Apartheid Free Zones (AFZ) are an exciting global initiative that will help to transform our local communities into spaces of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality.

For over seven decades, the Palestinian people have faced harsh injustices: dispossession and ethnic cleansing, colonisation, war crimes, apartheid, mass incarceration, enforced exile, a 50+ year occupation, and a 10+ year siege of Gaza.

In 2005 over 170 Palestinian civil society groups issued a call for international support for a global campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) to pressure Israel into ending its apartheid system and occupation of Palestinian lands, ensuring equal rights for Palestinian citizens of the Israeli state, and respecting the right of return for Palestinian refugees. This campaign draws inspiration from the similar worldwide campaign boycotting South Africa during the Apartheid era.

Apartheid Free Zones are an answer to this call for solidarity.

By pledging to support the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign that aims to help Palestinians to win their freedom, any organised group of people can publicly declare themselves to be an Israeli Apartheid Free Zone. This can include shops, restaurants, bars, businesses, community organisations, trade unions, NGOs, sports clubs, arts groups, collective spaces, political organisations, student unions, and other groups, all taking a stand for human rights.

Apartheid Free Zones Scotland is a grassroots initiative, building from the bottom up, with the ultimate aim of making all of Scotland into an Apartheid Free Zone.

Across the world, spaces such as shops, cafes, community centres, cultural institutions, local businesses, are declaring themselves to be Israeli Apartheid Free Zones. They are pledging to publicly support the boycott of Israel.

As more and more organisations within a city, town, village or community declare themselves to be Apartheid Free Zones, it will help to build a real and deep culture of solidarity within our communities.

An organisation or business that wants to become an Apartheid Free Zone commits to supporting the principles of the BDS movement, to boycotting Israeli products and institutions, and international companies that profit from Israeli human rights abuses, and to publicly declaring that it is an Apartheid Free Zone.

Apartheid Free Zones allow all kinds of organisations – from a community group to a business to trade union branches – to show their support for the Palestinian struggle for their basic rights, and encourages individuals to build support among organisations in their community.

We ask you to support the Palestinian people in their fight for freedom and justice by signing up and saying ’YES TO BDS!’

Apartheid Free Zones Scotland is an initiative of Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

You just need to sign up using this the form to let us know. We will provide you with stickers and information sheets, and add you to the list of AFZs in Scotland.

Whatever your business/group/organisation/space/festival/etc. is, becoming an AFZ means that you are pledging to support the principles and tactics of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. This means refusing to buy products or services from Israel, or from companies that are complicit in Israeli human rights violations and the occupation of Palestine.

You can read the BDS Call from Palestine online here www.bdsmovement.net/call – but its essence is this:

We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.

These non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognise the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall

2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

Becoming an AFZ also means that you agree to publicly be named as a supporter of the campaign. In the case of a business/space/group/office etc. – you agree to have your business/space/group/office etc. name and address appear on both the Scottish and International Apartheid Free Zone websites and associated maps. Your personal details – name, phone number, email etc. will not be made public and will be securely stored. In the case of individuals, no details will be made public. You also agree to receiving occasional communications from the AFZ Scotland campaign.

The short answer is ‘yes and no’.

In general, you are asked to avoid Israeli products and services when and where possible, as revenue from these helps to fund the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people. In general, this is a boycott of all Israeli goods and services, not merely those that originate in Israel’s illegal settlements in Palestine – the settlements are merely symptoms of the wider problem of Israeli colonialism and apartheid, and cannot be divorced from the state that creates and sustains them.

You are also asked to refuse any and all funding that may be offered from the Israeli state, or its representatives such as ministries, embassies, universities, state-run cultural funds – including for artistic or humanitarian ventures; the Israeli state often uses cultural and humanitarian work to whitewash its oppression of Palestinians.

You are also asked to avoid using the products or services of any company that is found to be a ‘complicit company’, in other words, a multinational company that is profiting from the occupation and colonisation of Palestine.

The nature of global capitalism today, and the successes of our international campaigning work, mean this is an ever evolving list. Thus should any business cease being complicit – as companies such as CRH, Veolia, Orange and others have done – we will let all AFZs know as soon as we can. Similarly, we will inform AFZs if other companies move into complicity.

We will provide up-to-date lists as best we can, including when you first sign on.

The BDS Movement does not endorse such maximalist boycott tactics or lists. The reality of global capitalism today means that virtually every multinational or a subsidiary operates in most countries, including in Israel. It would be impossible to boycott all these companies while continuing to lead the kind of life most people lead. BDS advocates tactical boycotts that will help to move the campaign for justice forward.

As Nelson Mandela once said, “boycott is not a principle, but a tactic depending on circumstances”.

No it does not. This is a misunderstanding of the campaign; we are not asking you to throw out your laptop, your car, your insurance policy, a bag of babywipes or anything else, or indeed to dump stock. What we are asking is that when the time comes to restock or upgrade, renew something, you make a conscious decision not to purchase from an Israeli or complicit company.

In this scenario, you might also consider writing to the previous supplier and letting them know that you have chosen not to go with them again, or not to purchase that particular item, and outline the reasons why.

You can get in touch using this form or call/message/WhatsApp Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign using this number 07931200361. If you can’t get us, leave a message and we’ll call back.

We believe in being honest with supporters. There are potential consequences, though in our opinion and experience they are minimal and short in duration. In the past, Israel lobby groups have activated their online army of trolls and propaganda warriors to launch defamatory attacks on businesses and organisations that have declared that they support the BDS movement. In general this has manifested itself as nasty comments and fake reviews being left on social media and review sites, over a short period of time, along with empty threats about ‘boycotting the boycotters’. Ultimately, these had little to no effect on the business or organisation, even in the short term – the Israel lobby doesn’t have the power to launch a serious or sustained boycott campaign in Scotland as they are a relatively fringe movement when compared to the widespread public support the Palestinian people enjoy here.

Israel’s attacks on Gaza since October 2023, described by the International Court of Justice as ‘plausible genocide’, has mobilised millions of people around the world in support of the basic human rights of the Palestinian people. This movement has seen a surge in support for BDS as a means of holding the state of Israel and complicit companies and institutions to account, when our governments and institutions have failed. The BDS Call was made precisely because of this failure and is an appeal for civil society and people of conscience to make change. There is no doubt that by taking the step to be an Apartheid Free Zone in Scotland, you will attract the support of those who stand for equality, justice and freedom for all people and who wish to see businesses, organisations, and groups within their communities do the same.

Yes we do. You can get information packs by getting in touch using this form or call/message/WhatsApp Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign using this number 07931200361.

Absolutely not – just as boycotts of South Africa were not ‘anti-white’, boycotts of Israel are not ‘anti-Jewish’. The BDS movement seeks to pressure the Apartheid State of Israel into adhering to international law and allowing the Palestinian people to exercise their full inalienable rights – and uses the long-established non-violent methods of boycotts, divestments and sanctions as the means to apply this pressure.

Complicity, not identity

The BDS movement’s focus is not Jewish people, whether as a whole or individually. The BDS movement explicitly rejects all forms of racism, bigotry and discrimination, including antisemitism and Islamophobia. Many Jewish groups and Jewish people support the BDS movement, including Jewish-Israelis in the ‘Boycott From Within’ group, and Jewish Voice for Peace in the US.

The BDS movement focuses on complicity, not identity, and targets are chosen based on their relationship to the Apartheid State of Israel and its ongoing violations of human, civil and democratic rights, and its breaches of international law. From the protests of the Irish Land League – where the word boycott was originally coined – to Ghandi’s anti-British goods boycott, to the Jewish anti-Nazi boycott, to the Montgomery bus boycott, to LGBTQ+ anti-homophobia boycotts and the fossil fuel divestment movement, such tactics have repeatedly been used to attempt to end situations of injustice. Perhaps the most famous, and effective, use of a BDS campaign was the global campaign that helped to bring down the Apartheid regime in South Africa – a campaign after which the Palestinian BDS movement models itself.

Apartheid Israel’s apologists will often say that the BDS movement ‘singles out’ Israel. In fact, the opposite is true – despite its atrocious human rights record and constant violations of international law and UN Resolutions, Western governments’ special relationship with Israel ensures that it is ‘singled out’ for protection and impunity. US aid, EU trade agreements and research grants, a thriving arms trade, and friendly diplomatic relationships are the order of the day. No Western state has moved to sanction Israel in any way for its crimes – yet the EU, US and UN have instituted both multilateral and unilateral sanctions against a wide range of countries and other entities, including Palestinian political and armed groups. There is a fundamental imbalance here that BDS, by mobilising global civil society, seeks to redress.

Of course, this does not mean that the BDS movement opposes boycotts, etc. of other states, institutions or entities that are involved or complicit in serious human rights and international law violations. It simply means that the Palestinian BDS movement’s goal is the liberation of the Palestinian people and its activities are focused on helping to achieve that goal. There is absolutely nothing stopping individuals, communities, spaces, entities or states engaging in other boycotts of whatever they feel merit such action.

Certainly, owing to (often deliberate) misreporting, some sincere people may be confused about the targets and tactics of the BDS movement. Overwhelmingly, however, those who make claims about BDS being ‘antisemitic’ are doing so in an attempt to discredit the movement and isolate Israel from both political criticism and effective action to compel it to end its injustices.

No problem! If it’s a question about Palestine, whether history or current affairs, you might find the answer on our ‘Palestine’ explainer page. If it’s not answered there either, please feel free to contact us using this form!