In November of last year, Lasair Dhearg relaunched a campaign for the creation of ‘Israeli Goods Free Zones’ in Belfast, occupied Ireland. Its purpose is to arrange the boycott of all products that are marked ‘Made in Israel’, to have them removed from sale, and replaced with similar products from other distributors, creating massive Zones free from produce that helps fund the Apartheid state of Israel.
It is designed to support the Palestinian people, in the face of an ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Zionist Israeli colony in occupied Palestine.
So far, significant numbers of Irish businesses have signed up to support the campaign, with zones declaring across many communities in Republican West Belfast. Those zones have grown at a phenomenal rate, now encompassing areas containing thousands of homes, and tens of thousands of residents.
As Lasair Dhearg, a relatively new Socialist Republican organisation, continues to grow across Ireland, so too has interest in our campaign, and those in support of it, with activists across the country getting in touch to plan new Zones in their cities.
Significant progress has already been made, and the campaign continues to advance, with ‘Israeli Goods Free Zones’ declared in Poleglass, Twinbrook, Lagmore, Mount Eagles, Lenadoon, Glencolin, Caffrey Hill, St James’s and the Rock Streets. More areas are progressing toward declaring in the near future, with other Zones now linking up, such as Poleglass, Twinbrook, Lagmore and Mount Eagles now declaring one massive Zone encompassing the whole Colin area on the outskirts of West Belfast.
The campaign is a focused boycott, specifically targeted at goods marked ‘Made in Israel’, and does not include brands alleged to be linked to Israeli apartheid like Coca-Cola and others. These Israeli goods typically include certain brands of wipes, hair products, and some fruit & vegetables.
Whilst we had originally launched our campaign in November of 2021, it only really started getting underway and drawing widespread support following the events of October 7th in Palestine.
It was then that significant numbers of Palestinian Resistance fighters rose up against the Zionist settler colony occupying their lands. The same entity that enforced an Apartheid state against the will of ordinary Palestinians, and which walled in millions of indigenous people into the world’s largest open air prison known as the Gaza strip.
The more than 30ft walls that surround Gaza, were completed in 2021, and encompass what the Israeli entity calls a “smart fence,” a 40-mile-long barricade, with towering concrete fortifications that include an underground concrete barrier.
On October 7th of last year, Palestinians blasted this “smart fence” open, and through it, stormed hundreds of armed resistance fighters, intent on eradicating the occupation of their land from armed settler colonies and an occupying army funded and supported by imperialist western nations such as the US and Britain.
Since that date, the Israeli entity has systematically annihilated more than 27,000 Palestinians.
Their strategy has been to decimate the population of Gaza through airstrikes and the restriction of food, water and medical supplies into the strip. This, alongside a land incursion by Israeli occupation forces, has seen hundreds of tanks systematically clearing lands in Gaza, utilising armoured bulldozers and the deliberate explosive demolition and levelling of whole neighbourhoods and infrastructure including universities, hospitals and religious buildings, including mosques.
Zionists are already publicly planning colonisation and apartheid state infrastructure within Gaza, with rumours abounding of the impending construction of a new Suez Canal, to be forced through Gaza, and which will channel billions of dollars into the pockets of Israel and other western states.
What we are witnessing, in real time, is the deliberate genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, perpetrated by the United States, Britain, and others, and carried out by the willing participants of the Israeli state, baying for Palestinian blood.
Willing participants like Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who declared on the 9th of October last year that “we are fighting human animals and we act accordingly”, as well as stating: “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything.”
On 10 October, the head of the Israeli army’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, addressed a message directly to Gaza residents: “Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell”. The same day, Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari acknowledged the wanton and intentionally destructive nature of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza: “The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.”
Referencing the forced relocation of Palestinians from the North of Gaza during the ongoing bombing campaign, Jan Egeland, former Norwegian diplomat involved with the Oslo Accords, stated in an interview with the BBC: “There are hundreds of thousands of people fleeing for their life — [that is] not something that should be called an evacuation. It is a forcible transfer of people from all of northern Gaza, which according to the Geneva Convention is a war crime.”
In response to Israel’s persistent violations of international law and the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the Palestinians have asked the world to take several important steps, principle among them the boycott of all goods manufactured in occupied Palestine, and which are labelled as ‘Made in Israel’.
This is exactly why our campaign for ‘Israeli Goods Free Zones’ is so important. In their desperate hour of need, we must do everything we can to support the Palestinians.
We must boycott Israeli Goods.
