A new insight to boycotting

In the aftermath of the 2^nd uprising (intifada), there was a media propaganda that was endorsing the idea of boycotting Jewish / American products like COCA-COLA, NESTLE, INTEL, KIMBERLY-CLARK etc. Although the campaign has been successful in causing major losses for those companies, many people are short-sighted to the effects of a small decision such as whether to drink this can of coca cola or not. So let's pause here for a while

You can hardly say that Palestine has an economy and of course that's obvious from the political instability in the area. No investment, no new business ventures and thus no jobs are out there. This has exponentially skewed the unemployment rate.

On the other hand, Israel might be small in geographical size but it is the most industrially and developed country in the Middle East. I'll leave it to you to read more about it here. The point is, Israel is a country with a very high potential in scientific and industrial development. Considering all this and the factor that they have a population of ONLY 7.1 million people, you can clearly see that there are abundant vacant positions that are waiting to be filled.

In the end, the Palestinian worker (especially the ones supporting families) is facing the dilemma of either staying patriotic and wait for the "so-called" donations (that will never arrive) coming from Arabic countries before his family starve to death, or take a peak on the other side and work for the same enemy that his people are fighting against against. It's a tough call. But he may justify it by thinking that he'd be taking the money from the Jews, feeding his family and his people. Yea, that's gotta be a wise decision. Or so he may think.

Israel needs us. They don't have an enough workforce especially in the blue-collar jobs. They'd love to hire Palestinians as waiters, construction workers, plumbers, carpenters and other jobs that they feel they can enslave us whenever possible; And what a miserable state it would …to be a slave in your own country. But whether we like it or not, a reported number of 33,386 were working inside Israel as of March 2004.

Ok, now let's go back to our stand on boycotting. A successful boycotting campaign would result in reduced profits or huge losses (depending on the significance of the impact it had on the operations) to the business. Such a business will absorb these unexpected losses by reducing costs. And what would be the easiest way to reduce costs? Laying off employees. So guess who's going to get nailed after all? Poor Palestinians again.

This is not another conspiracy theory. I have been to Palestine 3 times and to Israel, Tel Aviv to be specific, once (illegally of course. Trust me, driving for half an hour through banana fields is not interesting at all :P). It was the first time in my life that I've seen a western European culture. Clean streets, many green areas, beggars making money by playing music, cars stopping when a pedestrian puts his foot on the street…it was mesmerizingly beautiful. The first thing that came out of my mouth after seeing all this was "I never want them to leave…they take care of it better than we do"

Now don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting that we should NOT boycott pro-Israel products. I just want you to think deeply about the impact of boycotting and its significance the next time you decide to take that decision. What would be your call?