Sample letter to shopping outlets allowing Dead Sea Spa products to be sold on their premises.

Dear Manager,

I am a regular shopper in your store and I am deeply concerned that you are allowing the Dead Sea Spa company to trade on your premises. The products sold on these stalls come from illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. I would like to ask you to remove these Israeli products and the companies that sell them, since they come from a country which continues a brutal and illegal military occupation of the occupied Palestinian territories. Much Israeli produce comes from illegal settlements on Palestinian land, although it is routinely mislabelled as coming from within Israel's borders.

Even before the latest mass killings of the population of Gaza, the Palestinians have suffered long enough. In 1948 colonising Zionist forces initiated a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Palestinian population, resulting in the forced expulsion of over 750,000 people from their homes to facilitate the creation of the State of Israel. In 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This occupation is now in its 42nd year, the longest military occupation in the world. This occupation is in contravention of numerous international laws and conventions. Human rights organisations such as Amnesty International have noted that over 4,000 Palestinians, most of them unarmed civilians and including over 1000 children, have been killed in the past 6 years by Israeli forces. Israel has destroyed thousands of Palestinian homes and crucial civilian infrastructure, including power plants, roads, bridges, sewage and telephone networks. Restrictions imposed on the movements of Palestinians and Palestinian goods have made normal life impossible.

B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights group, describes the situation as bearing "clear similarities to the apartheid regime that existed in South Africa". The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, John Dugard agrees, stating that the system of control that Israel uses is effectively a system of apartheid.

Last year, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions recognised Israel's apartheid nature, and recognised the role Irish workers and unions played in promoting the boycott of South African goods when it was under apartheid rule. As a result, they voted unanimously to support a full boycott of Israeli goods, joining in the growing international call for a boycott.

This boycott is called for by Palestinian civil society. Boycotting Israeli goods offers a non-violent tactic towards change. It is both a moral and effective means to achieve a just and peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I sincerely hope that your centre will stop allowing these traders to operate, and look forward to your reply. However, if you choose to support Israeli war crimes, and allowing the sale of goods from illegal Israeli settlements, I'm afraid I will have to take my custom elsewhere.

Yours sincerely