Lebanon: Supermarket chain won’t sell Melitta coffee filters with Hebrew writing on package - Babylon & Beyond | LA Times
LEBANON: Supermarket chain won’t sell Melitta coffee filters with Hebrew writing on package
LA Times - Babylon & Beyond
Observations from Iraq, Iran,
Israel, the Arab world and beyond
For those craving a fresh cup of home-made Joe while in Lebanon, finding a pack of coffee filters may become a difficult task.
You might even find yourself crawling from neighborhood corner store to mini-mart to grocery megaplex under the scorching sun searching for filters.
Why? Because though the Arab League may lack the unity to cling to its once-potent boycott of Israel, which from 1942 to 1993 was highly comprehensive, Syria and Lebanon still adhere to an orthodox interpretation.
And though the coffee filters you seek may be German and not Israeli — Melitta in this instance — it apparently makes no difference to the Lebanese branch of a major Kuwaiti supermarket chain, The Sultan Center, known by its acronym T.S.C.
At least one T.S.C. supermarket nestled in the quaint, largely Francophone neighborhood of Ashrafiyeh in Beirut recently sent back its shipment of Melitta coffee filters after discovering that the boxes had Hebrew script on the side.
File this one under the department of the absurd.