I'm boycotting one of my favorite health food stores in San Francisco, Rainbow Grocery Coop, because some of their departments have stopped selling products made in Israel. Here's the article, Middle East unrest hits grocery store.

I've been shopping at Rainbow for years. They're one of the best stores for vegetarians in San Francisco, and since I've been an off and on vegetarian for most of my adult life, I spend at least $300-$500 there a year. Now I know that's not a lot of money, but in this competitive tight economy, every dollar accounts.

As soon as I read the article, I sent an email to Rainbow telling them their politics disturb me and that I will no longer be shopping at their store. The destruction of the Jews at the hands of Hitler's Nazi party, started with the boycott of jewish products. What's next? Yellow Stars of David on stores that sell jewish products? Anti-semitism scare me, and what Rainbow is doing freaks me out.

The best thing about capitalism is you can vote with your economic dollars. If you don't like something, you don't buy it. Now my $300-500 might seem like teeny weeny sum, but it's a large sum of money to me. I'm also telling all my friends to boycott Rainbow Grocery, and if they do it, then that's more voting economic dollars. And since the San Francisco Bay Area is in a recession, maybe me and people who think like me will have an effect. It's not like Rainbow Grocery is the only health food store in San Francisco.

Now I'm not the kind of person who boycotts stores, but this whole anti-semitism thing so disturbs me. They make me think of Nazis and the Holocaust. They make me think of friends' relatives who were in the Nazi death camps during World War II, and had unbelievably horrifying stories to tell. They make me think of how the world just watched as six million jews were systematically killed. They make me pay attention to all the articles I read about the rise of anti-semitism. They make me think that if I don't individually act to stop it now, then I am as guilty of anti-semtism as the Nazis were.