Rightwing rabbi Shmuley Boteach writes in the Jerusalem Post that “Israel haters… follow my trail on the Internet like dogs in heat.” But Boteach seems to seek the attention: his latest encounter with critics of Israel was on Madison Avenue last Saturday, when he approached protesters outside a store associated with an Israeli business in the occupied West Bank and taunted the group by loudly celebrating Israel and denouncing Hamas. His children joined in his chants.
New York, NY, December 21, 2014—Forty New York human rights advocates arrived to protest Saturday afternoon at Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev’s flagship Madison Avenue diamond store and were surprised to find the store closed and the display cases completely emptied of all merchandise during the busiest shopping period of the year. The New Yorkers had gathered for the eighth consecutive year to sing parody holiday carols opposing Leviev’s companies’ construction of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in violation of international law (PHOTOS).
Leaning signs against the empty store, the protesters sang what have become Adalah-NY anti-apartheid holiday classics with lines such as, “We wish you a loss of business, we wish you a loss of business, we wish you a loss of business and a poor fiscal year,” and “It’s beginning to look a lot like failure, at Leviev’s store.”
Hannah Mermelstein from Adalah-NY commented, “Leviev’s billions have come from exploiting Palestinian and Angolan communities. So today we celebrate because it seems our years of holiday wishes have come true: Leviev’s store is empty.”
