Unreal...For your info, the OWNER of Home Center is Eliezer Fishman, one of the 12 ruling families of Israel... and INTRODUCING BRITISH strategic investors into the company; read below.SMELLS LIKE SOMETHING THE BRITISH WOULD DO!!!

19:43 , 08.07.08

Print Preferred Customers? Home Center. Discrimanatory discounts click here to enlarge text click here to reduce text				Now at Home Center: Discounts for Arabs only Customer accidentally stumbles upon secret 'minority discount' offered by Israeli home goods chain. 'I tried to think what would happen if it was a discount for Jews only,' he wonders Roni Lipshitz Ynet has learned that Home Center, a popular home wares chain that operates throughout Israel, has been offering preferential treatment to the Arab sector via special discounts they alone are eligible for, regardless of whether the store is situated in a mostly Jewish city.    More Preferential Treatment? Arab-Israeli prisoner demands conjugal visit 'like Yigal Amir' / Sharon Roffe-Ophir Petition filed on behalf of man serving life sentence for terror offenses says Arab prisoners discriminated against, denied private spousal visits. Defining inmate as security prisoner as excuse to deny legal rights, implies practice applied on Arab prisoners only,' attorney says Full story Home Center customer Eli Chai arrived at his local branch at the Renanim Mall in Ra'anana last Tuesday, with the intent of buying a power drill, several tools and a number of other products. As the cashier began scanning his purchases at the checkout line, Chai noted that before passing each product the register computer would ask the cashier 'Minority Discount.' The cashier, said Chai, clicked 'no' and continued scanning the goods.   "I wasn't sure I had really seen what I thought I had," Chai recounted, "it was strange, I hadn't encountered anything like it before. I wanted to make sure, so I asked the cashier what the discount was, and why he was not giving it to me.   "He insisted that it wasn't a discount. But I said, cancel the purchase and scan it again. So he relented and said, 'It's a discount only for minorities'."   Chai claimed that, to his understanding, the chain offers a 10% discount on specific products for people belonging to a certain minority.   "I asked him what it meant, and he said, 'a discount only for Arabs'. I said, 'What do you mean, if I was Arab you would give me a discount?' He said yes. Definitively. It was really strange. I decided not to argue and to forgo the discount, so I paid full price for the products I had purchased.   "I didn't expect to get a discount, but I was appalled when I realized that had I been Arab I would have received one. I tried to think what would happen if it was a discount only for Jews, or Sephardim, or Ashkenazim," he concluded.   Home Center responded by stating that the controversial discount is company policy. "Home Center offers a wide range of attractive discounts throughout the year. As part of a plan to target specific communities, the chain offers different discounts for different sectors from time to time," the statement said.   Following Ynet's report, members of the far-right National Jewish Front - Itamar Ben-Gvir and Baruch Marzel - addressed an urgent letter to Attorney General Menachem Mazuz and to State Prosecutor Moshe Lador, in which they demanded that an investigation be launched against Home Center on the grounds that the discount constitutes discrimination, and is therefore unlawful.   HAARETZ TODAY: Businessman Eliezer Fishman is in advanced talks with a group of foreign investors, some of whom are British, to sell 40 percent of his Home Center Do-It-Yourself chain based on a value of $120-$130 million. The investors would inject some $50 million into the company to help it expand its international chain. Home Center recently opened a branch in Cyprus and is expected to open another one soon in Greece. The chain plans to eventually open branches in central and eastern Europe, primarily in the Russian market. Back