...This causes me to wonder whether the next great cause of the feral Left will be a boycott of souvlaki restaurants throughout Australia. My question stems from the antics of anti-Zionist protesters this past Friday evening outside the Israeli-owned Max Brenner chocolateria in the Melbourne CBD.| A quick google of "Max Brenner boycott" pulls up all sorts of ugliness -- this has been going on for a while -- including a Facebook page with lots of photos of standard issue participants, smugly pleased with themselves. |
And all the while, these protestors were chanting the puerile, poetically-challenged slogans we've come to expect at such events: "hey hey, ho ho [FILL IN THE BLANK] has got to go."
But the most notable ditty of the evening told of liberating Palestine "from the river to the sea". For anyone not immersed in the intricacies of Middle Eastern geography, those boundaries include the entire territory of pre-1967 Israel proper.
In other words, the protesters outside Max Brenner were calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state. As a waggish Israeli once put it in the spirit of his nation's wry sense of humour: "Of course those activists want peace. They want a piece of Tel Aviv, they want a piece of Haifa, and they want a piece of Jerusalem."
Members of that largely Anglo middle-class mob apparently hadn't received enough attention from daddy, and were taking out their existential angst on the world's only Jewish state. From affection-deprived child to embittered anti-Zionist/anti-Semite in three easy steps.
I also suspect the protest organisers deliberately chose Friday evening for their rally because they knew the advent of the Jewish Sabbath would free them from political competition. With all the serious Jews at synagogue, there could be no substantial pro-Israel counter-demonstration. So it was left to less observant Yidden such as I to see how the other one-half-of-one-per-cent lived.
The cops were out in force, showing laudable restraint in the face of some pretty obnoxious provocation. These riffraff formed a human barricade in front of the entrance to Max Brenner, denying people the ability to partake of its delectable wares. The hypocritical irony of protesting an alleged blockade of Gaza by forcibly blockading the entrance to a Jewish-owned business would be delicious if it weren't so obnoxious.
So let's all make haste to the nearest Max Brenner and raise a cup of hot chocolate in a toast to the inalienable right of the Jewish people to national self-determination. In the final equation, that's what this is really all about.
Ted Lapkin has worked as a ministerial advisor to the federal Coalition and as communications director to a senior member of the Republican leadership in the US Congress.