Lasair Dhearg’s ‘Campaign for Palestine‘ aims to create ‘Israeli Goods Free Zones’ across Ireland.
Our activists are busy visiting businesses within their local communities, with the aim of ensuring that there are no goods marked as ‘Made in Israel’ available for sale.
So far, scores of businesses in Belfast have signed up to our campaign and have committed not to stock or sell Israeli made products.
Starting in the Colin area of West Belfast, our objectives are to cleanse whole communities of Israeli goods and have all businesses commit to no longer make them available for sale. Once local activists have gained the necessary support from the business community in a particular area, it will be declared an ‘Israeli Goods Free Zone’ in line with the campaign.
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 Zones 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.
Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) is a Palestinian-led movement for freedom, justice and equality. BDS upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.
Israeli Apartheid
Israel’s leading human rights group, B’Tselem, issued a report in January 2021 titled: “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid”. In the US, Human Rights Watch followed in April of the same year, accusing Israel of “crimes of apartheid”.
Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, successive governments have created and maintained a system of laws, policies, and practices designed to oppress and dominate Palestinians. This system plays out in different ways across the different areas where Israel exercises control over Palestinians’ rights, but the intent is always the same: to privilege Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinians.
Israel imposes a system of oppression and domination against Palestinians across all areas under its control: in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and against Palestinian refugees, in order to benefit Jewish Israelis. This amounts to apartheid as prohibited in international law.
Laws, policies and practices which are intended to maintain a cruel system of control over Palestinians, have left them fragmented geographically and politically, frequently impoverished, and in a constant state of fear and insecurity.
The term “apartheid” was originally used to refer to a political system in South Africa which explicitly enforced racial segregation, and the domination and oppression of one racial group by another. It has since been adopted by the international community to condemn and criminalise such systems and practices wherever they occur in the world; including in Israel.
