The Ginosar Agro team says they come from a deep understanding of the challenges banana growers are facing worldwide. You may not know this, but the Cavendish, that lovely, big, yellow banana you so love, is in grave danger. Tropical Race 4, a fungus which has already destroyed acres of crops across Taiwan, Indonesia and Malaysia, is threatening the plantations of Australia and South and Central America. In those areas, banana plantations are guarded by barbed wire fences and patrols.

The Ginosar elite-cultivars of disease-free banana plants are the result of decades of stringent professional selection from our mother plantations, located in northern Israel. The clones are globally recognized as a premium brand, due to the high quality of the plants and their superior performance in the field.

So, before you know it, those BDS folks are also going to have to go with just berries in their morning cereal…

And now a bonus image: a vendor at the Mahane Yehuda Market in Jerusalem who discovered a brand new use for his bananas.

Photo credit: Kobi Gideon / FLASH90

The giant Dutch ABP pension fund has rejected dis-investing from Israeli firms as was done earlier the past several days by funds in Denmark and Norway.

The bank announced that it issued a statement that it is holding on to its investments in three Israel companies because of the publicity over the other funds’ boycott actions.

The Al Jazeera network aired a 25-minute program weed that was a bald-faced commercial for boycotting Israel under the guise of a supposed news program that featured two pro-Arab interviewees and, just to make an uneven program seem half-legitimate, Danny Dayan of the Yesha Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria.

Throughout the entire program, Al Jazeera flashed subtitles that were totally biased against Israel, stating. “Israel accused of violating the rights of Palestinians” and “BDS movement has increased boycott moves against Israel.” Just in case someone does not know what BDS means, Aljazeera thoughtfully spelled it out – “Boycotts, divestment and sanctions.”

It interviewed a Palestinian Authority economist and none other than Avraham Burg, former Israel Knesset Member who went off the deep end a few years ago, left the country and constantly preaches anti-Zionism.

Al Jazeera’s token nationalist was Dayan, who spoke while a sub-title flashed “Israeli settlements in West Bank illegal according to international law.”

The entire “Inside Story” program was so amateurishly biased that Al Jazeera should be embarrassed.

The New York State Assembly has yanked, at least for the time being, a bill that would punish educational institutions that carry out academic boycotts, an action that is synonymous with a boycott of Israel.

The State Senate passed the bill last week, but the State Assembly’s Higher Education Committee has taken the proposal, even though it was amended to be less strict, off the table following protests by academics and legal experts.

On the surface, the bill seems like a glimmer of light in a twisted academic world of darkness. Its original version in the Senate would cut off funds from any institution that engages in an academic boycott, most notably the recent vote by the American Studies Association to boycott Israel because it allows and encourages Jews to live in Judea and Samaria.

The boycott defies all morals, logic and intelligence, so much so that dozens of higher education institutions have pulled out of the ASA. It always is more effective to win a war by fighting back instead of legislating it as illegal.

The New York State United Teachers union opposes the bill on grounds that it would “serve to regulate speech based on content and the message it conveys.”

Pro-Israel groups have protested academic boycotts because it stifles academic freedom and is aimed at schools simply because they receive money from a country whose policies the boycotter finds unacceptable. Many New York educators argue that the anti-boycott bill does exactly the same thing by punishing a school for its ideological positions.

The union’s memo of opposition states, “Withholding state aid from any college or university for speaking publicly about a country; or boycotting a country; or one of its higher education institutions; violates the First Amendment protection of speech. While we may not agree with, or even detest the content of an individual’s – or group of individual’s speech – they are free to express it. This is a fundamental tenet of our Constitution.

“Similarly, an academic institution has the right to participate in a boycott over issues of public concern regardless of whether we agree or not with the subject matter that the boycott addresses…..

“The enactment of this legislation would serve to regulate speech based on content and the message it conveys…. The bill is also unconstitutionally vague in that reasonable persons can’t know what is prohibited and what is not.”

Assemblywoman Deborah J. Glick, a co-sponsor of the bill and the chairwoman of the Higher Education Committee, said she removed it from the committee’s consideration because she felt that “we needed to take a longer look” and that the bill needs to be modified to deal the issue of academic freedom.

The general counsel for the City University of New York, Frederick P. Shaffer, said the bill “creates a dangerous precedent of legislative intrusion into the decisions of higher education institutions concerning academic matters.”

Boycotts, such as the campaign against Israel, may be carried out because of a twisted vision of the world. But the most effective antidote has been its failure.

The Boycott Israel campaign several years, which tried to convince people not buy anything from anywhere in Israel, fell flat on its face when people woke up to discover that their computer chips are made Israel, their disk on key was invented in Israel, and their generic pill or prescription drug against Multiple Sclerosis is made and sold by Israel-based Teva Pharmaceutical.

BDS has been targeting SodaStream, which has a factory in the Judean Hills in “post-1967,” Israel, and so far has had little success.

Canada’s Employment minister Jason Kenney has countered the BDS ‘Boycott SodaStream” campaign by buying one of the company’s soda-making machines and crediting Oxfam for the idea.

Oxfam has dumped Scarlett Johansson as an ambassador because she signed up to promote SodaStream whose 20 factories around the world include one in the industrial area of Maaleh Adumim, located in Greater Israel, Post-1967 Israel, or the Occupied Territories, depending on your political point of view.

BDS has been promoting the boycott, but its vocal protests have caused rumbles that are turning into an avalanche of positive publicity for SodaStream and Israel because of the company’s policy of equal opportunity for Palestinian Authority Arabs.

Instead of a boycott, there is “buy-cott,” and Keeney tweeted on Monday, “Bought a nice @SodaStream unit at the @HudsonsBayCo. Thanks to @Oxfam for the tip. #Buycott #BDSfail #GoScarJo”

Kenney said on Canadian television, “I’ve given money to Oxfam in the past because I thought they were there to help poor people, not to marginalize Israelis and make Palestinians unemployed.” He added that “all the nutters at Oxfam” also marginalize “Palestinian people” who get paid four times more at SodaStream than they would earn working for factories run by Palestinian Authority Arabs.

Kenney also had some choice words for leftist groups’ “anti-Israel obsession” while they while they ignore countries such as Iran, which executes political dissidents and homosexuals.

Cause and effect conclusions always are a problem for ideological zanies, both right-wing and left-wing.

Today’s discourse on the stock market deals with the pro-Arab lefties. They call themselves pro-Israel, which is like a talking Trojan Horse uttering praise for the country where it was brought with enemy soldiers.

The truth is that mass media are just as guilty, burying a nasty and misleading leftist agenda under the term “objective reporting.”

Here is Monday’s headline from Mondoweiss, one of the nastiest and most misleading Jewish anti-Zionist sites around: “SodaStream Stock Sinks, and Bloomberg Cites ‘Sanctions Over Jewish Settlements.”

Indeed, that is what Bloomberg also wrote. Its headline on Monday read: “SodaStream Drops Amid Sanctions Over Jewish Settlements.”

Facts: The stock dropped 3.3 percent on Monday, the same day that the Standard and Poor 500 fell 2.28 percent and the NASDAQ index dropped sunk 2.26 percent. SanDisk sank 3.1 percent, and Microsoft outdid SodaStream and fell 3.59 percent.

Maybe Microsoft dropped because settlers in Judea and Samaria bought Office?

Bloomberg concluded, “SodaStream International Ltd., the Israeli maker of home soda machines with a factory in the West Bank, sank to the lowest since 2012 in New York amid growing criticism for businesses operating in a territory that Palestinians seek for an independent state.”

The writer, Elena Popina, did not explain how she knows that is the reason, but she immediately followed up on her conclusion by noting that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry cautioned Israel about the boycott campaign and that Oxfam and Scarlett Johansson broke up their relationship because she is a goodwill ambassador for SodaStream.

Popina added, “The boycott debate comes after pro-Palestinian activists scored several successes in a campaign to blacklist businesses operating in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, land occupied by Israel since 1967 and claimed by Palestinians for a future state.”

After swallowing and regurgitating the media assumption that Israel “occupied” the land, which was previously occupied by Jordan, she reminded readers that a large Dutch fund announced in January it would not invest in Israeli banks because of their involvement in Judea and Samaria. Norway also said its own fund has reinstated a former boycott against two Israel firms active in parts of Jerusalem where Jews are deemed illegitimate and illegal.

It is an axiom that stock market analysts, like many psychologists, invent reasons for a past event, and for this shrinks charge $100 an hour or more.

Mondoweiss also does the same for free.

It wrote on Monday that last month “we reported SodaStream stocks had plunged that Monday morning after the announcement Johansson had signed on as the [SodaStream]corporation’s global ambassador. However, we noted at that time there was ‘no mainstream investment media mention regarding the growing boycott against the corporation.’”

Mondoweiss’ Annie Robbins gleefully wrote that the Bloomberg headline ”screamed” that the drop is because of its factory in the industrial area of Maaleh Adumim, where no one lived before Jews began to settle there 39 years ago.

Bloomberg came up with a cause and effect fallacy, and Mondoweiss ran with it off the field of reality.

“Finally, people are listening,” she wrote. “ And remember that John Kerry only made his offhand remark about ‘boycotts’ that hurt the stock, per the analyst quoted in Bloomberg, a day or so after SodaStream was the talk of the State House briefing. Methinks we’re having an impact. There’s been a massive shift in the discourse since we reported on Jan. 12 that Scarlett Johansson is the new face of apartheid.”

Now here is a little item, actually big item, from the same Bloomberg Business newspaper on January 14 of this year, under the headline “Even Star Johansson Can’t Help SodaStream as Stock Sinks 26%.”

Roger Waters assailed actress Scarlett Johansson for working with SodaStream and musician Neil Young for his planned performance in Israel.

In a Facebook post on Saturday, the former Pink Floyd front man said he was making a public plea to Johansson and Young after writing to them privately in recent days.

Waters has publicly called for boycotts against Israel and made personal pleas to artists not to perform in Israel. Young is scheduled to perform in Israel in July.

Johansson last week ended her relationship with the human rights group Oxfam following a protracted debate over her role as spokeswoman for the Israeli company SodaStream, which has a factory in the West Bank. The factory employs Israeli and Palestinian workers.

In his public letter, Waters said Johansson’s “choice of Soda Stream over Oxfam” is  “an act of intellectual, political, and civil about face, that we, all those of us who care about the downtrodden, the oppressed, the occupied, the second class, will find it hard to rationalize.”

The letter cites alleged human rights abuses by Israel against the Bedouin living in southern Israel and poses several questions about how Palestinians live under Israeli rule in the West Bank.

He concludes his letter, which mostly is directed at Johansson, by saying, “Scarlett, you are undeniably cute, but if you think SodaStream is building bridges towards peace you are also undeniably not paying attention.”

Oxfam accepted actress Scarlett Johansson’s resignation as a global ambassador, calling the role “incompatible” with her work for the Israeli company SodaStream.

“Oxfam has accepted Scarlett Johansson’s decision to step down after eight years as a Global Ambassador and we are grateful for her many contributions,” the global anti-poverty charity said in a statement issued Thursday. “While Oxfam respects the independence of our ambassadors, Ms. Johansson’s role promoting the company SodaStream is incompatible with her role as an Oxfam Global Ambassador.”

Johansson announced Wednesday that she was ending her relationship with Oxfam following criticism from the charity of her work as a spokeswoman for the producer of home soda-making machines, which operates a factory in Judea and Samaria.

Johansson in her statement said she and the humanitarian organization have “a fundamental difference of opinion in regards to the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.”

Oxfam has said it opposes any trade with Israeli settlements.

As a global ambassador for Oxfam, Johansson has traveled to India, Sri Lanka and Kenya to highlight the problem of global poverty.

“She is very proud of her accomplishments and fundraising efforts during her tenure with Oxfam,” said the statement released by Johansson’s spokesman and first reported by The Associated Press.

SodaStream signed Johansson to be its first global brand ambassador, and she is set to appear in a television ad for the company during the Super Bowl on Sunday. The company employs Israeli and Palestinian workers at its Judea and Samaria factory in the settlement of Maale Adumim.

Pro-Palestinian groups had called on Oxfam to sever its ties with the actress. On Tuesday, representatives of Jewish Voice for Peace, the Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights, American Jews for a Just Peace and the First Church in Cambridge Israel/Palestine Task Team met at Oxfam America’s Boston headquarters and urged the humanitarian organization to drop Johansson, who is Jewish, over her defense of SodaStream’s presence in Judea and Samaria.

Johansson had defended SodaStream and her involvement with the company in a statement released Jan. 24 on The Huffington Post.

In an interview with the Forward newspaper, SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum said his company’s Judea and Samaria factory was “a pain in the ass.” Birnbaum said he would have never established the plant, which was set up before his tenure at the company, but vowed he would not close the factory in response to pressure. He told the Forward that he “just can’t see how it would help the cause of the Palestinians if we fired them.”