We Believe in Israel (WBII), Stop the Hate UK and UKLFI, have today launched a national email campaign calling on members of the public to write to the Co-operative Group's leadership and demand that they reject Motion 13, recently passed at the Co-op’s AGM.
Motion 13 promotes false, defamatory, and racially charged claims about Israel and seeks to impose a discriminatory boycott on Israeli goods. It falsely accuses Israel of mass civilian killings based on discredited and speculative data, and it echoes extremist narratives that have no place in a responsible ethical framework.
We believe this motion violates the Co-op’s own governing rules (Rule 32.5), which prohibit the adoption of proposals that incite racial or religious hatred or risk bringing the organisation into disrepute. We further believe that it constitutes a dangerous precedent of institutional bias that isolates the UK’s Jewish community and undermines the Co-operative Group’s stated commitment to fairness, equality, and transparency.
WBII is calling on its members, supporters, and the broader public to take action now.
🔹 Send an email to Co-op management using our ready-to-use campaign tool.
🔹 Call on Co-op leaders to reject Motion 13 and confirm that no boycott of Israeli goods will be implemented.
🔹 Pledge your support by joining our mailing list to stay updated on this and other advocacy efforts.
“Boycotting Israel while ignoring far more egregious human rights abuses elsewhere is not ethical trading—it’s discriminatory activism masquerading as morality.” – WBII
If the Co-op proceeds to implement this boycott, we will respond with a sustained boycott campaign of our own against their stores, services, and affiliated brands.
Take action now. Help us ensure that antisemitic double standards are challenged wherever they arise.
👉 Send Your Email
Our Model Letter
We are writing to express our deep concern regarding the recent passage of Motion 13 at your Annual General Meeting on 17 May 2025. This motion contains demonstrably false, defamatory, and inflammatory claims which promote racial hostility against Israelis and Jews. Its approval not only undermines the Co-operative Group’s values but also violates your own governing rules—specifically Rule 32.5(a) and (b)—which prohibit proposals that incite racial or religious hatred or that may bring the Group into disrepute.
We urge the Co-operative Board to reject the implementation of this motion. We, as longstanding members, customers, and stakeholders, strongly oppose any discriminatory boycott of Israeli goods, and we reserve the right to boycott the Co-operative Group’s stores and services should this policy be enacted.
You have previously stated—most notably in correspondence with UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI)—that Co-operative policy is guided by consistent ethical principles, and that any change in sourcing arrangements “should not be specific to one country or geography” but rather “applied consistently across different countries where conditions and human rights records do not align with our co-operative values.”
If such consistency is indeed your guiding principle, then singling out Israel while continuing to trade freely with states engaged in far graver and systemic human rights violations—such as China, Iran, or Syria—would constitute a gross double standard and a politically motivated breach of your stated values.
We are grateful to UKLFI for highlighting the factual errors and misrepresentations within Motion 13, the most serious of which we summarise below.
1. False and Misleading Death Toll Claims
The motion falsely claims that “at least 186,000 Gazans – mainly women and children – had died” as a result of Israeli military operations, citing The Lancet (20 July 2024). In truth, this figure did not come from a peer-reviewed article but from a speculative letter to the editor. The letter projected, without empirical foundation, a possible future death toll and has been dismissed by scholars such as Professor Mike Spagat as lacking credibility and rigour (AOAV, 2024).
2. Inaccurate Characterisation of Casualties
The motion asserts that the majority of those killed were women and children. Even the Hamas-run Ministry of Health no longer makes this claim. Their own data (as of 22 March 2025) shows that of the 50,021 deaths recorded:
- 16.6% were women
- 31.2% were “children” (a category that includes male teenagers, many of whom are active combatants)
- 7.7% were elderly
These figures, adjusted for gender distribution, indicate that women and children together constituted less than 50% of the fatalities—far below their proportion in Gaza’s general population (74%).
Multiple credible sources, including UKLFI and independent analyses, have demonstrated that a significant proportion of “children” killed in the conflict were male teenagers recruited by Hamas and other armed factions (UKLFI Briefing Note). As of March 2025, 65% of deaths among 13–17-year-olds were male (Aizenberg, X), strongly indicating their participation in hostilities.
Moreover, the overall figures provided by the Hamas-controlled Ministry have been repeatedly exposed as inflated, unverified, and manipulated for propaganda purposes (Henry Jackson Society).
3. Mischaracterisation of Israel’s Conduct
Contrary to the motion’s insinuations, Israel has made extraordinary efforts to minimise civilian casualties in an urban combat environment deliberately engineered by Hamas to increase civilian suffering. These efforts have been acknowledged by leading military and legal experts (Newsweek, 2024).
The Co-operative Group now faces a pivotal decision. To implement this motion would be to embrace a campaign based on misinformation, antisemitic tropes, and racial hostility. It would set a dangerous precedent and alienate a large portion of your membership, customers, and the wider community.
We therefore call on you to:
- Reject the implementation of Motion 13;
- Reaffirm your commitment to ethical and consistent sourcing policies;
- Publicly clarify your position in light of the facts now available.
Should the motion be implemented, we will consider all available legal, consumer, and public advocacy options, including the launch of a sustained boycott campaign against the Co-operative Group.
Yours faithfully,
