Report of SPSC boycott Israeli dates action: Edinburgh 3 Sep 2010

Edinburgh SPSC Activists and local Muslims Unite to Enforce Israeli Date Boycott

SPSC Edinburgh Branch rallied local Muslims and non-Muslims before and after Friday prayers today (3^rd September 2010) at the central Mosque in Edinburgh to lobby local grocers’ shops to ensure they did not stock Israeli goods generally, and Israeli dates specifically. Dates are particularly popular during Ramadan as a fast-breaker. ESPSC leafleted and urged locals attending prayers at the Mosque to not only boycott Israeli dates but to join them in a lobby of the many small shops in the surrounding area.

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Tens of Muslims joined together with SPSC activists to lobby and urge local shopkeepers not to stock Israeli dates. The campaign met with one hundred percent success, building on similar actions in Glasgow, Bradford and Birmingham. Some of the shops visited – such as the Red Sea Food Store and Jordan Valley Foods - already had a policy of not stocking any Israeli goods. Others were unknowingly selling Israeli dates masquerading under the cover of such brand names as Kalahari and Jordan River. These dates come from illegal settlements in Occupied Palestine, not the Palestinians farmers that have been kicked from their land to make way for the illegal settlers. When this was pointed out to them they took the dates of their shelves and said they would return them to the supplier.

All the shopkeepers took a poster declaring that no Israeli goods were on sale in their shops and the shops supported the Palestinians. A major contributor to the success of the campaign was the large numbers of Muslims and non-Muslims lobbying outside the shops with a small delegation talking rationally and calmly to the shop-keepers inside.

This campaign against Israeli dates can be spread UK wide and not just to Muslim shops but to the large supermarkets that knowingly stock dates from the illegally occupied territories. It can be a stepping stone to a wider Boycott of all Israeli goods, raising peoples’ conciseness around the whole of Israel’s illegal polices against the Palestinian people. This can help build support for a wider disinvestment and sanctions campaign that can pressurise Israel into meeting the Palestinians’ just demands of an end to the illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the return of all refugees to Palestine and equal rights for Arabs living in Israel and the occupied territories.