A Sainsburys store removed its kosher products from shelves due to fear of protestors, and has been criticised as a result.
The manager of the Holborn branch of the nationwide supermarket chain, caved under pressure from protestors demanding a boycott of Israeli goods as a result of the current conflict there.
Due to a fear of the store being attacked, the manager removed all the food from the kosher section, a lot of which reportedly wasn’t even made in Israel, and a photograph of the empty shelves made its way online.
It sparked outrage, with the store being accused of anti-Semitism in a tide of social media backlash, with calls to fire the manager who made the decision and even to boycott the supermarket chain.
However, reports indicate that the manager was not acting out of racial hate or anti-Semitic beliefs but because his store was under threat from nearby protestors.
Many people seem to have not considered that the people protesting for the Israeli boycott were not likely to have differentiated between UK and Polish produced kosher foods and Israeli kosher imports, nor that mob pressure is not a viable, safe or fair form of protest.
Measures taken to protect the store, its employees and its customers were quickly taken as some form of political statement, but in reality, the store is unlikely to have made the move as a racist announcement.
The food is reportedly, back on the shelves now, and the incident was described by Sainsbury’s as “a decision [that] was taken by a store manager faced with a challenging situation outside the store,” and emphasised the fact that “we are a non-political organisation and we’re not coming down on either side of the argument.”
A similar incident occurred on the same day at a Tesco’s store in Birmingham, where protestors threw food around the store, scaring customers, and reportedly ended in at least one arrest.
