On Boxing Day pro-Palestine demonstrators met customers at the Zara sale in the Westfield shopping centre, in Stratford, east London. They were not there to wish them the compliments of the season.
‘Bombs are dropping while you’re shopping’, they chanted, as police stood by to make sure the protests did not turn violent. ‘Zara is enabling genocide’, their placards read.
Quite what they wanted bargain hunters to do about the Israeli forces bombing the Gaza Strip, they never said. Lobby their MPs? Politicians are on their Christmas holidays. Join the Palestinian armed struggle? It was unclear whether the shopping centre had a Hamas recruitment office.
But on one point the demonstrators were clear: no one should be buying from Zara. Even though the fashion chain has not encouraged Israel’s war against Hamas, profited from it, or supported Israel in any material way, it was nevertheless ‘exploiting a genocide and commodifying Palestine’s pain for profit’.
Zara, in short, has become the object of a paranoid fantasy: a QAnon conspiracy theory for the postcolonial left.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in