CIJA campaign touts Buycott app to help Israel

Sara Saber-Freedman

In the wake of countless calls from the anti-Israel community to damage Israel’s economy by boycotting goods made in the Jewish state, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) is continuing to promote its BUYcott Israel campaign.

The initiative, which was founded in 2009 and has surpassed 5,000 members on its Facebook page, is a “social media-based campaign… [that allows members] to identify a product that is being targeted for boycott to ask for support for targeted purchasing,” explained Sara Saber-Freedman, CIJA’s executive vice-president.

“The message to the boycotters is if you are attempting to isolate Israel through this kind of activity, not only are you not going to isolate Israel, it’s going to cause Israeli products to be better sold. It will have precisely the opposite impact.”

CIJA’s latest tactic to counter boycotters is to encourage Israeli supporters to download an app called Buycott, which helps users ensure that the products they purchase do not support a cause they oppose.

According to the website for the app, “when you use Buycott to scan a product, it will look up the product, determine what brand it belongs to, and figure out what company owns that brand… It will then cross-check the product owners against the companies and brands included in the campaigns you’ve joined, in order to tell you if the scanned product conflicts with one of your campaign commitments.”

Saber-Freedman explained that CIJA has been promoting the app to help identify goods that anti-Israel boycotters are singling out as products CIJA wants people to purchase.

“We often get requests from people who want to know what they should buy… This campaign allows us to respond in a very tactical way. This really allows us to know exactly what it is they’re identifying and to direct purchasing in that other direction,” Saber-Freedman said.

“The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development named Israel the fourth-most-attractive foreign investment target among its 34 members. It’s the kind of information that signals to everybody that the people who are trying to target Israel for boycott are failing.”

Saber-Freedman also pointed to another initiative that was recently launched in Toronto called Shop4Israel, which is being promoted by UJA Federation of Greater Toronto and a number of synagogues, schools, and Jewish community groups, that calls on Israel supporters to purchase Israeli products either online or at a local retailer.

For more information about the BUYcott campaign, visit www.cija.ca/services/campaigns/buycott-israel. To download the Buycott app, search for Buycott in the Apple App Store or in Google Play.