Which brands sell Palestinian dates?

The medjool date is known as the “King of Dates,” and in the run-up to Ramadan many people will be purchasing them.

In this guide we’ve covered the main brands selling dates in the UK, with a particular focus on those verified as selling dates sourced from Palestinian farms.

A third of dates in the UK come from Israel. We’ve highlighted brands that are definitely sourcing dates from Israel, which several Palestinian human rights campaign groups are calling for people to boycott.

Why buy Palestinian dates?

Palestinian dates are generally considered to be of very high quality.

But in addition to this, people might want to buy Palestinian produce to show support for Palestinian companies and farmers.

These producers have long been under pressure and faced for example land demolitions from the Israeli military. But since October 2023 the situation has escalated, with the Israeli state committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, while violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank has greatly increased.

In the face of such atrocities it can be difficult to know how to show support, and buying produce from Palestine is one small way to take action.

Many dates in Palestine come from the Jordan Valley in the West Bank. Banana and citrus farms once thrived in this area, but Israel’s illegal occupation has diverted fresh water to Israeli settlements, curtailing the cultivation of these crops by Palestinian farmers.

But dates, in particular, medjool dates have continued to thrive in the region and are an important export. 

A third of the UK’s dates come from Israel

Dates are also produced by Israel, and the UK is a key export market.

In 2024 the UK imported £77.3m of dates. 

The main origin of these dates was Israel, representing 32% (£24.7m) of the UK’s total date imports. And, statistics show, Israel is the “fastest growing place of origin” for dates sold in the UK – the amount of Israeli dates in the UK has increased significantly since 2023.

Israel is said to account for 50% of the medjool date market globally.

So if you are buying dates in the UK there is a high chance they come from Israel, and they may be coming from illegal Israeli settlements.

How many Israeli dates come from illegal settlements?

It is estimated that 40 percent of Israeli dates are grown in illegal settlements.

These Israeli settlements on Palestinian land have long been considered illegal under international law, and the UK government has clearly stated that it considers them illegal.

The settlements are communities established by Israel on land in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which is prohibited under the Geneva Convention. Establishing settlements often involves Israeli citizens moving into empty land or moving directly into Palestinian property which residents are forced to vacate. Read more about the issues with settlements in our BDS article.

Despite settlements being illegal under international law, the UK government still allows goods produced on these settlements to be imported into the UK.

Amnesty International has been campaigning for the importing of settlement goods to be banned, stating: “By allowing the importation of settlement goods, the UK government is legitimising and facilitating an illegal enterprise.” Its call received the backing of over 60 MPs but has yet to be successful.

Find verified Palestinian dates

How did we verify which brands are really sourcing from Palestinian-run farms?

We asked any brand claiming to sell medjool dates from Palestine to provide us with official documentation, stamped by the Palestinian Authority. They would only have this if they were importing goods from genuine Palestinian businesses.

We accepted the following documentation as proof:

• Official registration documents
• EUR.1 declaration, which is needed to import goods into the UK and EU. So if a UK company is importing dates from a genuine Palestinian company, it will need an EUR.1 form stamped by the Palestinian Authority.

The table below shows you which brands provided satisfactory documentation to show they are sourcing dates from Palestinian run businesses and farms.

You will find some of these brands selling their Palestinian dates listed on Amazon, but we recommend avoiding Amazon because it is complicit in Israel’s genocide on the people of Gaza. See the table below for where you can purchase these brands.

Verified-Palestinian medjool dates

All these brands provided Ethical Consumer with documents confirming dates were sourced from Palestinian territories.

* Our Israel-Palestine rating assesses the extent to which companies have links to the Israeli state or are supporting Palestine. We have a separate article which explains more about this new rating.

** Affiliate links to these online shops

About the brands selling verified Palestinian dates

Holy Land Dates is based in Birmingham and sources exclusively Palestinian products from Palestinian-owned businesses to support local livelihoods and preserve traditional agricultural practices. It also donates 50% of its net profits to initiatives in Palestine that assist vulnerable communities and social causes.

Rift Valley Farms is a Palestinian family business which grows its produce in the Jordan Valley, Palestine, and has a UK branch of its company so it’s easy to buy their produce here. It grows organic medjool dates and works with approximately forty other Palestinian farmers to source, pick, pack and export dates globally. Rift Valley also works with other Palestinian cooperatives to produce extra virgin olive oil, olives, tahini and more. Director of Rift Valley UK, Sami Alami, spoke at our Ethical Consumer annual conference in 2025 on a panel on consumer solidarity and Palestine.

Sofra is a brand owned by Damasgate, a London-based wholesaler. It sells Palestinian dates under its Sofra brand, alongside a wide range of other Halal and Mediterranean food products. You can order directly from its website, or find its foods in many independent food shops, as well as in ASDA.

Yaffa is based in Sheffield and supports Palestinian farmers by promoting and marketing Palestinian products. It sells a range of Palestinian goods, including dates, olive oil and spices. It also stocks Palestine Cola, the perfect alternative if you are boycotting Coca-Cola over its operations in illegal settlements.

Zaytoun is a social enterprise founded in 2004 to support the resilience of Palestinian communities through fair trade. It works directly with Palestinian producers and prioritises long-term relationships built on transparency, traceability and impact. 100% of its profits are reinvested into furthering its mission. It sells a range of Palestinian produce, including dates, olive oil and soap.

Brands that sell dates from other countries

As well as brands that sell Palestinian dates, there are also companies who sell non-Israeli dates from other countries. 

See the list of these companies in the table below, with their Israel-Palestine rating. 

How we calculated the Israel-Palestine rating scores

Our Israel-Palestine rating assesses the extent to which companies have links to the Israeli state or are supporting Palestine. We have a separate article which explains more about this new rating.

Companies that scored 80 weren’t found to have any links to Israel, but didn’t appear to be taking action to support Palestine such as not sourcing products from Israel.

Here's some extra background on the scores:

• Forest Whole Foods: Lost marks for selling own-brand products (sea salt) from Israel.
• Healthy Supplies: Lost marks for selling own-brand products (salt, couscous and flour) from Israel. These products were listed as “temporarily out of stock” at the time of writing, and it was assumed that they would be restocked.  
• Holland & Barrett: Lost marks because its ultimate parent company, LetterOne Holdings SA, had donated to Genesis Philanthropy Group, which had links to the Israeli state via the Birthright Israel Foundation.
• Keeling’s: Used to source dates from Israel, but stopped sourcing from there in 2024. It appears to have no links to Israel now.
• Sainsbury’s: Lost marks because it sells settlement produce.
• Suma: Scores highly in our Israel-Palestine rating as it sells a range of Palestinian products made by Zaytoun.
• Waitrose: Lost marks for selling products from Israel (Sabra humous is available on its website). Many products from Israel are marked 'out of stock' however, suggesting it may have reduced its product range from there. Waitrose used to source its medjool dates from Israel, but told us that they no longer do.

Boycotting Israeli dates

Many organisations have campaigned about dates that are coming from Israel and Israeli settlements.

These include:

• Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC)
• Islamic Human Rights Commission
• American Muslims for Palestine

See the websites of these organisations for more about their campaigns and how you can get involved.

We found a number of brands sourcing their medjool dates from Israel (see the table below), which you might want to boycott if you support the Palestinian BDS movement.

Campaigns officer at Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Lewis Backon:

"Boycotting Israeli dates is a meaningful way people can act in solidarity with Palestinians facing Israel's genocide, military occupation and apartheid.”

Backon says that when you are looking for medjool dates, always check the label: “If it says 'Product of Israel' or contains the name of an Israeli exporter like Hadiklaim, Mehadrin or Galilee Export, don't buy it”.

Key Israeli dates producers

Hadiklaim is an Israeli exporter of dates. It exports its nine date varieties, including medjool, to 50 countries. According to PSC Hadiklaim sells dates under the following brands: King Solomon, Jordan River, Jordan River Bio-Top, and MyJool. It also sells dates under supermarket own brands.

Mehadrin claims to be Israel’s largest grower and exporter of citrus, avocado, dates, and other fruits and vegetables. 

Galilee Export claims to be the second largest exporter of fresh produce in Israel.

Carmel Agrexco is an Israeli agricultural exporter, selling a range of produce including dates.

An investigation by Jerusalem24, Danwatch and Y+ documented evidence that Hadiklaim and Mehadrin export dates produced in Israeli settlements to Europe. “Investigators managed to interview Israeli settlers in the Jordan Valley who admitted that the dates they farm are exported to Europe via Hadiklaim and Mehadrin.”

Brands that source medjool dates from Israel

The brands listed below were all found to sell dates from Israel according to labels viewed on supermarket shelves and company websites during December 2025 and January 2026. (Note: some also sold dates from other countries.)

Are Lidl’s dates really Palestinian?

We recently came across Lidl selling medjool dates under its own “Deluxe” brand, with the country of origin listed as “Palestine”.

It’s seemingly the only UK supermarket selling own-brand dates from Palestine, so this could be making a positive contribution to Palestine’s economy.

But we didn’t get any response from Lidl when we asked for verification to confirm that its dates were indeed from Palestine. We tried multiple times and through several different channels, but never received an answer, even when they had replied to acknowledge our email.

Until Lidl have provided verification, we recommend buying dates from the brands above verified as genuinely sourcing from Palestinian farmers.

Do barcodes indicate if products are from Israel?

There have long been rumours that you can check whether a product is from Israel by looking up its barcode. This is not true.

As the Scottish PSC have pointed out: “The purpose of the barcode prefix is to indicate the country where the company selling the product is registered, not where the product has been grown or made.”

The barcode on Lidl’s medjool dates, advertised as from Palestine, was 4056489353805. 

When input into the GS1 website, which allows you to search, look up and verify information about any barcode number, the information provided showed that the UK company selling the dates was registered in Germany. The name of the company wasn’t given because it has “requested data privacy”, but Lidl is a German company, so this fits. 

No information was provided about the origin location of the dates, nor the name of the producer.

Labelling on settlement produce

All fresh fruit and vegetables in the UK must be labelled with a country of origin label.

And it is especially important to display the country of origin if not doing so would mislead the consumer – for example, if you were selling pasta with pictures of the Leaning Tower of Pisa on the packaging, but which was made in the UK rather than Italy. Or if a product’s packaging displayed Palestinian flags but was produced in Israel.

The country of origin label is the main way you can tell where a good has come from. 

However, we were informed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) that “dried dates are not covered by fruit and vegetable marketing standards and so do not have any specific quality or labelling requirements under these regulations.” So any labelling of these dates is voluntary.

But, Palestinian human rights campaigners have long alleged that some brands have mislabelled their dates to make it look like they are from Palestine, when they are likely from Israel or from illegal Israeli settlements.

For example, campaign group Resistance Kitchen published a blog in 2025 pointing to what it calls “false labelling”. It showed a box of “Natural Medjoul Dates”, labelled as “Packed for Offa Exotics” and labelled as produce from Palestine. Resistance Kitchen claims to have seen images on the Mehadrin website (an Israeli exporter that has been found to export produce from settlements) advertising Offa Exotics dates, implying that these dates were not from Palestine, but rather from Israel or Israeli settlements. (Since then, the page mentioning Offa has allegedly been removed from Mehadrin’s website).

And according to the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC): “In an attempt to mislead consumers into buying Palestinian dates, Israeli companies are deploying illegal tactics such as stating that the dates are ‘Made in Palestine’ and not revealing company information on the packaging of the date boxes.”

And then there is the issue of settlement goods and how they are labelled. UK and EU labelling laws state that produce originating from Israeli settlements should be specifically labelled as such.

However, concerns have been raised about whether these laws are being effectively enforced.

For example, in 2009 Dr Phyllis Starkey, then a Labour MP, stated the following in UK Parliament: “Significant doubts remain, however, as to whether HMRC is policing the process effectively…It is well known that Agrexco, the major Israeli fruit and vegetable exporter, allows agricultural produce from the settlements to be mixed with produce from within Israel, with the whole then being exported as ‘made in Israel’.”

Throughout all our research we did not come across any goods labelled as coming from settlements, which leads us to wonder whether rules around labelling settlement goods are being adequately enforced.

When questioned on this, DEFRA stated: “Origin information given voluntarily on dried dates must be accurate and reflect that it is from occupied Palestinian territories… Food labelling rules outside marketing standards are enforced by local authorities independently of central government… Where there are doubts about the declared origin of goods, HMRC undertakes checks to verify the origin and ensure fiscal compliance.” 

As there have been concerns raised in the past about the origin of some dates, if you only want to buy Palestinian dates we recommend buying from the brands that we have verified in this guide.

Buying dates from independent shops

There are loads of independent food shops and markets that will sell medjool dates, and some may sell brands not featured in this article.

We can’t research all of these independent shops, so here are some tips if you want to avoid buying Israeli dates:

• Ask the owner of the shop where their dates are from. Talking with the owner about this also makes them aware that this is something their customers care about.
• Look for the brands selling Palestinian dates that we have verified in this article.
• Check to see whether the country of origin label states “Israel”. If you feel comfortable doing so, you could raise the issue with the shop owner.
• Look out for the following Israeli exporters: Hadiklaim, Mehadrin or Galilee Export. If you see these names on the packaging, don’t buy them.
• If the dates have no country of origin, don’t buy them.