An Italian supermarket chain said on Tuesday that it would remove Israeli products and promote “Gaza Cola” to protest Israel’s actions.
Separately, a British chain, Co-op, said it would stop sourcing goods from Israel, Iran and 15 other countries that Co-op called “internationally recognized” rights abuses and violations of international law.
The Italian Coop Alleanza 3.0, which has hundreds of stores in Italy, “decided to remove from its shelves some items of peanuts and tahini sauce produced in Israel and the SodaStream branded items,” the chain wrote in a statement.
This is part of “calling for the immediate cessation of military operations” in Gaza, the chain said, and to protest “the blocking of humanitarian aid destined for the civilian populations of the Strip by the Israeli Government.”
Israel and the United States helped create an aid organization, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has delivered millions of meals and other goods to civilians in a manner designed to sever Hamas’s control over resources.
“In addition to the decision to remove those products from the shelves,” the statement said, “for a couple of weeks now [the chain] has chosen to include a particular product in its assortment, Gaza Cola,” which is “a 100% Palestinian-owned project.” Gaza Cola, according to its website, is a product of “Palestine House, London.”
Neither Israel’s embassy in Italy nor the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI) responded immediately to the announcement.
Davide Romano, the director of the Museum of the Jewish Brigade in Milan, condemned the boycott as discriminatory, noting that Coop Alleanza singled out only Israel.
“Do COOP executives not see the bombings in Ukraine, the public hangings of LGBTQ+ individuals and dissidents in Iran, or the persecution of Uighurs in China?” he told JNS.
Romano also said the reasoning for the boycott was “absurd” since Hamas has refused multiple proposals for ending the military confrontation with Israel.
“This is the real folly of this boycott: Instead of addressing those who refused the truce, they’re targeting those who publicly accepted it. If that’s not prejudice, what is?” Romano added.
Liana Marabini, an author and filmmaker who has focused on Jewish-Catholic relations in the Holocaust, condemned Coop Alleanza’s move.
“What a shame. Antisemitism is now out in the open. It is truly worrying. The insidious Islamization of Europe takes various forms. These behaviors must be denounced, condemned and blacklisted,” Marabini wrote on X.
In the U.K., the Co-op boycotts are to be gradually implemented from this month, including on products from Russia, Syria, Belarus, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Sudan, as well as Israel and Iran. Co-op said in a statement that the ban would cover ingredients for its own-label products as well as whole items.
The decision follows an independent assessment of “where there is agreement across respected assessments, such as by the UN and others, that there is consistent behaviour which would constitute community-wide human rights abuses or violations of international law,” it said.