Boycotting Zionist Goods

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

The idea of boycotting Zionist goods, or some of them, is not new — it is as old as the Zionist occupation of the West Bank and Gaza itself. From the very beginning of the occupation, some Palestinians tried to take a practical stand on commercial and economic dealings with the occupying enemy, calling for a boycott of Zionist goods on the grounds that it is not permissible to support the enemy by buying its products, and also for the sake of Palestinian moral cohesion, since buying the enemy’s goods stands in complete contradiction to the idea of liberation. Among these Palestinians in the city of Nablus I recall Yusra Salah and Fadwa Touqan, may God have mercy on them both, and I recall well that Mrs. Yusra kept boycotting Zionist goods as much as she could until she passed into God’s presence in the 1980s.

The plain fact is that there has been a clear and serious Palestinian failing in this regard, and it is unreasonable that this idea has still not been put into practice after decades of Zionist occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip — this reflects badly on the image of the Palestinian people and on the whole idea of liberation. Note that a commercial boycott constitutes a first and fundamental step of resistance; it requires no sacrifice, and does not expose those who adopt it to security interrogation.

The Eighties Phase

Some Palestinians tried to revive this idea of boycott by using fabrics partly woven in the occupied territory. Bolts of cloth were in fact bought from Marwan al-Nabulsi’s factory in Nablus, but only two people actually prepared the cloth into clothing, and the idea failed. The idea was revived again with the start of the 1987 intifada, and a broad popular boycott campaign emerged. This time the Palestinian factions adopted the idea and decided to work on implementing it.

Implementation of the idea began in most Palestinian cities, with Jenin and Nablus being the most committed, followed by Tulkarm. Young people in these cities were active in visiting merchants and campaigning against Zionist goods. But some mistakes occurred, some of which were judged at the time to have been deliberate, aimed at making the effort fail. For example, there were instructions that goods should not be confiscated from any merchant — merchants were simply to be asked to stop importing Zionist products, with no objection to selling off existing stock. The matter was sensitive, because the goal was supposed to be winning the merchants’ goodwill, affection, and cooperation; otherwise the idea would be emptied of its popular content. But unfortunately, some young men began confiscating goods and sometimes burning them in front of the media, or taking them off to an unknown place for personal use and distribution among friends and loved ones. Some of these young men were deliberately doing wrong, and it is regrettable that their factions did not cooperate in investigating them. Some of them also began taking bribes from merchants, particularly in the vegetable markets, to look the other way on Zionist agricultural produce, and from manufacturers to look the other way on reduced quantity and quality. This is not to mention that many well-off people would travel to Zionist settlements to buy goods. The idea failed.

A Limited Revival of the Idea

There is now a limited revival of the idea, led by the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, in the form of calls to boycott the produce of Zionist settlements in the West Bank. Of course this is a very timid revival, and I do not think it will lead to any positive result on the Palestinian scene. Quite simply, settlers can change the stamp on a product so that it becomes “Made in Netanya” instead of “Made in Barkan.” Moreover, the settlement economy, compared to the Israeli economy as a whole, forms a small proportion that has no real effect in the end on the flow of goods between the West Bank and Israel. I have noticed that some activists who support the Authority’s idea of boycotting settlement goods call verbally for boycotting various Israeli goods in general, while the flyers they distribute call only for boycotting settlement goods. They justify this by saying that the Authority does not want to get involved in campaigning against Zionist goods in general.

Some citizens who listened to certain leaders of the settlement-goods boycott told me that they found these very leaders in a settlement market buying settlement goods right after their lecture on boycotting. Neither was the leader honest, nor was the listener.

Why Boycott?

Boycotting Zionist goods — the products of an enemy that occupies the land, displaces the people, kills people, tortures them, and throws them into prisons — is a national obligation, and it clearly expresses the degree of one’s national belonging. It is a disgrace for a person to consume his enemy’s goods unless forced to do so, and it is a national slackness in thought and practice for a people to buy the products of an enemy under whose practices it groans morning and evening, every day and every hour.

…an end to strengthening the enemy against ourselves and further empowering him over us and over our homeland. National commitment and belonging to the homeland and the people require the individual to boycott, and the boycott is an important measure of the extent of this commitment and this belonging — it is a matter of principle.

Moreover, the boycott serves and encourages national production. We are in dire need of encouraging Palestinian producers so as to rely on ourselves as much as possible and free ourselves from the yoke of foreign aid and begging, and so as to employ our workers, reclaim and cultivate our land, and raise the level of our production, which in the end contributes to the general budget through various taxes and fees. Self-reliance carries dignity, honor, and independent decision-making, while begging carries humiliation, submission, surrender, and the loss of land and honor.

Whoever insists on defeat and dependency says that our production ultimately depends on importing raw materials from Israel, so why should we tire ourselves out and boycott, since in the end we come back to Israel anyway? We try to produce as much as we can. If the value we add to a good is 10%, that is good; if we raise it to 20%, that is better, and so on. In any case we must try — the loser is the one who wants to fail before even trying.

Levels of Boycott

Someone might say there are goods we import from the enemy for which there is no alternative, and we have no choice but to import them. Here I offer the following classification:

There are Zionist goods that have a Palestinian alternative, and the people must commit to the production of their own sons and daughters, such as many kinds of vegetables and fruits, types of detergents, toilet paper, chocolate, biscuits, and juices.

There are Zionist goods we do not need at all, and not importing them would not affect the course of our lives in the least, such as orange juice (“Tapuzina”), ice cream, and spiced tomato paste (ketchup).

There are vital goods we import from the enemy or through it, such as sugar, tea, and fuel. The enemy itself imports these and does not produce them. These are goods we have no choice but to buy, but it is preferable to import them from Jordanian or Egyptian merchants if possible.

There are strategic goods we cannot avoid importing, such as cement. It is preferable to buy such goods from Arab merchants if possible.

In other words, the matter of importing is subject to national criteria and criteria of strategic need, not to a culture of consumption or the quality of the good or whether it tastes good or not. I do not have precise figures at the moment on the volume of imports from the enemy, but we import roughly $6 billion worth annually, and we are the second-largest importer from the Zionists in the world after the United States.

The Date Phenomenon

Has anyone noticed that people rush to buy Israeli dates during Ramadan, so that the breaking of the fast may be blessed and in accordance with the Prophetic tradition? We end up supporting the Zionist farmer who stole our land in the Jordan Valley, all in order to enter Paradise.

We may also notice that many people offer the Israeli date at houses of condolence, to help their deceased avoid, or lessen, the torment of the grave.

If people bought Rihawi or Gazan dates instead, they would be closer to Paradise and a little further from a torment they see with their own eyes at the grave.

A Delicious Product

It is a symptom of the flabbiness of national belonging to hear someone say he buys the Zionist product because it is tastier than the Palestinian one. This is a culture of defeat, backwardness, and appetite. It stems from the cultural incapacity we suffer from at the level of the PLO, the factions, the universities, the schools, and at the various levels of our social, political, and economic life.

The Cultural Revolution

Working to bring about a Palestinian cultural revolution could be the best policy the Palestinian Authority could pursue. We have failed in so very many things, until we arrived at this feeble decision — the boycott of settlement products. Has the Palestinian struggle really shrunk to this extent? Yes, it has shrunk, and all the attempts not to provoke the enemy and the United States will not bring us one inch closer to liberation and the right to self-determination. What we are doing now, in our various activities, contributes directly to the liquidation of the Palestinian cause, and perhaps also to the displacement of the Palestinian people. The matter is bigger than, and goes beyond, the settlements — it touches the consciousness of an entire people, its sense of belonging and its commitment to its national causes, and requires reordering its culture and its ranks so that it may rise to the level of the challenge.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “مقاطعة البضائع الصهيونية” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.