While activists insist no dip has been harmed, supermarkets are keeping Obela products in back rooms or surrounding them in A4 signage warning of CCTV surveillance.
Hundreds of protesters are pawing “like zombies” at supermarket windows in Christchurch. Managers peep from behind walls of security guards. Police are visiting the homes of protesters bearing trespass notices. Mountains of letters from Nelson and beyond are arriving at the Foodstuffs head office in Māngere. Around the country, unauthorised stickers are appearing in supermarkets. Home printers are whizzing through ink to keep up with demand. Frazzled security guards are ranting about property damage. Cleaners are scraping stickers off supermarket signage.
In Wellington, people with banners and megaphones are storming the aisles. They’re filling shopping baskets and abandoning them on the floor. Security guards and police are sprinting from one supermarket carpark entrance to another to barricade them. Impassioned speeches are being made through PA systems. The audience hold supersized props, banners and placards covered in red handprints. New A4 laminated signs on supermarket fridge shelves claim CCTV is operating. Staff are asking people holding flags to hand them over or leave. Stock is being sequestered to the safety of backrooms, then reappearing on shelves.
A national movement is using formal and informal channels to request discussion. A giant corporation is refusing to budge. The issue? A $4.59 tub of hummus.
You may know Obela hummus for being smooth or for its 1kg buckets. It’s also the primary boycott target on the BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) Aotearoa website, and the BDS campaign called “NObela” is quickly gaining traction. Sold under the brand name Sabra in other parts of the world, and also under Copperpot here, Obela is half owned by Israeli company Strauss Group. On the Strauss Group website, a message pops up: “hundreds are held hostage by Hamas,” it reads, and then a live counter ticks the days, hours, minutes, and seconds since October 7, 2023. On the partnerships page, Friends of IDF – a charity that supports Israeli soldiers on the frontline, is listed.
Last week, New Zealand joined 124 countries in supporting a UN resolution that demanded Israel end “its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” by this time next year. Foreign minister Winston Peters told RNZ that while he had previously spoken in support of Israel’s right to self-defence, “there comes a time when you cannot maintain that argument, when so many innocent people become the victims of your defence”.
Obela products are stocked throughout New Zealand in New World, Woolworths, Pak’nSave, Four Square and FreshChoice. Each Foodstuffs store is owned by an individual franchisee, but the head office decides on the core range of products to be stocked nationwide.
For months, customers and supermarket staff have been finding unauthorised stickers on pottles and buckets of Obela products – Tzatziki, guacamole, margharita dip, pesto dip, and, most of all, the hummus. First they were simple, and obvious – white rectangles with bold black letters stating: “Buying this product supports genocide.” Sometimes there was an image of a watermelon slice, or a QR code too.
Over the months, the stickers have become incredibly sophisticated. Now, at first glance, they pass as part of the packaging, or a special sticker from the supermarket. It isn’t until you squint and actually read what they say, “Free Palestine, boycott Obela”, that you realise they’re a form of protest. There’s also near-perfect knock-offs of Woolworths’ “Special” wobblers, which start with “Warning: Purchasing this product helps fund the murders against Palestinians.” Some of this extracurricular material is being distributed through the BDS Aotearoa website, and handed out at weekly Saturday rallies.
Foodstuffs is not keen on the unsanctioned additions. In a statement provided to The Spinoff, a spokesperson said, “it’s never OK for people to tamper with products in our stores. This includes applying their own stickers.” Products that have been tampered with are removed from sale, “creating waste and inefficiencies”. They acknowledged negative feedback over Obela products and said they “understand the importance of the issue” and that Foodstuffs “want to assure customers their feedback is being taken seriously as we continue to evaluate the products we stock.” That’s not to say stickering will be tolerated – people caught tampering with products will be trespassed, the spokesperson said. On social media, the suggestion from groups which support BDS is to “avoid stickering your LOCAL supermarket”, because activists need to eat too.
BDS Aotearoa spokesperson Samer insists no dips have been damaged in the course of their campaign. “We specifically make sure,” he says. Samer says that Foodstuffs is breaking its own policies by stocking Obela. Though much of Its Responsible & Ethical Sourcing Policy is aimed at practices within supplier companies, it does state, “Foodstuffs is committed to the protection of human rights”. Samar points to the ICJ’s July ruling which found Israel breaching international law multiple times, including through its occupation of Palestinian territories. He argues that procuring products from companies complicit in violations of international law does not fit with protecting human rights. “All we’re really asking Foodstuffs to do is to follow its own policies.”
Equally, the campaign is about educating the public. “I do believe that most kiwis would share our views on not funding groups that violate international law,” says Samer. He believes that once the public is informed of the connection between their purchases and Israel, “support will be inevitable.”
Samer, a Palestinian kiwi, was born in Auckland and raised in the Middle East. Some of his family lives in the occupied West Bank where escalations in violence and human rights violations are currently being reported. “This is why we do what we do,” he says. But it’s not just some stickers that have motivated supermarkets to utilise A4 printers, backrooms, cleaners, trespass notices, security guards and the police.
The activists’ first call to action was outside of the stores themselves. Foodstuffs supermarkets have product complaint forms, and BDS Aotearoa rallied supporters to fill them out (complaining about Obela products) and submit them to their local supermarkets. Forms were sent around by email, filled out during meet-ups and brought along to rallies. The response (or lack thereof) from supermarkets has been “shameful”, says Samer. For the most part, there’s been silence. In a few instances, supermarkets responded with “a generic copy and paste response” which promised to look into the concerns. “The information is very easily available,” says Samer. But when pressed for follow-ups, “our questions largely went ignored.”
Similarly, a formal letter sent to Foodstuffs months ago by the organisation Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), has gone unanswered, says John Minto, national chair of PSNA. Ben, a PSNA member says, “the supermarkets have stonewalled us”.
And so, things have escalated. For the past four Saturdays, the weekly rally in Christchurch has marched its way to supermarkets. On August 31, it was Pak’nSave Moorhouse, and it was “mayhem”, says Ben. Inside the store, protesters wheeled around trolleys full of Obela hummus, people filled out complaint forms on the walls, a man with a megaphone screamed “Boycott Israel”. Outside, “a hundred protesters… pawing at the windows like zombies”.
The next two weeks, New World Durham Street was the target. The first time they arrived, on the 7th, the manager peeked out from behind a wall of security guards, says Ben, and timidly explained that they didn’t sell Obela at his store. “Of course, this was a lie.” Speeches were made through a PA system in carparks. The next week, police and security guards blocked three separate entrances, and then the carparks, says Ben. Requests to speak to managers were declined. Another protester, Will, says the group found their way in, with a supersized Obela hummus bucket, about two metres wide. Inside the container were figures wrapped in white shrouds, reminiscent of some of the 34,344 Palestinians killed by Israeli attacks. The protesters, many wearing keffiyeh, chanted, “Obela hummus tastes like mud, don’t dip your food in Gaza’s blood!”
At the same time in Wellington, the group Falastin tea collective entered New World Chaffers bearing a painted banner stating “No to Israel genocide – Boycot Obela hummus.” All the Obela hummus was gathered up and placed in shopping baskets. In its place, BDS fliers were stuck on the shelf. With the help of megaphones, the group chanted “Free, free, free Palestine!” until they were escorted out by staff.
“When a community feels so passionate about a specific topic and their concerns go unheard, it’s almost like you’re leaving little choice for them but to create some noise just to get your attention,” says Samer.
Since these actions, it appears that the supermarkets are getting protective over their hummus. A photo has been circulating social media in which A4, colour printed, laminated signage surrounds the hummus in one store. A yellow triangle with an image of a security camera sits above the words, “CCTV in operation”. Captioning suggests it was taken at Pak’nSave Kilbirnie. The Spinoff was unable to ascertain whether there were additional cameras trained on the dip area of the fridge, or if the A4 printouts were a stand-alone security measure.
Immediately after the first protest at Pak’nSave Moorhouse, PSNA members reported that Obela products were taken off the shelves there and New World Durham Street, says Ben. He says members have also seen the hummus missing from Pak’nSave Northlands and New World St. Martins.
At FreshChoice Lichfield, Obela hummus was temporarily replaced with an A4 print out with the words, “If you are looking for any of the Obela product range, please ask a staff member and they will retrieve your desired product.” Ben says people hungry for “abysmal hummus” had to ask for it “like it’s a grubby pack of menthols”.
Though the products were off the shelves, it’s not quite the response the activists were after. It appears to be temporary. “Amusingly, we were later informed by members that these supermarkets are removing the Obela products each Saturday morning, in anticipation of our weekly protest,” says Ben. Both Will and Ben say police officers hand-delivered trespass notices to their homes. “I have two myself, bless their generosity,” says Ben. Will is less gracious, “they’re trying to intimidate us out of peacefully protesting.”
Still, there’s no suggestion that the NObela campaign is losing steam anytime soon. Will says he’ll find another way to get food now that he can’t shop at his local supermarket. Samer says the campaign is a long term plan, and that “it’s working”. Ben is expecting an acceleration in activities – more stickers, more letters, more protests, more social media. “Obela goods might end up in the dog food aisle,” he says, “pity the pooches.”