Nestle, owners of the Jenny Craig and Uncle Tobys brands, but best known for it’s low-cocoa, high-sugar chocolate, has decided to support Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine, by opening a production plant in Sderot, on the border with Gaza.
Sderot was ‘founded’ in 1951, on the ashes and blood of the former Arab village of Najd. To achieve this, the village was ethnically cleansed, its residents either being slaughtered or fleeing, in a method synonymous with Israel’s violent beginning and consequent existence.
Today, 99.8% of Sderot’s population are Jewish, while just across the Appartheid Wall ( ’security fence’ in Zionist-speak ) in Gaza, Arabs struggle to exist in the most densely populated area on Earth. Even as I type this post up, more news rolls in about further expansions of illegal ’settlements’ in the occupied territories.
Nestle’s explicit support for Israel isn’t the first of their controversial moves, and most likely won’t be their last. A selection of Nestle’s achievements:
- Widespread use of slave labour through Africa
- Use of Genetically Modified products without labelling
- Price Fixing
- Marketing their baby formula as a safe substitute for breast milk
- Selling a range of contaminated products in Venezuela
What Nestle have really done here is make it even easier for people with any sort of social conscience to decide which products not to buy. There are plenty of alternatives that don’t involve ethnic cleansing.