Employees and Customers Agree: It's Time Trader Joe's Stop Carrying Israeli Products

CODEPINK Action

Everyone's favorite store, Trader Joe's, claims to support local and organic, so why are their shelves stocked with products from Israel—a country committing genocide with U.S. funds? By stocking Israeli products, Trader Joe's supports a system that is currently enacting forced starvation on an entire population. 

Recently, CODEPINK's D.C. team took a trip to their local Trader Joe's and found several Israeli products, ranging from feta cheese and Bamba puffed peanut and corn snacks to Dorot garlic and ginger cubes, stocked on the shelves. They took the time to call out the hypocrisy and spoke with the manager. In doing so, they found solidarity with customers and employees alike.

"Trader Joe's claims it is "transforming grocery shopping into a welcoming journey full of discovery and fun," it is certainly not fun to discover that—one year into this genocide—they are still carrying Israeli products," said CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin. 

Calls for Trader Joe's to discontinue selling products from Israel have been going on for years. In 2009, activists focused on the store's product, Israeli Couscous. In a campaign spearheaded by the U.S. Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, Trader Joe's was made aware not only of the unethical practices of Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine but also how products like "Israeli Couscous" were inherently racist, stating: 

"products such as "Israeli Couscous" are offensive as they allow a state that was created sixty years ago, through dispossession and illegal occupation, to claim a type of Couscous that was traditionally produced by Palestinians and other Arabs for generations. This is racist advertising for cultural theft and does not befit a store that wishes to promote diversity, equality, or sustainability."

Today, other culturally appropriated Israeli products remain. 

Since last October, Israel has been committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, which has included indiscriminately bombing schools, hospitals, and refugee tents, engineering a famine that has killed numerous children through malnutrition, and murdering over a hundred journalists. 

Millions of people around the world are horrified by the genocide that Israel has been inflicting on the people of Gaza, as well as the violence it is spreading throughout the Middle East.

Numerous other institutions - including corporations, colleges, cities, and even countries - have done the humane thing and cut economic ties with Israel. It is a moral and legal obligation for Trader Joe's to do the same. Israel cannot benefit economically from us while it is committing crimes against humanity.

Join us in demanding Trader Joe’s Stop Carrying Israeli Products!