Jew World Order

                   

by Margaret Cassar

The Adelaide based Australian Friends of Palestine Association (AFOPA) has been promoting the international Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign on the streets of our city centre for the last five and a half years. In that time we have targeted over a dozen companies and cultural events including three annual protests of the Israeli Film Festival and 286 consecutive weeks protesting the presence of Israeli Dead Sea cosmetic firms in Rundle Mall.

125,000 leaflets have been given out and we have engaged in thousands of conversations during our five year education campaign. We have noted a dramatic change in public sentiment regarding Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians in that time. Apart from the aggressive verbal and some times physical attacks we face from a core group of Zionist and Christian Zionist detractors we are now encountering mainly positive responses from passers-by in the street. In addition to the change in public sentiment and the up-take of BDS tactics we have achieved some concrete successes. The most notable being the abandonment of the AICE Israeli Film Festival in Adelaide.

However AFOPA’s BDS group is constantly on the look out for new and innovative ways to reach the largest number of South Australians as possible. Earlier this year one of our long term protesters identified a crucial demographic when a friend’s brother noticed that Israeli Eskal pickles were being sold in many of the small grocery stores in Adelaide.

Further research unearthed some very important information for pro-Palestinian advocates in Western countries like Australia. Many foreign born shop keepers are well aware of the plight of the Palestinians but are unaware that they can help by actively supporting the BDS movement. There are two reasons for this. One is the language barrier as many of the shopkeepers have limited English skills. This has made us hyper aware that all information about BDS in Adelaide to date has been written in English.  Even more disturbingly our researcher discovered that some of the shopkeepers had the erroneous view that they had to accept Israeli products as they were living in Australia and they are extremely conscious that Australia’s government is a great supporter of Israel. It was clear that we had to reach out to this group and give them information about BDS and also reassure them that in a democracy like Australia everyone has the freedom to choose which items they stock in their shops.

We launched our campaign in mid-April 2016 with a walking protest along a busy arterial road in Adelaide which has numerous small grocery shops. We visited twelve different shops and talked to people in the street as well. We wanted to not only educate the shop owners but also the general public. It is important that everyone realizes their shopping dollars give them political power.  All they need to do is look for bar codes beginning with 729, shun those products and this will send a message to Israel.

The reaction to our first protest last week was extremely positive both from the shop keepers and from pedestrians in the street. A shop owner who was quite dismissive of the boycott when it was first mentioned to him earlier in the year by a researcher  has thought more deeply and realized that it is not moral to sell pickles that have been grown on stolen land and watered with water stolen from the Palestinians. Another grocer had already removed Israeli products from his shop and cancelled any further orders. This was a fantastic start to the Israel is in a bit of a pickle campaign and all our activists are looking forward to talking to shop owners throughout South Australia.

In conclusion we see the Israel’s in a pickle campaign as a small start in a completely new BDS direction for us which looks at including non-English speaking people in Western countries in the global BDS movement. The starting point is the small humble dill pickle but the end point will be sustained national actions to educate all Australians across language barriers about BDS.

Margaret Cassar May 2016

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About the author

Margaret Cassar  is the co-coordinator of the AFOPA * BDS  movement in Adelaide, South Australia and a member of the Australian Friends of Palestine Association’s Executive.

 The Adelaide BDS group has protested every week for over 5 years in the centre of Adelaide’s premier retail precinct and at Israeli cultural events. The members of this persistent and peaceful pro-Palestinian group have been inspired by the non-violent protest movement in Palestine at places like Bilin. They have met with considerable resistance from Zionists and Christian Zionists but remain committed to BDS actions until Israel ends its military occupation of Palestine and there is equality and justice for all Palestinians.