Members of the Solidarity Across Land Trades (SALT) trade union this week launched a campaign urging for the full boycott of companies linked with Israel , and urging workers to take action against organisations who they say benefit from the systematic oppression of Palestinians .
On Monday, SALT issued a statement, calling on anyone who works on the land, including tractor drivers, ecologists, gardeners and pickers, to engage in an industrial boycott of Israel.
"As workers in Britain, SALT understands that the settler-colonial project of Israel would not be possible without the support of the British state and its industries, past and present," the statement reads.
SALT also published a list of companies to boycott, who they say are "complicit with Israel’s genocide". They have called all land workers to adhere to the official Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) guidelines and organise in their workplaces.
Some of the companies which are listed include Valley Grown Salads in Essex, Sadeh Farm in Orpington, GRAIN, Rothschild Foundation, Caterpillar Inc, Hazera Seeds, and Bickel Flowers Ltd, among others. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Solidarity Across Land Trades (@_salt_union) SALT, which is a branch of the Bakers Food & Allied Workers’ Union, said they are working to inspire workers across farms, gardens, forests and parks to pressure their workplaces to take part in the boycott.
The call for the boycott comes as Israel continues its onslaught in Gaza and Lebanon, despite theoretical ceasefires in both.
Israel’s war on Gaza, launched in October 2023, has killed over 72,000 Palestinians and levelled entire neighbourhoods, pushed the Strip into a deep humanitarian crisis and displaced the vast majority of the population.
Over 2,500 people have been killed and more than a million more displaced in Israel's most recent war on Lebanon. Israel has also been accused of carrying out "ecocide" by the Lebanese minister of environment.
In a report, the minister, Tamara el-Zein, said that Israel’s brutal aggression has "reshaped both the physical and ecological landscape" of south Lebanon and damaged the country’s natural resources.
"The scale and intentionality of the damage to forests, agricultural lands, marine ecosystems, water resources, and atmospheric quality constitute what must be recognised as an act of ecocide, with consequences that extend far beyond immediate destruction," the report reads.
Lebanon’s Ministry of Environment and the National Council for Scientific Research revealed that Israeli forces have damaged 12,350 acres of forest cover, destroying habitats and causing soil erosion, and that £87 million worth of physical agriculture assets have also been destroyed.
The ministry has raised concerns over the orchards damaged, and the worsening air pollution.
In Gaza, too, Israel destroyed around 48% percent of tree cover and farmland within the first months of the war on the enclave.
Earlier this year, data from the World Health Organisation and UN said Gaza’s natural water resources have been depleted, groundwater has been polluted and desalination plants have been destroyed.
The data further said that 90% of costal dune vegetation, 80 percent of waterbirds around Wadi Gaza and 70% of agricultural pollinators have disappeared.