FEATURED JOBS
Comments (0)A pro-Israel group has launched an online campaign to buy Israeli goods.
StandWithUs announced the Buy Israeli Goods campaign to counter the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which calls for boycotting and divesting from companies that do business with Israel and sanctioning Israel for actions in Gaza and the West Bank.
“This is a movement to counter BDS with positive energy,” said StandWithUs executive director Roz Rothstein.
In its online flyer, the group lists six reasons to oppose boycotts against Israel.
Boycotting Israel hurts the peace process by encouraging hard-liners and “does nothing to help the Palestinians improve their lives,” the flyer states, adding that shoppers should buy both Israeli and Palestinian products as “an investment in peaceful coexistence.”
StandWithUs has released an online button promoting the campaign for supporters to post to their Facebook walls.
The campaign website, which will be live in about a month, will include a list of products made in Israel that are available in North America. Supporters are asked to speak with local merchants and request that they carry the listed products.
Three Persian Jews Gunned Down in L.A.
Three members of Los Angeles’ Iranian Jewish community were shot and killed in West Hollywood.
Pirooz Moussazadeh, 27, and his brother, Shahriar Moussazadeh, 38, and Bernard Khalili, 27, were shot on the night of Aug. 25 at the brothers’ apartment. The three were pronounced dead at the scene, according to reports.
Police believe the men were targeted by the assailants, according to the Los Angeles Times. There was no sign of forced entry.
“Our community is shocked by the needless murder of three members of the Iranian Jewish community,” Pooya Dayanim, president of the Iranian Jewish Public Affairs Committee, told the Beverly Hills Courier.
The men all moved to the United States as young children, Dayanim told Tthe Associated Press. They were not wealthy and had no criminal pasts, he added.
Jews Still Like Obama, but Approval Dips
Nearly two-thirds of Jews still approve of President Obama’s performance, but his approval numbers have dipped.
A Gallup Poll released last Friday of religious groups in the United States found that Muslims gave Obama the highest job approval rating, while Mormons gave him the lowest. Jews and those affiliated with other non-Christian religions gave Obama above-average ratings, as did those with no religious affiliation.
From January to July this year, Jews gave Obama a 61 percent approval rating, down from 66 percent from July to December 2009. Muslims gave the president a 78 percent approval rating during the first half of 2010, and Mormons a 24 percent rating.
The overall approval rating of 48 percent is down 15 points from the first half of 2009.
Obama received average job approval ratings from Catholics, and below-average ratings from Protestants.
Despite drops in the overall job approval rating from January 2009 to July 2010, Muslims have consistently given Obama the highest rating and Mormons the lowest. Jews’ approval ratings have remained above average.
The results are based on phone interviews with a random sampling of 276,123 adults with a 1 percent margin of error. Jews, Muslims and Mormons each made up about 2 percent of respondents. Jews accounted for 6,746 of the respondents, with a margin of error below 2 percent.
The interviews were conducted between January 2009 and July 2010 as part of Gallup Daily tracking.