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War in the Middle East reverberates in unlikely places, like Ireland. That country is weighing a controversial bill that would ban trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Ireland would be the first country in the Western world to do so. And the last time Ireland led a boycott, it changed history. NPR's Lauren Frayer begins our story in rural county Wexford, south of Dublin.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: Old black-and-white photo.
MARY MANNING: That's me there.
FRAYER: This is definitely the 1980s.
MANNING: Yeah. Now look at the hairstyles.
FRAYER: In 1984, Mary Manning was just out of high school, working a grocery store cash register and annoyed by all the rules.
MANNING: Just stupid things, like if you were 3 minutes late, you got a warning.
FRAYER: So she and a few other cashiers picked a political fight.
MANNING: In fairness, we didn't know anything about South Africa at the time. We hadn't a clue what was...
FRAYER: Kind of just to spite their bosses, they decided to boycott goods from South Africa because it was under apartheid at the time. Mary was first to refuse to ring up a customer who was trying to buy South African grapefruit.
MANNING: I just said to her, like, I'm sorry, we are boycotting South African goods in solidarity with the people of South Africa. She was grand. She just said, OK, and she put the - there was two grapefruit, and she left them on the checkout. But the manager, who was behind me, saw.
FRAYER: Her manager suspended her, so Mary went on strike. Her co-workers joined, and their union backed them up.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: Mary, what gives you the right to tell people what they should and shouldn't buy in the shop?
MANNING: Well, we're not saying that people should or shouldn't buy it, and we're saying that we should have the moral right not to handle the goods.
FRAYER: That's Mary 40 years ago, being interviewed in the picket line. Reflecting back, she says that's where she came of age.
MANNING: It was only as we were standing on the picket line that we started to read what was happening in South Africa. It just became much, much more important to us.
FRAYER: They stayed on strike for nearly three years and were nicknamed the most dangerous supermarket workers in the world, until 1987...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: After their lengthy action over South African goods...
FRAYER: ...When not only did their supermarket give in, their entire country did. Because of this boycott, Ireland that year banned imports from apartheid South Africa. It was first in the Western world to do so.
MANNING: Kind of remodeled the whole kitchen when we got here.
FRAYER: Yes.
Mary went back to private life - marriage, kids, a cute rescue dog in a house near the sea south of Dublin. But now she's back on the streets 40 years on, lending her clout to another boycott movement.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MANNING: I haven't done this in a long time, so...
(CHEERING)
MANNING: ...Free Palestine.
(CHEERING)
FRAYER: Ireland is now poised to become first in the Western world to ban imports from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Those are settlements the United States, the United Nations and the European Union all consider illegal.
CONOR O'NEILL: And in practice, what that would mean is that if you're a supermarket here and you're stocking dates that have been produced in illegal settlements, you'll be asked to pull them from your shelves. If you refuse to do that, you could be fined or sent to prison.
FRAYER: Conor O'Neill is a Christian Aid worker who helped draft the Occupied Territories Bill. We met at the gates of Ireland's parliament, where the bill is expected to pass this year and where citizens have been gathering every month to rally for it...
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD #1: (Chanting) The Occupied Territories Bill.
FRAYER: ...With Mary Manning's example in mind, he says.
O'NEILL: There is a street in Johannesburg named after Mary Manning, and I think the stance we took as regards apartheid South Africa in the '80s is really to the front of public consciousness here.
FRAYER: Last year, a poll found 71% of people in Ireland now think Israel is an apartheid state. Now, Israel does not see itself that way, and Ireland didn't always. Many Irish supported Israel in its early years. But perhaps because of Ireland's own history of British occupation, as Israel annexed and occupied more Arab land, Irish public opinion flipped, and it's now one of the most pro-Palestinian countries in the world.
DANA ERLICH: Why now? This is one of our hardest year in history, and we've seen Ireland take more and more anti-Israeli steps.
FRAYER: Dana Erlich is the Israeli ambassador to Ireland. We spoke as she was packing her bags. Israel is closing its embassy here because since the October 7 Hamas attacks and the Gaza war that followed, Ireland has recognized Palestinian statehood, joined a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice and said it would arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he ever sets foot on Irish soil. The ambassador says those actions go beyond policy critique.
ERLICH: That has crossed the lines to incitement. So when you are solely focused on punishing the only Jewish state, that is an antisemitic move.
FRAYER: The ambassador says Jews here feel vilified and that Israelis who came to work in Ireland's tech sector are leaving. Dublin is decked with Palestinian flags. People wear buttons that say, pass the Occupied Territories Bill. The bill's only domestic critics - there are very few - even many of them say they don't disagree with it. They just think it's unnecessary. The bill will not affect the $6 billion in annual trade Ireland does with Israel proper. It only applies to Irish trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, which is...
DANIEL MULHALL: Very, very, very little, if any at all. This would be more of a symbolic gesture rather than...
FRAYER: Daniel Mulhall was Ireland's ambassador to Washington during the last Trump administration when this bill was first drafted. It sparked concern among U.S. companies, many of which have branches in Ireland that also do business with Israel and with settlements. Mulhall convinced President Trump not to retaliate against Ireland back then, when it was only a draft bill, but when it passes...
MULHALL: There are particular risks for a trade-dependent country like ours when you have the imposition of tariffs and trade wars breaking out all over the place.
FRAYER: Ireland is already in Trump's sights because of its trade surplus with the U.S. Why rock the boat, Mulhall asks, for a bill that's only symbolic?
FRANCES BLACK: For one reason - because I firmly believe that this is the right thing to do.
FRAYER: Frances Black is the Irish senator who wrote this bill, and she's worried because even though all of Ireland's main political parties support it, they're spending a lot of time revising and amending it, tweaking the language to make sure it doesn't clash with EU trade law, and votes have been delayed.
BLACK: Will they carve out exemptions, or are they going to water it down? I don't know. And the Irish people will be very, very upset by this. I can guarantee it.
FRAYER: Because they so overwhelmingly support this.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: A 20-year-old cashier said she wouldn't handle South African fruit.
FRAYER: Back in the '80s, after Mary Manning refused to sell that South African grapefruit, she was blacklisted. For years, no one in Ireland would hire her. But news of her strike reached a certain prisoner who'd been held on Robben Island, and when he was freed, he thanked her.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NELSON MANDELA: The sacrifices they underwent, so many thousands of miles away from us.
(APPLAUSE)
FRAYER: And when Nelson Mandela died, Mary was a guest of honor at the funeral in a giant football stadium in Johannesburg.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Long live the spirit of Nelson Mandela. Long live.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD #2: Long live.
MANNING: And it was just unbelievable. It was unbelievable to be there - like a kind of, you were right in what you did. You know that kind of way? - 'cause we were kind of - you - not doubt ourselves, 'cause we knew what we were doing was right, but no one seemed to kind of believe that what we were...
FRAYER: She says it took years for her to feel vindicated. Back then, Mary Manning was an outlier. This new boycott has widespread Irish support, but if it passes, it could make Ireland the outlier. Lauren Frayer, NPR News, Dublin.
(SOUNDBITE OF JHENE AIKO SONG, "B.S. (FEAT H.E.R.)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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