Monthly Archives: August 2013

Aug 14 2013

Support Jews and Arabs in Israel, buy Coca cola!!

One of the common announcements by the BDS Crowd (thats Boycott, Divestment and Sanction)   is to rally around to get people to cease doing business with Israel to ‘stop the occupation’

Its funny that the word ‘occupation’ seeing as Jews have lived in Judea and Samaria for thousands of years, places like Bethlehem, Jericho, Hebron, Shiloh, etc have Hebrew names and and well known in the bible and real history books.

One of the favourite targets for the BDS movement is Coca Cola being ‘Zionist company’  Some more interesting hoaxes against the Coca Cola company http://www.coca-colacompany.com/contact-us/coca-cola-rumors-facts

This is an interesting idea, and actually not buying Coca Cola actually hurts Arab people and Palestinian people, here’s why:

P1060640I went to the Arab convenience store near my house here in the southern most tip of Jerusalem.   Here is what I bought:-

This Can of Coke is in Hebrew, and its made in Benei Barak, a Jewish city outside of Tel Aviv that has a mostly Ultra Orthodox community.  Its certified Kosher too.  Coca Cola also make soda in the Palestinian city of Ramallah.   However I couldn’t buy this from this shop, but there are other Arabic labeled products from other Palestinian cities.    A company called United Beverage company in Ramallah are licenced to make Coke for Arabic speaking people in this region.

Here’s their official web site of the National Beverage Company who are licenced to sell Coca Cola for Arabic speaking customers:- http://www.nbc-pal.com/

Here below is the Hebrew canning operation of the Coca Cola factory which is on the side of a big motorway, rather use my own photos, I nicked this off of google.

P1060642-001

This can of Pepsi is in Arabic and marked as for sale to the West Bank and Gaza market, – but – its made in Greece!!

Coke and Pepsi seem to often alternate between using 330ml cans in the tall skinny type or fatter traditional ones.  I’m not quite sure why.

These boycott lists of so called ways to help Palestinian people are always unfair and inaccurate, and often use any kind layoff from the financial changes in the last year as a so call ‘win’ for the BDS movement.   The BDS movement’s goals are based on malice towards Israel and not towards positive ways to help Arab people anywhere.  A better way to help Palestinian people would be to maybe manufacture and market the popular Arabic drink Sahalab to UK and western nations, particularly maybe sell it in Arab and Asian restaurants in Europe.

 

Aug 11 2013

The search for Milo the cat in Jerusalem

milo at hq

This week a stray cat unofficially adopted by our work had a slight injury or infection in her eye.

Milo is a lovely female tortoise shell cat who patrols our gardens and car park, shes clean, energetic and full of life and friendly to anyone who walks up our drive way unlike the usual stray diseased moggies that lurk on every Jerusalem street corner.

So to administer her medicine over the weekend, one of my colleagues took her home in a cage so she could get the eye drops and decent food each time. She is still a stray, but she lives in our car park, but has a nice garden and plenty of places to hide and gets fed during the week by someone before we leave each evening.   After the third litter of kittens one of my friends finally got her spayed and also a flea collar, so I guess she enjoys all the freedom of being feral but gets another cuddles and meal from my work.

Anyway today I found out (Sunday) she preferred to escape through a window rather have a the eye drops and food supplied by my co worker. Kathy who look her home lives about 6-7 kilometers from our headquarters, which makes me think.

talpiyot
Here’s a picture of the south east corner of Jerusalem where I live. For humans, Jerusalem is a confusing cluster of hills with the unmistakable white stone apartment blocks and buildings, trees and scrub bushes. No road goes in a straight line, you have to travel in most streets in a kind of S-shape.

Can a cat like Milo find her way home so easily? For a small mammal 7 kilometers must feel like 5 times as much distance for a human. I’m wondering during the times of the bible when people traveled to different cities in Israel if their animals could tell where to go by the sun, moon, smells, sights, whatever, if their riders had their navigation judgment affected by severe heat or sickness.

I’m hoping when I get into work tomorrow I’ll see a familiar furry face when get into the gate path, if I do, then I know that Lord gave animals a sense of direction that people can’t often fathom.