Israel has been accused of “acting like a cartoon villain” after it confiscated a shipment of chocolate bars headed for Gaza – alleging that these were part of a network financing Hamas operations.
On Monday, tax authority officials reportedly intercepted the 23-ton shipment as it passed from Egypt into Israel.
The confectionery was apparently being brought into Gaza by two import companies – al-Mutahidun Currency Exchange and Arab al-Sin – which, according to Israeli allegations are ‘fronts for Hamas’.
https://t.co/PHJfIjj4Eh pic.twitter.com/8a8UhVGOae
— ac (@avgmeat) August 16, 2021
“Israel will continue to act to prevent Hamas from growing stronger. It is building up military force instead of taking care of the people of the (Gaza) Strip who are collapsing from the economic burden,” Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said in a statement after signing an executive order authorizing the seizure of the chocolate bars.
Social media users ridiculed the assertion that Hamas was being funded through the same avenues used by “little league baseball teams,” while another juxtaposed the Hamas flag with a banner of the Girls Scouts of the USA, which famously sells cookies and chocolate for funding.
It sometimes goes unnoticed but part of imperialism and apartheid is that you end up an actual cartoon villain stealing literal candy bars from children. https://t.co/lWPDbCMonh
— ProfessorCirno (@ProfessorCirno) August 16, 2021
Other commenters noted the amount of “spin” in the media reports with one person saying that it was hard to come off looking good when “stealing chocolate like some sort of cereal mascot.” Another person blasted Israel’s move as “cartoonishly evil.”
Even the editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, Yaakov Katz, could not resist poking fun at the “chocolate funds terror” allegation. Katz went one step further in querying whether “chocolate was the new enemy of the Jewish state” after the recent Ben & Jerry’s fiasco.
Chocolate is the new enemy of the Jewish state. Are we going to see tiktok videos of ministers throwing chocolate bars in the garbage like they did with Ben & Jerrys?
— Yaakov Katz (@yaakovkatz) August 16, 2021
Israeli officials got into a spat with the ice-cream company last month after it decided to stop selling its products in occupied Palestinian territories.
"By calling an ice cream company ‘terrorist’ for simply adhering to international law, Herzog has revealed the growing lack of credibility and absurdity of the official Israeli language," writes Ramzy Baroud. https://t.co/xo9ln14BWy
— BDS Schweiz – Suisse (@BDS_switzerland) August 12, 2021
Israeli President Isaac Herzog likened the move to “economic terrorism.”
(RT, PC, Social Media)
