বাংলাArab Light
Boycott Israeli Goods & Services
Boycott Israeli Goods & Services
Individual consumers can show their opposition to Israel’s Apartheid policies against the Palestinian people and violations of international law by participating in a consumer boycott of Israeli goods and services. A boycott can also put pressure on companies whose exports are linked to some of the most evident aspects of the Israeli occupation and apartheid.
Take Action: We are asking supporters and those concerned about Palestinian rights to write to supermarkets and ask them to stop stocking Israeli goods.
The Israeli barcode starts with the number 729. However, it doesn’t necessarily appear on all Israeli products so be sure to always check the label or ask your supplier for country of origin.
Also, please note that this is not an exhaustive list of all Israeli products available in Ireland – brand names change, companies dissolve, new companies enter the market, etc.
Supermarket products
Jaffa oranges were famous for centuries before Israel colonized the Palestinian name along with the city of Yafa. The Israeli agricultural companies Mehadrin (Jaffa) and Carmel-Agrexco export fruit and vegetables for sale to Europe. Much of this produce is grown on confiscated Palestinian land in the Jordan Valley. Apart from oranges, other examples of fruit exported by these, and other, companies are grapefruits, peppers, avocados, grapes, figs, and passion and sharon fruits.
Dates from Israel come in many brands and are particularlyy prominent during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan where they can be found in many halal shops.
Israeli new potatoes are often seen in the spring before Irish potatoes are available. Carrots are also exported from Israel.
Tivall is an Israeli company that produces vegetarian foods.
Sabra is an Israeli company that sells hummus and other dips. Its parent company, the Strauss Group, provides financial support to the Israeli occupation forces.
Herbs, such as basil, dill, tarragon, parsley, sage, rosemary, mint, chives and others are commonly sold.
Sodastream, an appliance for home-making carbonated drinks is a product that was previously manufactured in the illegal Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim in occupied Palestine. It now operates from the Naqab (Negev) area in the Apartheid State of Israel.
These goods are widely available in big chainstores such as Dunnes Stores, Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Supervalu, Aldi and Lidl – as well as often unknowingly delivered to restaurants, cafes, takeaways, etc by wholesalers who don’t inform customers of their place of origin.
Hardware and homeware products
Most Stanley/Black & Decker Toolboxes and plastic organisers are made in Israel. Plastic saw horses are also often available.
Keter exports a wide range of large plastic products from Israel. These include shelf storage bins, garden sheds, outdoor storage boxes, dog kennels and composting bins.
Palram is an Israel-based manufacturer of Polycarbonate and PVC products such as greenhouses, roofing, gazebos and sheds.
Lees Carpets are made by the Israeli company Carmel Carpets in the illegal industrial settlement zone of Barkan in the West Bank.
Beauty Products and clothing
Dead Sea beauty products come in many brands including, Ahava, Dead Sea Magik, GADI21, -417, VivO, Nevo and Sea Spa Skincare. YesTo, formerly an Israel-based company which has since ‘relocated’ to the US, uses Dead Sea minerals in many of its products. They can be found in Holland & Barrett, Nourish and pharmacies. In addition they are often marketed by on stalls at large shopping centres.
Any theft by the Israeli state or companies of natural resources from the Palestinian section of the Dead Sea constitutes War Pillage under the terms of the Geneva Convention. Ahava is one company that is guilty of this, being based in the illegal settlement of Mitzpe Shalem on the Dead Sea.
Despite the misleading name, MoroccanOil is an Israeli company that manufactures argan oil-based hair care products. Arganicare is another Israeli company that produces argan oil-based hair products.
Ronen Chen is an Israeli women’s fashion label that can often be found in boutique fashion outlets.
Puma is an international sporting brand that proudces clothing, sportswear and equipment. Puma is the main sponsor of the Israel Football Association (IFA), which includes football teams in illegal Israeli settlements on stolen Palestinian land in its leagues.
Pharmaceuticals
The Israeli pharmaceutical company Teva, which specialises in generic drugs, is the “leading supplier of prescription drugs in the Irish market”. For most Teva products there are alternatives if you ask your pharmacist – if there is no alternative, just remember Nelson Mandela’s maxim that “a boycott is a tactic, not a principle”.
Sudocrem, for many years thought of as a quintessentially Irish brand, was bought out by Teva in 2016. Not long after, it announced that it was closing its Irish factory and relocating to Bulgaria.
Children’s Toys and other kid’s products
The Israeli brand AMAV market a range of “activities” type craft boxes (plastic) and Art Easels for children. These are available at major toy retailers.
Tiny Love is an Israeli toy manufacturer that make baby toys.
Lidl’s own brand Lupilu Babywipes are made in Israel.
IT, Music, and Online Tools & Services
The ‘DIY-website’ company Wix is headquartered in Israel, and Wix is the parent ogansiation of the online artistic platform DeviantArt which it acquired in 2017.
The audio plugin development company Waves is a joint US-Israeli venture.
The ancestry research and DNA testing website MyHeritage.com is headquartered in Tel Aviv.
Although officially headquatered in New York, Connecteam is an employee management app based in Israel.
The controversial online marketplace Fiverr is headquartered in Tel Aviv, while its Corporate Office is based in the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC.
HP Hewlett-Packard, although not an Israeli company, is boycottable due to the company’s deep role in helping entrench the occupation of Palestine and associated human rights abuses.
Similarly, while also not an Israeli company, Motorola Solutions (not Motorola Mobility, which is a separate company) is boycottable as it provides surveillance in Israeli illegal colonial settlements, profiting from this violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Siemens is another complicit multinational company that is building the EuroAsia Interconnector, a subsea cable that will link Israel’s electricity grid with Europe’s, allowing illegal settlements on stolen Palestinian land to benefit from Israel-EU trade of electricity.
Vehicles, machinery, insurance and energy
Although none are Israeli companies, Caterpillar, JCB and Hyundai supply the machinery used by Israel when it demolishes Palestinian homes, structures and farmlands in Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem and the Naqab (Negev) desert. In addition to machinery, Caterpillar also markets shoes, bags, tools, childrens’ toys and other consumer products under its brand name.
Chevron, through its subsidiary Texaco, operates petrol/service stations around Ireland, and supplies heating oil. Chevron is the main extractor of fossil gas claimed by Israel in the Eastern Mediterranean and helps brings Israel billions of dollars in revenues from payments for its gas extraction licences, helping to finance Israel’s war chest and its regime of apartheid.
Multinational insurance and financial services giant AXA holds investments in Israeli banks that help to finance the construction of illegal Israeli settlements, as well as in other companies that are complicit in war crimes; The Don’t Buy into Occupation coalition notes that Axa ranks 30th among the top 100 European investors in Israel’s illegal settlement enterprises.
Boycott Israeli Diamonds
The World Diamond Council was established in 2000 with its mandate being “the development, implementation and oversight of a tracking system for the export and import of rough diamonds to prevent the exploitation of diamonds for illicit purposes such as war and inhumane acts”. To this end it initiated the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme to stem the flow of “conflict” or “blood diamonds”. In keeping with the limited concerns of the WDC the UN-mandated Kimberly Process adopted a very narrow definition of what constitutes a conflict or blood diamond: “rough diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to finance conflict aimed at undermining legitimate governments”. Such a limited definition of conflict diamonds allows the trade in cut and polished diamonds to avoid the human rights compliance demanded of rough diamonds. Therefore Israel, in constant and flagrant breach of the human right of the Palestinian people as well as international law, is able to benefit from the unrestricted access of diamonds crafted in Israel to the multi-billion dollar global diamond market. On its website the World Diamond Council fails to mention that the diamond industry is the main artery of the Israeli economy, accounting for over 30% of Israel’s total manufacturing exports worth nearly $20 billion in 2008.
Palestine Solidarity Campaign is calling for the introduction of a hallmark system for all diamonds which will inform consumers where they were manufactured, giving them the right to choose Israel-free diamonds. Consumers should have the right to know that when they purchase gemstones they are not funding the murder and oppression of innocent men, women and children in Palestine or elsewhere.
Boycott Israeli Potatoes
On top of this, often the potatoes are grown by illegal settlers using stolen Palestinian water – many precious West Bank water aquifers are under Israeli military control with Israel deciding who gets the water, and when. Israeli settlements in the West Bank never face water shortages while it is an all too common feature for Palestinains despite water coming from exactly the same sources.
To add insult to injury – along with orchards and olive groves – Palestinian arable agricultural lands are often targets of destruction by both the Israeli military and illegal settlers. In addition those Palestinians trying to export perishable good regularly face obstacles and/or the destruction of their produce by the occupation forces.
Almost all ‘organic potatoes’ on sale in Irish supermarkets at this time of year are from Israel and the IPSC asks you – as an act of solidarity with the Palestinian people – not to purchase them and to complain to the management about their continued presence on Irish shelves. You should also be on the look out for out of season New Potatoes which are also usually of Israeli origin.
‘729’ Barcode of Israel?
Alerts regarding identifying Israeli products by their barcode have been circulated over the internet, one example is shown below:
Boycott ‘729’ Barcode
Most of the products have a barcode to identify them. Each barcode contains a lot of information such as the factory and also the country where it is produced. The following system is not necessarly waterproof but will certainly allow you to screen a lot of products coming from Israël. You can retrieve the list of these countries and the according numbers on the internet. Some examples : 383 EAN Slovenija, 471 EAN Taiwan. Notice that these one have NOTHING to do with Israël. A barcode starting with “729” indicates that this product is produced in Israël. 729 Israeli Bar Code Association – EAN Israel
Don’t buy them if you want to protest against the current agression!!
Sometimes brands are misleading, a barcode never lies if it carries that 729 !!!. Others have added more targets to the barcode boycott list: The American ones start with 00 till 13.
But upon investigating the barcodes of know Israeli goods people found the barcodes weren’t always correct:
The Israeli bar code story is not so simple. I purchased several food items from Israel to investigate which could be from the occupied territories. The Achdut Tahini from Industrial Zone Barkan (Occupied Territories) starts out: 7 219…. Pri-Vayerek Olives from Industrial Zone Har Tov starts: 7 922… (Barbet (Jam) imported from Israel by Supreme Foods of Concord Ont.: 6 507…)
I notice that foods from Sweden start out with either a 7 or an 8, so there is no consistant labeling for some countries. As a matter of fact, I notice that the first number is not consistantly the same on goods from any particular country; foods from Canada usually start with a 6, but not always. There must be a better way to tell… Then someone investigated what EAN (the barcode number) actually mean. From the EAN international. Does the EAN number indicate the country of origin of a product?
No, the numbering of a product with EAN numbers does not imply any significance. An EAN number simply starts with the prefix of the member organisation that has allocated a bank of numbers to a company. This does not mean that the product was manufactured in a specific country or by a specific manufacturer.
So where does this leave us?
We recommend you read all the labels and not rely on the barcode as it clearly does not indicate the country of origin although it might be accurate on many occasions.
People of good conscience have chosen to boycott israeli products and companies supporting the zionist entity. Their ethical purchasing decision however is frustrated by the lack of accurate information as to which companies to boycott.
Below please find a comprehensive list of Israeli Products and companies. We are 1.6 billion Muslims we need to hit them where it hurts – their pockets Insha’Allah kheer.It is the least we can do after dua’.
