I have on my desk a bottle of Palestinian beer. The importers of Taybeh Beer are interested in SOAS stocking it. We can’t, due to buying restrictions via the NUS, but politically it might be a bit dodgy anyway. Because the distributor si giving some of their profits to charity. But are splitting those donations one to an Israeli charity, and one to a Palestinian one.
In the companies press they suggest they are not being political in distributing the beer. It is just a really nice beer (which I hope to be able to test some time soon). But the very act of distributing it is necessarily political. The brewery is in Ramallah, the company has been massively hit by the intifada. That said this bottle was brewed on licence in Belgium. My Palestinian colleague was very keen on having a bottle, he hasn’t had it for ages. But was less enamoured with the non-interventionist politics of the distributors. The actual Taybeh beer website is a bit more honest about a potential political effect of their product – “Political independence depends on economic independence”