Pro-Palestine activists in Toronto and Montreal have announced — and begun — a campaign to boycott Chapters/Indigo because of a foundation pioneered by majority owners Heather Reisman and Gerry Schwartz.

The Heseg Foundation for Lone Soldiers offers support such as scholarships to “lone soldiers” — foreign nationals without family in Israel who join the Israeli military. The Heseg website describes the ways in they work to ease former soliders into civilian life in Israel.

The leaflet handed out during the Christmas holidays at the campaign’s first picket, outside a Toronto Indigo location on Bloor street, states that Heseg foundation’s board of directors “is stacked with active and retired high level Israeli military personnel,” and goes on to state that by “rewarding and supporting Lone Soldiers who have served in the Israeli military, Reisman and Schwartz provide support for Israel’s military effort”. The leaflet is available from the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid website.

According to one right-wing blogger — who says he will now support Chapters/Indigo all the more, despite his anger of their refusal to sell the issue of Alberta’s ultra-conservative Western Standard that reprinted the infamous Danish cartoons — Chapters staff told him “a lie” when they claimed that “extra security” on site was meant to handle the busier holiday season, rather than the picket outside.