Saudi authorities are investigating how Israeli pencils reached one of the kingdom's biggest retail chains. The Kravitz chain, which markets the pencils in Israel, was surprised to hear about the affair stirring up the Gulf kingdom.
How Youm7 illustrated the story
It turns out that Abu Rialin, a Saudi chain which offers all of its items for two riyals, is selling one of Kravitz's most popular products – a set of 12 pencils with an eraser.
The pencils are sold with the Kravitz logo in Hebrew and without any attempt to conceal the fact that they are made in Israel.
Kravitz learned about the incident following a report published by Saudi website Jazan. The reporter noted that Kravitz was the biggest manufacturer of office supplies in Israel and asked how the Saudi Ministry of Commerce could overlook such a thing.
"Where are the Saudi kingdom's supervision authorities?" the reporter asks, calling for an investigation into the apparent marketing of an Israeli product in Saudi Arabia.
Unfortunately, I cannot find the original Saudi story. Plenty of Arabic sites are talking about this but every one I can find is referring to an article about it in Ma'ariv.
I found "Jazan News" and "Jazan Press" websites, but no newspaper simply called "Jazan." I found a story on both sites complaining about the prices of school supplies at the Abu Rialin chain, but nothing about Israeli pencils.
So while it is a fun story, it might be just a rumor.