Letters - 25 February 2011

From supporting both sides to surveying the business method

Supporting both sides

I think Simon Gray is right in principle but wrong in practice (Supporting both sides, 18 February). I make sure I buy no goods from Israel unless I know that they have not been produced on stolen land. This usually means buying olive oil through my Meeting grown by Palestinian farmers committed to peace.

If you go into a shop where you know some, most even, of the goods are genuine but some are stolen, what do you do? Do you shop regardless and walk away from the implied support you are giving to the thieves? Or do you boycott the shop completely thereby denying the genuine producer of his or her living? I choose to buy, but only those goods I know not to have been stolen or unacceptably produced. If Israeli producers want to sell to me they will have to show me that they produce their goods in ethical and legitimate ways. As they do not I do not buy them; as I refused to buy South African goods during the apartheid years. Just as we demand ethical standards in our investments we should demand ethical standards in the goods we buy.

Yes, we are committed to promoting peace and justice. We will not do so, however, by supporting one side or the other, but by refusing to choose sides and insisting we only do commercial business with those, like Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salaam, who see an Israel/Palestine without sides. Perhaps such a boycott might motivate those within Israel and the Occupied Territories to give Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salaam, or a similar organisation, a role in certifying products as legitimately produced. It would provide a real opportunity to promote peace through enhancing the economic power of the proponents of peace rather than war.

Jim Paris