In the past few days, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) have launched a new campaign, Don’t Buy Apartheid, which calls on all individuals, shops, restaurants, cafés and venues to take two actions in solidarity with Palestinians: boycotting Israeli produce, and boycotting Coca-Cola. Through these two simple steps, we aim to link millions across Britain to the enduring struggle for freedom and justice in Palestine.

Nearly 20 years ago, over 170 Palestinian civil society organisations – including all major trade unions, as well as women’s groups, students’ unions, cultural associations and refugee networks – issued a historic call. It urged people around the world to build boycott and divestment campaigns, and demanded targeted sanctions like arms and trade embargoes, in order to end the complicity of governments, corporations and institutions in Israel’s regime of oppression.

Inspired by the boycott campaigns that helped to end apartheid in South Africa, the Palestinian call for Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) recognises that in the face of the historic and ongoing complicity of states like Britain in Israel’s colonial oppression of Palestinians, it is ordinary people who shoulder the responsibility to oppose injustice.

The BDS movement provides us with a strategy and set of tactics to engage in meaningful action to isolate Israeli apartheid and therefore help create the conditions for Palestinians to succeed in their struggle for freedom.

Meaningful solidarity with Palestinians could not be more urgent. Palestinians in Gaza continue to face Israel’s genocide. In recent days, Israel’s carpet bombing has seen the killing of hundreds of Palestinians, including entire families, often as they slept. It has burned the ceasefire agreement in front of the eyes of the world. For over 2 weeks, it has reimposed a complete blockade on the Gaza Strip, denying the entry of all food, water, fuel and medical supplies. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Palestinians are resisting Israel’s daily military invasions, and an escalation of land grabs and ethnic cleansing.

In addition, Palestinians face the real prospect of Donald Trump enabling Israel to carry out a further crime of historic proportions, the ethnic cleansing of the entire population of the Gaza Strip. In the West Bank, Palestinians are resisting Israel’s daily military invasions, and an escalation of land grabs and ethnic cleansing.

The atrocities committed by Israel since October 2023 have given rise to a mass movement in solidarity with Palestinians. Millions in Britain have taken to the streets to oppose Israel’s genocide. The sustained nature of the national demonstrations in London, each attended by hundreds of thousands of people, reflect the huge chasm that exists in British society between ordinary people sickened by Israel’s crimes and the political establishment which arms, funds and backs them.

Using the tactics outlined in the 2005 BDS call, we can channel the deep anger felt by millions into mass campaigns to end British complicity in Israel’s regime of oppression – such as the Don’t Buy Apartheid campaign.

Israeli agricultural export companies like Hadiklaim, Mehadrin and Edom, which ship fruit and vegetables to supermarkets in Britain, operate facilities such as farms and packing houses in illegal Israeli settlements based on stolen Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank. These companies are participants in Israel’s colonisation of Palestinian land and theft of Palestinian resources. When out shopping for groceries, check the label of fresh produce like avocadoes, herbs, peppers and dates. If it says ‘product of Israel’ – don’t buy it.

Coca-Cola also enables Israel’s land theft and military occupation. The corporation’s exclusive franchisee in Israel, the Central Bottling Company, also known as Coca-Cola Israel, owns a regional distribution centre and cooling houses in the illegal Atarot Settlement Industrial Zone, constructed on the stolen land of 3 Palestinian villages in East Jerusalem. The settlement is part of Israel’s strategy to isolate, fragment and force out Palestinians from the city, while expanding its illegal settlements.

Boycott Coca-Cola and its brands including Schweppes, Fanta, Sprite, Innocent and Costa Coffee. The rise of non-complicit Cola alternatives, such as the Palestinian-owned Gaza Cola, which donates profits to rebuilding hospitals in Gaza, demonstrates that Coca-Cola is easily replaceable by individuals and businesses.

The mass boycott of South African produce was at the heart of the anti-apartheid movement in Britain. It intertwined the struggle against apartheid with the everyday lives of ordinary people. Shopping for groceries became a reminder of the injustice, and a site in which people could act to support the struggle against it. The boycott campaign provided a way for people to intervene in, and effect, events happening thousands of miles away. It was therefore a first step for many who went on to take up deeper organising roles in the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

Combined with cultural and sporting boycotts, and eventually international sanctions, the boycott of South African goods undermined the economic foundations of apartheid, helping to isolate the South African regime, creating the conditions that saw the struggle of Black South Africans to end apartheid succeed.

Inspired by, and learning from, this history, we can take the Don’t Buy Apartheid to many millions by having a regular presence in every community, holding information stalls and protests at supermarkets to demand that complicit goods are taken off the shelves. In addition, we must make the case to local shops, cafés and venues to join the boycott and display a campaign poster. Every high-street in Britain can become a visual display of support for the Palestinian struggle for freedom and every shopping basket free of Israeli goods and Coca-Cola a site of protest and act of solidarity.