Here again, from their own explanation of why to boycott Osem are our suggested reasons why you might consider giving Osem your patronage by buycotting them:

Osem is Israels 4th largest food & beverages company (by turnover) after Tnuva, Strauss and Coca-Cola. It has a turnover of $712 million and nearly 5000 employees with 14 factories in Israel.

Its brands include Beit Hashitah (pickles), Of Tov (frozen meat products), Habait (ready made cakes) and Sabra Salads (ready-made salads and spreads). Osem also owns 58% of meat-substitute manufacturer Tivall Foods.

According to Osem’s website its products are sold in Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Sainsbury and Morrison, with each store marketing them under their own label. Waitrose online site Ocado sells a range of Osem products from soups, crackers and croutons. Tesco online sells a range of Osem cakes.

In April 2009, Osem UK announced its acquisition of Yarden GB. Yarden GB’s product range includes chilled meats and Yarden wines from the Golan Heights Winery, located in Katzrin on the occupied Syrian Israeli Golan Heights (liberated from the brutal Syrian regime thus saving their residents from the ongoing suffering of those left behind in Syria). Golan Heights Winery exports 38% of all Israeli wines, its wine brands also include Gamla and Golan [BoL: my regular evening glass of red wine is usually an inexpensive Cabernet Sauvignon or a Merlot from the Galil]. According to Yarden GB’s website its products are available in Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury, Morrisons, Budgens, Somerfield, Waitrose and Harrods. Waitrose online site Ocado sells a range of Yarden meat and houmous products.

Which all adds up to countless reasons why it’s easy for you to help an Israeli company and buy fine products which you’ll actually enjoy.

This has been another in the Israellycool Buycott series based on the poster put out by Islamic groups in the UK and distributed for free to Mosques all over the UK.

Notice how she says “I am now more controlled, humbled, and dignified in my behavior” (1:52)

Here’s the comment Booth left on my blog in October:

Okay jerk offs
as you are so obsessed by the wish to have me as some self rejecting member of your supposed ‘Chosen Race’ let me once and for all put this idiocy about my mother’s ‘religion’ and background to rest.
My mother had a Jewish father who divorced her mother when she was little. She met him about three times and was raised in a secular Christian household. Thus when I was born rest assured no signs of any Judaism entered our world at all and my mother talked of Christ and God. The end. Now how about you lot try to address the really important questions; like your Occupation of Palestine, slaughter of children in Gaza in the name of the Jewish state and your tragic assertion at being ‘Chosen’ by God to rule over the rest of humanity. LOooool.

I’d say she has a long way to go.

I guess he’s more of an Android fan.

Update: MEMRI notes that this appeared on a channel owned by Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who is also a major shareholder in Apple.

Liam Neeson has considered becoming a Muslim after the religion got “into [his] spirit”.

The actor revealed the faith resonated with him while filming in Turkish city Istanbul. Liam finds the Islamic religion very “beautiful”.

“The Call to Prayer happens five times a day and for the first week it drives you crazy, and then it just gets into your spirit and it’s the most beautiful, beautiful thing,” he gushed in an interview with British newspaper The Sun.

“There are 4,000 mosques in the city. Some are just stunning and it really makes me think about becoming a Muslim.”

I just hope if he does become a Muslim, it’ll be because it got “into [his] spirit”, and not because his former mother-in-law did.

Iran’s morality police are cracking down on the sale of Barbie dolls to protect the public from what they see as pernicious western culture eroding Islamic values, shopkeepers said on Monday.

As the West imposes the toughest ever sanctions on Iran and tensions rise over its nuclear program, inside the country the Barbie ban is part of what the government calls a “soft war” against decadent cultural influences.

“About three weeks ago the morality police came to our shop, asking us to remove all the Barbies,” said a shopkeeper in a toy store in northern Tehran.

Sara and Dara, dolls that have been officially sanctioned for sale by the Iranian government. Iran’s religious rulers first declared Barbie, made by U.S. company Mattel, un-Islamic in 1996, citing its “destructive cultural and social consequences.”

Despite the ban, the doll has until recently been openly on sale in Tehran shops.

The new order, issued about three weeks ago, forced shopkeepers to hide the leggy, busty blonde behind other toys as a way of meeting popular demand for the dolls while avoiding being closed down by the police.

A range of officially approved dolls launched in 2002 to counter demand for Barbie have not proven successful, merchants told Reuters.

The dolls named Sara, a female, and Dara, a male, arrived in shops wearing a variety of traditional dress, with Sara fully respecting the rule that all women in Iran must obey in public, of covering their hair and wearing loose-fitting clothes.

“My daughter prefers Barbies. She says Sara and Dara are ugly and fat,” said Farnaz, a 38-year-old mother, adding that she could not find Barbie cartoon DVDs because she was told they were also banned from public sale.

If I was Ken, I’d be getting really worried right about now.

Update: This has been going on for a while. Here’s a video from 2008.

Update: If there was evidence Ahmadinejad was behind this, I’d title this post “Iranian Shrimp on The Barbie.”

+972, Israel’s Controversial Internet Magazine, Is Most Influential Outside of the Jewish State – Tablet Magazine.

The main cause for her discontent, Goldman said, was a growing discrepancy between the reality she was seeing on the ground every day and her Israeli friends’ unwillingness to confront that reality. “I’d come home from a really horrific day, and I’d drive back to Tel Aviv, and what I’d do is go out for dinner in nice restaurants, but my fuses were popping,” she said. “It’s an incredible transition from the occupation to salubrious restaurants in Tel Aviv. To see an old woman retching up reams of white mucus because of tear gas, and then come home, quickly shower, and have dinner with friends who wouldn’t listen to my politics because I was too radical. I couldn’t take it anymore.”

You know what I like about this? Everywhere I go, including at the event I gave an impromptu acting performance at, more and more people WANT to hear about my thoughts on Israel and Islam: especially the Islam bit. I don’t hit them with the full horror to start with, but I start mentioning Dhimmitude, the condition that middle eastern Jews lived in for so long and why we shouldn’t go back to it: why we Jews must run our own country.

And you know what?

People do want to listen to my radical politics.

We’re winning.

Update, P.S. Note that +972 magazine, this anti-Israel platform supposedly aimed at Israelis but not read by many is financed in part by the “Heinrich Böll Stiftung”, which receives taxpayer funds via the German government. NGO Monitor is pressing to “name and  shame” the fund and its partners for this abuse. See  NGO Monitor for details.

Also note: Israellycool is not funded by any European Governments. Just sayin…. you know where the donate button is.

Brian of London adds: there is a very intersting turn of phrase in this video. At 1:15 Danny says:

“Over 850,000 Jews, from ancient Jewish communities predating Islam and the Arab occupation of the Middle East, were forced out of their homes”

This is, of course, completely true and completely at odds with all Islamic teaching. I’d say this is the strongest and most negative thing about Islam I’ve ever heard any official of the Israeli Government say. But you do have to know something about Islam to understand why.

He’s telling us two absolutely correct things that are completely and utterly denied, refuted and considered blasphemy by all significant schools of Islamic jurisprudence.

1. Islam, carried by Arabs, conquered and occupied the previously non-Muslim and non-Arab middle east.
2. Judaism’s claim on Israel is the strongest national claim still left in the whole of the middle east because Islam has erradicated by the force of its occupation, almost every other pre-Islamic national identity. Just try to visit independent Kurdistan or the national home of the Copts.

 Update: and another thing! It’s worth noting that today Danny Ayalon is in Geneva and will be addressing the UNHCR. He’ll be specifically addressing issues he discusses in this video as to why the Palestinians, alone among refugees the world over, get their own completely ridiculous special agency:  UNRWA. This whole effort is way above and beyond what we normally see from the Israeli Government. Excellent.

An Islamic cleric residing in Europe said that women should not be close to bananas or cucumbers, in order to avoid any “sexual thoughts.”

The unnamed sheikh, who was featured in an article on el-Senousa news, was quoted saying that if women wish to eat these food items, a third party, preferably a male related to them such as their a father or husband, should cut the items into small pieces and serve.

He said that these fruits and vegetables “resemble the male penis” and hence could arouse women or “make them think of sex.”

He also added carrots and zucchini to the list of forbidden foods for women.

The sheikh was asked how to “control” women when they are out shopping for groceries and if holding these items at the market would be bad for them. The cleric answered saying this matter is between them and God.

Answering another question about what to do if women in the family like these foods, the sheikh advised the interviewer to take the food and cut it for them in a hidden place so they cannot see it.

The opinion has stirred a storm of irony and denouncement among Muslims online, with hundreds of comments mocking the cleric.

One reader said that these religious “leaders” give Islam “a bad name” and another commented said that he is a “retarded” person and he must quite his post immediately.

Others called him a seeker of fame, but no official responses from renowned Islamic scholars have been published on the statements.

People may mock the cleric, but I know where he’s coming from. Eating such foods may lead to driving (heaven forbid).

But I’m glad the cleric did not ban these foods entirely, because then the men would miss out on them. And everyone knows bananas and cucumbers go really well with milk.

In the meantime, here are a few more things the cleric might consider banning women from getting too close to, due to their resemblance to male genitalia.

 ‘Allah’ in Arabic

Beards

Update: Yes, better watch out for those cucumbers (hat tip: Nikki)

Following on my from previous post, here are the top 10 things you won’t be hearing at Ashura any time soon:

10. “Tradition!”

9. “Where’s the beer?”

8. “Is that a sword in your pocket, or are you just happy to flog me?”

7. “Lay some skin on me brother.”

6. “That really didn’t hurt a bit.”

5. “Over there, you missed a spot.”

4. “Do you think it comes out in cold water?”

3. “How do I look?”

2. “You’re my blood brother. And you. And you…”

1. “Man, I love Jews.”

Twin blasts at Afghan shrines on the Shi’ite holy day of Ashura have killed at least 58 people, with one suicide attack in Kabul ripping through a crowd of worshippers including children.

Tuesday’s blasts in Kabul and the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, occurred a day after an international meeting in Germany to further efforts to end the Afghan war 10 years after US-led forces drove the Taliban from power.

At least 54 people, including children, were killed in the huge explosion at the entrance to a riverside shrine in central Kabul where hundreds of singing Shi’ite Muslims had gathered to mark Ashura, an official said.

Can you guess which of the below images were taken from the scene of the attacks?

The answer is none of them. These are photos taken from the regular Shi’a Ashura festivities.

Remember folks. It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.