SodaStream to Remain Target of BDS Boycott
West Bank factory’s move to Israel proper still won’t satisfy activists
November 11, 2014
Israeli SodaStream factory in the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim. (MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/Getty Images)
Remember SodaStream? After being accused by the anti-Israeli Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions movement of benefiting from the occupation, the home carbonation giant announced that it would shutter its controversial West Bank factory, laying off about 500 Palestinian employees and moving its facility to southern Israel.
Which means that the boycott is over, right?
“Even if this announced closure goes ahead,” said BDS spokesperson Rafeef Ziadah, “SodaStream will remain implicated in the displacement of Palestinians. Its new Lehavim factory is close to Rahat, a planned township in the Naqab (Negev) desert, where Palestinian Bedouins are being forcefully transferred against their will. Sodastream, as a beneficiary of this plan, is complicit with this violation of human rights.”
It’s probably news to the Bedouins, nomadic tribes who have been residents of Israel since its creation and who have sent thousands of their young men to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. It’s probably also news to anyone who for some reason still believes that the BDS movement is only interested in ending Israel’s presence in the West Bank.
Maybe the ‘B’ in BDS now stands for Bedouins.
