ISRAEL: The snack panic attack
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A recent sequence of apparently unrelated sudden infant deaths had Israeli parents nervous that a violent bacteria or virus was the cause. For one day this week, the tragic cases had been linked together by an infection of a different kind: viral e-mail.
An e-mail warning that one of the country’s large drugstore chains was expected to pull the popular ‘Bamba’ snack off shelves in connection with the children’s deaths went outta control, causing mass panic, heavy financial losses and probably legal consequences too.
The original letter appears to have been sent by a women named Keren, a software engineer employed by HP in Israel. From the company’s mailing group of 800, the message reached hundreds of thousands of Israelis within hours. The Health Ministry issued a statement dispelling the rumors but the damage had been done. Shares of Osem, the manufacturer, took a nosedive and had fallen by more than 6% before beginning to recover later in the day. More than 27 million shekels ($7.1 million) had changed hands in the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange that day over the false alarm.
The HP employee had signed the original message with her full name and contacts; she later apologized for the false information but didn’t explain what had prompted her to send it to begin with. Now her job is at risk and she may face legal charges. The Osem company is furious.
Israelis are probably no quicker to hit ‘send’ or ‘forward’ than most others. But the high rate of Internet users — at least 52% — in such a small country means these e-mails reach every other person, quite literally. Many go for ‘forward’ without thinking. Others check out ‘irrelevant,’ the website of Hanan Cohen, a webmaster, urban kibbutz member and kite aficionado who has undertaken as a community service to check out as many threads as possible, from scams and scares to bona fide information. This particular one was short-lived but others have persisted, as has Cohen, for years.
For Israelis, ‘Bamba’ requires no explanation. Here’s the Bamba-brief for the rest of you: the peanut-flavored corn-puff is the country’s most popular snack, accounting for one out of every four salty snacks sold; it is reportedly included in soldiers’ combat rations; most-sold at army canteens; Bill Clinton is rumored to have been rather taken with it; the main production facility had been declared an emergency industry in advance of the Iraq war and parents had been recommended to give some to kids during the first one in 1991. Quintessentially Israeli, you either love it or hate it — although the ‘hate’ option only kicks in around age 20.
And it even has its own website.
— Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusalem
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