It’s almost Christmas time, the season of smiling at your fellowman…except if they are Israeli?

The year of 2010 was marked by an increase international campaign to delegitimize Israel. The musicians, Elvis Costello and the Pixies, cancelled a concert in Tel Aviv at the last moment. This week in Seattle, a series of adverts were placed on public buses, decrying so-called Israeli war crimes. In London, there are now regular demonstrations outside retailers stocking Israeli products. And so on, at great length.

Years ago, if you wanted to protest about Israel, you stopped buying Jaffa oranges. So what would happen today, if you were to ignore deliberately Israeli products?

Teva is considered the second largest manufacturer of generic drugs in the world with facilities in Europe and in the USA. Many of their products end up in the bodies of the poor on all continents. I suppose you could just avoid the company, and either suffer or hope that you could afford the alternatives.

What about Argo? Their equipment is helping thousands of people confined to wheelchairs to start walking again. One application was featured recently on Glee, the award-winning tv programme. Of course, paraplegics in Seattle may wish to remain immobile, but me thinks this unlikely.

And then we have fans of Lady Gaga, Bruce S or U-2. These artists and others depend on technical support from Waves Audio, based near Tel Aviv. Like the music or not:

Waves Audio … will be presented with a prestigious Technical GRAMMY® Award during the GRAMMY Week celebration in February 2011. ……With this presentation of the Technical GRAMMY®, Waves joins a prestigious list of previous recipients which includes such well-known names as Apple Computer, Inc., Sony/Philips, Shure Incorporated and Yamaha Corporation.

And we must not forget Intel. 95% of people reading this item will have a computer whose chip tech had been developed in the Holy Land. And the next generation is already in the planning stage. So, switch off your computers and stop listening to most modern music?

So what is the boycott all about?

The true hypocrisy of the boycott was exposed on a picture of the front page of the newspaper Yediot, this Christmas Eve. The reader saw a stream of illegal refugees from Sudan and other parts of central Africa hiking across the Negev desert into Israel.

You have to conclude that Israel is not that bad for these people to come here. And, assuming that they are persecuted in their home countries, why are those protesters against Israel not uttering a word of behalf of these poor souls. Anti-Israel or just old-fashioned hatred?