California. Very different in size, yes? Well Israel and New Jersey are comparable in size. Now much of California isn't suited to the growing of dates, either too dry to grow anything or too wet and cool. But much of Israel isn't suited to growing dates either. It would not surprise me if the area in California that does grow things like dates is far laregr than all of Israel.

So yes I guess it's POSSIBLE that dates grown in Israel might be labeled as coming from California. Except I rather suspect that the California growers would take action against that. So not very likely.