The Whisky Boycott. More thoughts.

Chivas Regal. Israeli's favourite
Duty Free Whisky

I had an interesting conversation about the Whisky Boycott on Shabbos with a Rav who lives in my local area. (He incidentally enjoys a large Glen Fiddich on occasions).

He made some good points I felt. I had expressed my view that I wasn’t convinced that the distilleries should be boycotted just because they were situated within authourity of anti-Semitic councils, especially being that many of them were doing so much to obtain kashrus certificates and some even had commercial interests with Israel (buying Israeli kosher wine casks), thus implying that they were not pursuing anti-Semitic or Anti-Israel policies themselves. Perhaps we would actually lose any friends we might have in Scotland by boycotting their whisky.

He counted this by asking me how I proposed to make the councils change their policies without hitting them where it hurts the most, that is, in the pocket. He asked me if Scotland produced anything else of significance besides whisky that we could boycott. If the distilleries begin to feel the loss of sales then they will put pressure on the councils to reverse their immoral policies. However, he went on to say that he didn’t see any point in boycotting Single Malts as they were too expensive for most drinkers which meant that the market was too small to make any noticeable impact. (I’m not sure he is correct here). He suggested that the boycott be on all blended Scotch whisky and not exclusively on whiskies in the council’s area but to all Scottish blended whisky. (From my experience, most Israelis, for reasons that escape me, buy Chivers Regal). This he said would express in the strongest terms, our view on the Scottish boycott of Israel.

Scotch Blends

I then made a rather flippant comment to the effect that I might well subscribe to his suggestion being that I could still be able to enjoy my Single Malts. I immediately angered an elderly gentleman who said that I sounded like those American Jews in the 1930s who refused to join the German boycott due to their love of German products. He told me that had the German boycott been effective then this would have probably changed the whole course of history.

What do you think?