Several banks finance Israeli settlements, weapons, and military, which contributes to human rights abuses in Palestine.
In this article Marlous Veldt and Jasmine Owens assess which UK current account providers are most and least complicit.
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“At least do us no harm”, says founder of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, Omar Barghouti. Part of what he means by this is for everyone to stop making purchases from or investing in companies that actively support Palestinian human rights abuses.
But even if we switch to a brand that isn’t complicit in apartheid, it may be complicit in other types of harm to people, the planet, and other animals.
For this article, we've used recommendations from our ethical shopping guides to enable people to find alternatives to boycotted brands that are a little, or a lot, more ethical than competitors in their sector. For our guides we analyse company performance against issues such as climate, workers’ rights, animal rights, tax conduct, excessive directors’ pay and more.
The boycotted brands we’ve found alternatives to – and why
We chosen a select number of boycotted brands to find alternatives to, but there are dozens more that could have been explored.
The leading authority on brands to boycott in support of Palestine is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee, otherwise known as the BNC. The BNC is a coalition of Palestinian organisations which since 2005 has led impactful boycott campaigns against complicit brands, and it sits at the centre of the global BDS movement.
We prioritised providing alternatives to brands that:
- the BNC is targeting
- are relevant to UK-based consumers
- operate in sectors we have researched for shopping guides at Ethical Consumer.
Brands that support Palestine
It's rare for big brands to actively support Palestine. Brands that support Palestine vocally are more likely to be small companies. If you want to support businesses that have a strong stance in support of Palestine, you could buy from Zaytoun or the Palestine Solidarity Campaign shop, or subscribe to Ethical Consumer to help fund our research.
In this article, some of the alternative brands we suggest might still be connected to Israeli apartheid in some way, and it's rare for any big brand to have no links at all to Israel. But all of these alternative brands are less complicit in Palestinian human rights abuses than the brands facing boycott calls, and none are being targeted by Palestinian human rights campaigners.
