Israel’s fruit exports are being hit as European retailers respond to consumer-led BDS boycotts without public announcements. Right, so Israeli fruit exporters are losing routine access to European supermarkets, with orders cancelled, buyers pulling back, and harvests being left unsold. Mangoes and citrus that used to move as a matter of course are now only being bought when there’s no alternative, and in some cases they’re not being bought at all. That removes a very basic assumption Israel has relied on for years, which is that civilian trade just carries on regardless. Because once food stops moving, you’re not talking about messaging or reputation management anymore, you’re talking about a system cracking at the seams. And that’s where a lot of confident claims quietly fall apart, most notably in the face of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaigns. The idea that markets are neutral. The idea that outrage stays online. The idea that this can all be compartmentalised until the headlines move on. You don’t lose fruit exports because of a bad tweet. You lose them when buyers decide the origin itself is the risk, and when that decision has already been implemented in contracts and sourcing rules. That’s the bit that doesn’t get walked back. Right, so the Co-op has changed its sourcing policy and has begun removing products that are clearly and solely sourced from Israel, after a member-backed push and a board-level decision to treat “community-wide human rights abuses” and breaches of international law as a reason to end sourcing relationships. That is just one for instance. That is not a protest on the street, it is a retailer deciding that Israel is now a reputational risk inside the everyday mechanics of food supply, and it does something that political statements never do, because it shifts a moral argument into procurement rules. An argument into something meaningful. When a supermarket does that, it does not need to persuade the whole country, it only needs to instruct buyers, rewrite contracts, and let the rest of the industry infer the direction of travel. A boycott campaign can launch a protest one day and the next day things return to normal, but it can also lead to a sourcing policy examination and a subsequent shift, the real power of BDS is more than the protest, it is the knock-on effects such demand can lead to.