To ask a question about boycotting

[mumtoateen]

If you, or family or your child needing life saving treatment, food (starving to death) etc, and the only choice was a company you boycott or Israeli produce etc, would you use it or continue to boycott?

Really?

I don't boycott Israeli stuff.

You would obviously use the product due to lack of choice, but continue to boycott products that you are able to.

Well in a life-or-death situation I would obviously use it, however for the moment it's very easy to avoid, so I'll continue to boycott.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/shropshire/7078455.stm

this thread reminded me of the women, now I am nor JW bashing however I think if someone does have an extremely strong belief then even a life/death situation wouldn't prevent them from using the product.

the link has upsetting content

I am boycotting my local costa coffee

I should be ok as I still like caffe nero and Starbucks

I happily buy Israeli goods.

The last king of Saudi, or was it the one before, had a heart stent and somehow nobody mentioned the boycott.

In my childhood we did without citrus rather than buy Outspan but if any of us had needed medication which was derived from a plant which only grew in South Africa the boycott would have been suspended!

Heck, if the president of PETA is happy to access medicines and technology that has been tested on animals despite saying that she'd rather people die than accept an AIDS treatment that had been tested on animals then anything goes...

Peta are a bloody joke its like a celeb organisation to look good drives me up the wall anyway I dont see boycotting nestle or palm oil would warrant life saving situations really,

I think most people would use whatever goods were needed in a life-or-death situation, because the benefit in terms of one known life which will definitely be saved would rate higher than the risk to other unknown lives from the ethical issues you have with the product.

Add the fact that most partial 'boycotts' make only a minor difference to the companies behaviour, and you are weighing up a life against a political gesture rather than a life against other lives.

That doesn't mean there's no point in making political gestures, they do have some effect. But they shouldn't outweigh genuine effects of using or not using the product.

The JW example is different - they are weighing up life in this world against life in the next, and the next world for them is more valuable so it's a different calculation.

if you really have principles that strong, you'd continue the boycott. But no-one does.

all those boycotting Israeli products; remember that for consistency you need to boycott items that come from other places. That means nothing from places that persecute gays (much of Africa), restrict women's rights (India, various Arab countries), etc etc etc. You should also not be holidaying in these places.

Didn't realise I was boycotting Israeli goods.

I'm not boycotting israeli goods. I notice many of those talking about boycotting Israeli goods aren't boycotting Russian goods, Chinese good, Indian goods, Pakistani goods, Bangladeshi goods, Ugandan goods (and many other African countries) and so on. Israel is the only focus, it seems.

Everybody has the prefect right to choose which causes they wish to support and to which extent.

Mumtoateen I recognise it's bad form to cross reference threads but what with your really rather strange attitude to the friendliness of strangers as demonstrated on another current thread, and your cool as a cucumber acceptance/assumption that people boycott Israeli goods I just have to say this:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

However other posters on both threads have made some interesting points!.

That is all.

I agree I dont think we can pick and chose boycotting to
what is relevant atm many countries are at war killing each other we dont boycott them all

Everybody has the prefect right to choose which causes they wish to support and to which extent.

I tend to agree with this, but I was just a little taken aback at the OP's 'most natural thing in the world' kinda style regarding boycotting Israeli goods.

This question is missing the point, like the "if you were stranded on a desert island would you eat meat" question that some people ask vegetarians. The point is, the majority of the time you are not in a life and death situation and you have a choice not to support companies that cause suffering.

I have to disagree specialsubject

I get this argument from people frequently, "If you boycott x then surely you must also boycott y and z"

I think it is great that people boycott any companies/goods due to their principles, regardless of where their personal "line in the sand" might be.

If everyone thought a bit more about where things come from and made the effort to boycott just one product/company that they particularly disagreed with, maybe things could start to change. I dont buy gold/ silver because of the conditions of miners or green beans from Kenya because of the treatment of farmers, but that's my personal principles, I don't ask other people why they don't boycott these things, everyone's ethics and principles are different, and I don't judge them if they do!

WRT the OP I don't take pharmaceutical drugs for severe acne because I disagree with how pharma companies operate, their ethics etc. and I see those drugs as unnecessary However when I was pregnant and severely ill I was hospitalised several times and if I hadn't had treatment I could have died/lost the baby, so I did go against my principles, this makes me feel slightly guilty but I feel I make up for this by doing what I can.

Whew sorry that was long!

It's not always been clear to me why boycotting, say, fresh produce is the best way to deliver a political message. I mean, it strikes me that this type of activity, while possibly making inroads into a government's GDP, is going to disproportionately affect the people on the ground, who are making a minimal or subsistence living and who may oppose their government's actions as fiercely as the consumer does.

Thoughts on the success of such movements? I'm a little young to remember the full spectrum of SA-Apartheid boycotts, but did refusing to buy Outspan make a difference?

Before you decide you are boycotting Israel look at this

prepperchimp.com/2014/07/22/so-you-want-toboycott-israel-heres-alist-of-products-and-services-you-need-to-start-with/

now tell me you are?

prepperchimp.com/2014/07/22/so-you-want-to-boycott-israel-heres-a-list-of-products-and-services-you-need-to-start-with/

VampireSquid I don't think that you have to boycott everything you mentioned. People have a right to choose which causes to support/focus on, as another poster has also mentioned.

abouttobeevicted I stopped reading after the first few paragraphs, sorry. Apart from the site not looking at all reliable, they completely misunderstand the issue. Why on earth would I boycott something which was invented in Israel? TV was invented in Scotland, to the best of my knowledge, not every television is now made in Scotland!

I've simply tried to boycott Israeli product as much as possible for the past few years.

I believe that many pharmaceutical products are made under licence from the Israeli companies where they were developed - so if you use them you are supporting the Israeli economy.