An Israel boycott supporter railed about an Israeli wine being sold in Holland. Then it sold out.
jta.org
As a supporter of boycotting Israel, Mieke Zagt had no intention of marketing Israeli wine when she posted on Twitter a picture of the wine on sale at the Hema Dutch supermarket chain. But her tweet, meant to protest the sale, prompted Israel supporters here to mount a social media reaction so successful that the Israeli wines sold out at the Hema stores and the campaign became the No. 1 trending topic Tuesday on Dutch Twitter.
The opening shot for the #tipvanMieke campaign was a tweet that Zagt, a scholar and Electronic Intifada contributor with fewer than 1,300 followers on Twitter, posted Monday afternoon.
“Hey, Hema, you’re selling Efrat wine from Judean Hills [as] made in Israel. Is this possible? Efrat and Judean Hills are in occupied Palestinian land. Efrat is an illegal Israeli colony. Can you verify the origin? #hema #notAgainAye!??” Zagt wrote, attaching a picture of the bottles in question.
Gideon van der Sluis, a Dutch-born Israeli business consultant, and several other pro-Israel advocates began engaging on Twitter with like-minded users about Zagt’s tweet, labeling it with a hashtag meaning “TipFromMieke.” Within 24 hours it became the top-trending item on Dutch Twitter, with people from around the country using it with pictures of freshly bought Efrat wine bottles. Within hours, both the red and white Efrat wines were sold out from the online store of Hema — a huge chain with 525 stores in the Netherlands alone.
The social network campaign seems to have originated with the hard core of Israel’s supporters here — van der Sluis’ efforts to get it to take off were joined by those of Hidde J. van Koningsveld, who heads the CiJo pro-Israel group. But it seems to have reached far beyond the usual suspects from the Netherlands’ Jewish community of about 40,000 people. Menno de Bruyne, a chief strategist for the Reformed Political Party, had a colleague post a picture of de Bruyne at the office with three Efrat Wine bottles.
Sjoukje Dijkstra, a journalist from Utrecht, wrote on Twitter: “Thanks for the tip! Straight to Hema!”
