There's an article in The Guardian about the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and Peace Oil. Peace Oil was set up by the UK charity Charities Advisory Trust (CAT ) as a model for co-existence and cooperation between Jews, Druze, Arab and Bedouin in Israel and the West Bank, and is listed in CAT's Good Gifts catalogue.

The PSC, which is trying to keep all the plates spinning on its Israel boycott, has a number of objections to Peace Oil. One is that buyers of Good Gifts are being misled - they think they're helping disadvantaged people but in fact they're undermining Palestinian olive producers, namely a London-based business called Zaytoun. Another is that there's a lack of transparency about where Peace Oil is sourced and where the profits go - one anonymous activist called Peace Oil a "total con" but didn't say how. There's a disguised boycott call too - the PSC asks "those who want to give olive oil as a “good gift” to choose Zaytoun in preference" until Good Gifts includes Zaytoun in its catalogue. Indeed, the Boycott Israeli Goods campaign promotes Zaytoun and sadly Zaytoun also promotes the boycott.

The PSC support for Zaytoun is good but its case against Peace Oil is bad, causeless and another example of anti-Israel activism being passed off as Palestine solidarity. The criticism of Good Gifts is spurious - the Good Gifts principle is that "your money goes where you choose" - i.e. if you pay for a library for an Indian village, your money will go to that cause and no other. And based on a spot check, Good Gifts doesn't mediate sales for straightforward commercial products like Zaytoun's.

Although the Peace Oil Web site - minimal in all respects - could do with more detail, CAT director Hilary Blume vouches for the provenance of the oil in The Guardian piece. One possible reason for the lack of transparency is that cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians in recent years, largely possible through Oslo, became sensitive again when Oslo broke down - something that boycotters have actively sought to exascerbate. As a result in the occupied territories it is not uncommon for Palestinians who work with Israelis to be strongly condemned as complicit in the occupation.

Hilary Blume doesn't think that Zaytoun is disadvantaged in promoting its oil. Indeed a web search for Zaytoun +"olive oil" returns 44,100 pages whereas "Peace Oil" +"olive oil" returns only 610. If you search for "fair trade" "olive oil", the first page is exclusively Palestinian oils. If you search for "olive oil" Zaytoun is second in the list. The PSC rightly observes that olive oil is the backbone of the Palestinian economy and Palestinian farmers need all the income they can get. But in this enterprise Palestinian olive oil is competing with the world's olive oil, whereas the PSC is only worried about competition with Peace Oil. They haven't offered any findings, if such exist, about, say, the detrimental effects of competition in the ethical market. It's a singular insubstantial objection.

Facts about Peace Oil which go beyond uncritical approval are thin on the ground but one important thing in its favour is that the PSC goes out of its way to say that CAT is "widely and justly respected". The PSC's sole and grindingly predictable problem is with Peace Oil.

Anything that the Zionist Federation could get excited about would be bound to inflame the PSC. Pro-boycotters tend to act jealous when Palestinians cooperate with Israelis and frequently attempt to break things up. Targetting Israeli-Arab-Palestinian cooperation and making an issue out of the only product in the Good Gifts catalogue with an Israel connection is a wedge-driving tactic and part of the general boycott strategy. It's of a piece with their hard work to stop OneVoice dual peace concerts in Tel Aviv and Jericho, and their condemnation of Israeli academics for apathy while simultaneously encouraging and pressurising Palestinian academics to have nothing to do with them.

Actually, we're fortunate to have a choice of good causes. If we want our money to go exclusively to Palestinian livelihoods, and to a company with an excellent environmental and fair trade record, we can buy Zaytoun. If we want the price of our olive oil to support both livelihoods and much-needed normalisation of cooperation between ethnicities in Israel and Palestine, we can take CAT at its respectable word and buy Peace Oil. Sindyanna looks very good too.