Pro Kit Club is donating any profits from the sale of Israel-Premier Tech team kit to the UN’s World Food Programme to “help feed children facing famine and severe hunger in Gaza”.
The Australia-based online platform (formerly known as Pro Cycling Kit Sales) sells team-issue pro cycling kits to fans around the world, the idea of the business to find a home for the boxes of unused team kit that are surplus to requirements at the end of each season. In return, cyclists and fans can get their hands on top-level clothing, often at a discount.
Writing on Instagram, and first reported by Bike Radar, the owner of Pro Kit Club said this week’s sale of Israel-Premier Tech kit would be “a different kind of drop” and they are “not comfortable making a profit from this kit” so will donate any profits to the UN World Food Programme.
“We’re releasing a collection of men’s and women’s Israel-Premier Tech kit,” the post stated. “We understand that this will upset some people, and we also understand that by simply acknowledging that fact we may upset others with very different views.
“We have agonised over the decision to release this kit for almost a year, and eventually reached one realisation. As a father, if my child were starving and someone offered to donate money to feed them, I would not concern myself with who was right or wrong, or where that money came from. That debate is a luxury we have from the safety of our homes.
“Because we were not comfortable making a profit from this kit, we have decided that every dollar of profit from this IPT collection will be donated directly to the UN World Food Programme to help feed children facing famine and severe hunger in Gaza. Currently over 130,000 children in Gaza are at risk of death from malnutrition. It really doesn’t matter your politics, nobody wants to see children starve.
“Cycling gives us so much joy. Watching the riders, following the races, being part of this community. But right now, many children do not have even their most basic needs met, and releasing this kit allows us to contribute in a meaningful way. That is why we chose to move forward.”
The kit will be available to buy on Pro Kit Club’s website from 7am Hobart, Australia, time on 27 November, which is 9pm in the UK on the 26th. Most of the kit mentioned on Instagram is the smaller sizes, the men’s kit mostly S and XS, while the women’s is mostly XS and XXS.
Pro Kit Club has received plenty of support in the comments for its approach, although one follower did question why, if the aim was to contribute to the World Food Programme, it couldn’t be done “without having to sell this merch”.
“Unfortunately we’re not wealthily enough to make large donations without selling this,” an explanation came in reply. “You’re lucky if you’re rich enough and have already done this? We felt that this way we can actually make a meaningful difference with the money generated.”
After a season of protests, Israel-Premier Tech will undergo significant changes this winter, Never Say Never (NSN), the sports and entertainment company of former Barcelona and Spain footballer Andrés Iniesta taking over as sponsor of the team, which will no longer be Israeli-registered and will race under the Swiss flag instead.
Reports suggest the team will also race on Scott bikes, Factor having joined previous title sponsor Premier Tech in ending its association with the team.
-1024x680.jpg "“Clear anti-cyclist bias”: Lawsuit filed against Toronto police after cop doored cyclist… before ticketing rider over incident")
13 thoughts on ““We’re not comfortable making a profit from this”: Pro Kit Club to sell Israel-Premier Tech kit and donate proceeds to UN Gaza programme”
Buy it and burn it.
Buy it and burn it.
Not sure that’s very eco
Not sure that’s very eco-friendly though.
Sad that you’re so full of
Sad that you’re so full of hate. Antisemite.
Bigot
Bigot
???
???
alexuk wrote:
If being against a small state of neo-fascist, religious-supremacist, genocidal, murdering thieves makes one an anti-semite, then I proudly accept that label.
Course, most Israelis are NOT semites at all. They’re Polish/Russian/Slavic blow-ins with messiah complexes, who appropriate everything they can from older Levant culture to try pad out their LIE that they are from that land. “We’re semites” – a lie! “Humus is our dish” – a lie! etc. etc. While stealing and murdering.
The Palestinians (Muslim, Christian, Samaritan) are the semites. And they are also the closest genetically to the iron age tribes (inc. Israelites) that lived on that land!
Also, while most Israeli-Jews – by all polls – are vicious, supremacist and expansionist Zionists. A small, but not non-trivial, minority of Jews are NOT Zionist – they are anti-zionist (e.g., circa 10% to 12% in the USA, depending on polls). Of the remaining Jews in western countries, while the vast majority are technically Zionist in some way – i.e. believe there should a Jewish state of Israel – at least half are NOT supremacist, expanionist Zionists, i.e., they are “liberal Zionists” who believe Israel should make peace and there should be a two-state solution somewhat in line with 1967 borders.
So feck off with your laughable, pathetic shouts of “antisemitism”! It was never accurate, and the way you and your vicious Israeli neo-fascist colonial-genocide thugs keep hurling it around has made it meaningless.
Paul J wrote:
You’re simply mistaken there I’m afraid. The vast majority of Jews are ethnically semitic as in descended from the original tribes who inhabited the Levant in the Iron Age. Jews in fact have a far stronger genetic link to their ancestors than most other peoples due to the fact that conversion to Judaism is a long and complex process and because of antisemitism has never been seen as a desirable option in either the western or Arabic worlds. This has ensured that right up to our current era there has been very little interbreeding/intermarriage between Jews and gentiles. To say that Jews from Poland, Russia or the Slavic countries are not semitic is as nonsensical as saying that a black person who lives in Europe is no longer black or that a white person who lives in Africa is no longer white. To paraphrase Horace’s famous dictum that “caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt”, changing location does not change one’s ancestry or genetics.
Rendel Harris wrote:
Jews in fact have a far stronger genetic link to their ancestors than most other peoples
— Paul J
That may be true, but they have much more European ancestry than Palestinians do. Palestinians descend from Levantine peoples on both the DNA and mtDNA sides. Ashekanizi Jewish people have substantial European ancestry in their mtDNA side.
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3543
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0054616
(And note that Europeans generally all have a good amount of Levantine DNA; but our ancestors did not stay there – and that includes the Ashkenazi Jews from Europe; the people who stayed in Palestine are – quelle surprise – the ancestors of the people who are Palestinians today – funny how that works!).
(And a last addendum: I have ancestry from a certain town in Europe, and an ancestor of mine left there somewhere in the late 18th C /very likely/ because of quasi-religious civil unrest, inc. a civil war; does that mean I can now go back to that town, poison the wells, steal the livestock, and kick people living there now out of their house to claim it as my own? NO OF COURSE NOT!
And this argument gets even more ridiculous if you’re talking about people who left some place somewhere around 2000 years ago in one of the Roman-Jewish wars, whom you can’t even describe your lineage to in any specific way! Many many Europeans who do not in any way consider themselves Jewish or from the Levant could trace some descent to there in their DNA, but it’s pure nonsense to think that gives them any right to go there today and murder people in order to steal their land! Only the most evil shits could think it justified).
Not sure if you are saying
Not sure if you are saying that as a joke but that has to be one of the biggest problems. Calling someone antisemitic for apposing the actions of a state has nothing to do with the religion of the people who dwell within it. But it is a shield the Israeli governemt like to sit behind to try and stop people having a voice against their tyranny over innocent people.
Paul J wrote:
Being nasty, also wasteful. You could send it to one of the thousands of needy families in Gaza who are sheltering in a tent this winter near the ruins of their town.
What’s that – they wouldn’t take it?
In which case send it to a needy family in non-occupied Israel in the same position.
Oh…
(There were certainly *some* because Hamas burned places down during their raid. Let’s hope there’s a) money and b) access to materials to fix up *both* sides, soon)
Nothing to do with having
Nothing to do with having boxes of kit they can’t shift, of course.
RayG wrote:
Indeed, why did they buy the kit in the first place? They say they “agonised over the decision to sell this kit for nearly a year”, so they must have purchased it when the Gaza war had been in progress for over a year. It would be more honest to say that subsequent to this summer’s protests at cycle races they have realised that their chances of shifting it in the process of normal sales is minimal.
Going to be selling the UAE
Going to be selling the UAE kit off cheap too I wonder?