One afternoon late August in a quiet Irish seaside town, a supermarket worker decided he could no longer separate his job from what he was seeing on his phone.Images from Gaza, with neighbourhoods flattened and families buried, had followed him to the checkout counter.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listAt the time, Israel’s genocidal onslaught had killed more than 60,000 Palestinians.His first act of protest was to quietly warn customers that some of the fruit and vegetables were sourced from Israel. Later, as people in Gaza starved, he refused to scan or sell Israeli-grown produce.He could not, he said, “have that on my conscience”.Within weeks, Tesco supermarket suspended him.He requested anonymity following advice from his trade union.In Newcastle, County Down, a town better known for its summer tourists than political protest, customers protested outside the store.The local dispute became a test case: Can individual employees turn their moral outrage into workplace action?Facing mounting backlash, Tesco reinstated him in January, moving him to a role where he no longer has to handle Israeli goods.“I would encourage them to do it,” he said about other workers. “They have the backing of the unions and there’s a precedent set. They didn’t sack me; they shouldn’t be able to sack anyone else.“And then, if we get enough people to do it, they can’t sell Israeli goods.”“A genocide is still going on, they are slowly killing and starving people …
