Guest Column: Boycott SodaStream for peace

• By Richard Colbath-Hess, Joseph Gerson, Barry Phillips, Nancy Phillips and Nancy Ryan

  
  Posted Apr. 6, 2015 at 3:25 PM
  
  CAMBRIDGE

  A year-and-a-half ago, several residents of Cambridge, Somerville and the surrounding area began conversations with the management of TAGS Hardware in Porter Square in order to share information with the retailer about the growing international boycott of SodaStream products.

  SodaStream, which manufactures home carbonation systems for sparkling beverages, has built its factory in the Jewish-only Israeli settlement Ma’aleh Adumim in the occupied West Bank, where more than 40,000 Israeli settlers live on land expropriated from several Palestinian farming villages and from Bedouin communities. The settlement, which is off-limits to Palestinians unless they obtain permits, effectively blocks Palestinians in much of the West Bank from access to Jerusalem. And, like the 120 other Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, it is deemed illegal under international law.

  TAGS is, to our knowledge, the only locally owned retailer in Cambridge that stocks SodaStream. (The product is also sold locally at Staples and Best Buy, large corporations whose product decisions are typically addressed at the national level.) The boycott against SodaStream is part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that, originating in Palestine, was inspired by the historic use of boycott to help bring an end to apartheid in South Africa. Relying on economic activism at the consumer, institutional and governmental levels, the movement is seen as a nonviolent means of pressuring Israel to end its brutal West Bank Occupation.

  Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Boston and the Cambridge office of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), local sponsors of the SodaStream boycott, have provided substantial information about SodaStream’s unethical practices — among them, labeling their product “Made in Israel” when in fact it is made in the occupied West Bank. Palestinians employed at settlement businesses are subject to religious discrimination as Muslims. They are vulnerable to exploitation because they lack legal rights and because of the Israeli travel permit system; these permits can be revoked in the event of workplace disputes. Moreover, SodaStream, in paying taxes to the settlement municipality, is helping finance the town’s further development and expansion, thereby helping to displace a new generation of Palestinians.

  Since the start of the discussions with TAGS, more than 700 local shoppers — including hundreds of devoted TAGS customers — have signed a petition urging this retailer to stop selling SodaStream because it is complicit in and profits from the Israeli occupation. JVP and AFSC have also made local efforts to persuade large retailers like Target and Macy’s to stop carrying the product. Macy’s ceased carrying SodaStream products last year.

  In a major victory for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, SodaStream announced last year that it would close down its West Bank factory and rebuild it in Israel. However, so far they have made no moves to do so, which is why boycott pressure remains important. Furthermore, they plan to build the new factory in an area of the Negev desert to which Israel has forcibly relocated traditionally agricultural Palestinian Bedouin communities.

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