Israel Drops Anti-Hamas Lollipops on West Bank — Just in Time for Ramadan

Lollipop Op: Israeli-distributed candies in the West Bank bear the slogan ‘Here are some sweets because Hamas is making life bitter in the West Bank.’ Image by Haaretz

By Sigal Samuel June 29, 2014

In two of the West Bank’s major cities, Palestinians woke up Sunday morning to a strange surprise: hundreds of lollipops filled the streets, courtesy of the Israeli army.

The lollipops, distributed throughout Nablus and Ramallah, contained notes saying, “Ramadan Kareem. Here are some sweets because Hamas is making life bitter in the West Bank.”

An Israel Defense Forces officer told Haaretz he had no knowledge of the event. But Palestinian witnesses in Nablus told Ma’an News Agency that they saw Israeli soldiers throwing the lollipops in the streets.

Some onlookers believe that the candy distribution is a “psychological warfare” tactic meant to incite Palestinians against Hamas. Others say this “strange behavior” shows that the IDF is failing to find the three missing Israeli teenagers, whom it believes to be held captive by Hamas, and is scrambling for new sources of information in the West Bank.

Incendiary: A matchbox bears the slogan ‘Warning, Hamas is inflaming the West Bank.’ Image by B'Tselem

The lollipops are not the first Israeli-distributed “gift” to hit the area in recent days. After a military raid in Nablus on Thursday, Palestinians found matchboxes bearing the slogan “Warning, Hamas is setting the West Bank alight.”

Residents of Anbata said they discovered the same products after the IDF conducted searches in and around the village.

The matchboxes list the name of a manufacturer, Swedish company Swedish Match, and an importer, Nur Ltd.

The IDF Spokesman’s Office declined to comment.

Sigal Samuel is the former Opinion Editor at the Forward. When she’s not tackling race or identity politics, she’s hunting down her Indian Jewish family’s Kabbalistic secret society. Her novel THE MYSTICS OF MILE END tells the story of a dysfunctional family with a dangerous mystical obsession. Her writing has also appeared in The Daily Beast, The Rumpus, and BuzzFeed. Follow Sigal on Twitter.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO