Video: e-commerce site Etsy bans Palestinian items, lets pro-genocide/far-right stay up

Call for boycott after creators provide examples of ban and of items promoting Israel’s genocide that are still up for sale

E-commerce site Etsy appears to be banning Palestinian and pro-Palestinian craft items from its website – while allowing items promoting Israel’s genocide, or far-right figures, are allowed to be listed for sale.

Now-former seller Hudadoesart has called for a boycott of the site after it banned her and other makers’ pro-Palestine stamp badges, watermelon pins and other items, yet allowed t-shirts and other products glorifying Israel’s violence or lionising far-right figures such as the so-called ‘Tommy Robinson’ to be listed, despite Israel’s war crimes, including genocide and the mass slaughter of civilians, medics, aid workers and journalists and its starvation of Gaza:

An email from the firm to one seller, Zeindee, claimed that her items were banned because they ‘support or glorify acts of hate or violence’. Yet items glorifying Israel’s occupation were still for sale on the site:

Huda’s and Zeindee’s items are not the first to fall victim to Etsy’s censorship. In July this year, seller dhikrdesignsco reported a similar unaccountable ban:

And a year ago, the firm was reported to have banned the pro-democracy, anti-apartheid phrase ‘From the river to the sea’:

Israel lobby ‘lawfare’ groups have reportedly pressured Etsy to ban pro-Palestine merchandise – pressure to which the company appears to have buckled, unless it has its own ideological reasons for the ban.

Skwawkbox contacted Etsy’s press office yesterday with a request for comment. At the time of writing, the company had not responded.

SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount as it has to be entered by us). Alternatively, if you prefer to make a one-off or recurring donation by simple card payment, please use the form below:

Thanks for your solidarity so Skwawkbox can keep doing its job of inconveniencing the right and helping to build the left!

If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.