TORONTO (JTA) — Canada’s leading drugstore chain has pulled a controversial magazine from its racks, but insists the decision has nothing to do with complaints that its latest issue contained anti-Semitic images.
Shoppers Drug Mart said Tuesday that it will no longer sell Adbusters, an anti-consumerist/activist magazine based in Vancouver.
Lisa Gibson, a spokeswoman for the Shoppers, told the Globe and Mail newspaper Tuesday that the decision was unrelated to a campaign by the Canadian Jewish Congress against the magazine, which in its last issue ran a photo essay equating Israel’s military actions in Gaza with the Holocaust.
The CJC had urged supporters to go to stores where the magazine is sold, show the essay to the cashier and say, ‘This is anti-Semitic and shameful,’ and walk away.
"We only have a certain amount of magazine shelf space allotted to us in each store," Gibson explained, "so we do a fairly regular review of the magazine assortment and look at sales and other things. So it was actually pulled as part of that review."
CJC head Bernie Farber denied his organization had lobbied Shoppers to pull Adbusters.
"It’s an outright lie," Farber told the Globe and Mail.
In 2004, Adbusters was condemned in Jewish circles for running a list of influential neo-conservative U.S. policymakers and placing an asterisk next to the Jewish names.
