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SodaStream? Make it mainstream!

My worlds were colliding. Because of SodaStream, suddenly my Israel life was being linked and discussed in the context s of the Super Bowl, at which my team happened to be playing. My Broncos and the Israeli Palestinian conflict?

On principle I am opposed to the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (BDS). Regardless, I honestly don’t get the boycott of SodaStream. If anything, SodaStream should be what is unifying people across the political spectrum.

Because of the strange colliding of my worlds my interest in SodaStream was peaked. I started reading up and learning about this company. Its soda is healthier, less sugary than the popular sodas we are accustomed to, plus its product is environmentally friendly.

By now we all know that SodaStream employs hundreds of  Israelis and Palestinians (almost 1,000 Arabs, about half Israeli Arabs and half Palestinians from the West Bank), with equal pay and benefits for all.

SodaStream’s wages for Palestinians far exceed those of the average Palestinian — that is, if employed at all. Unemployment in the Palestinian territories is painfully high.  It is not only the wages paid by SodaStream that are good.The work relationship between all of these employees, Jewish and Arab, officially from enemy nations, is said by Palestinian themselves to be like family.

While everyone else is busy talking about peace, SodaStream is doing peace.

Want to know what the point of the fight for a Palestinians state is? Take a look at SodaStream.

It is the face of what peace looks like.

Let’s make SodaStream go mainstream.

Let’s make it Bed Bath and Beyond’s bestselling product.

SodaStream has now become a symbol of Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation.

But because the SodaStream factory is in Mishor Aduminm (technically “Area C”), disputed territory that in a final status agreement of a Palestinian state is expected to revert to Israel, all people are focusing on is the location of the factory.

In an era when human rights violations and abuses take place daily in factories in China, Oxfam does not celebrate SodaStream as a model of human rights factory employment.

Instead, Oxfam, is boycotting and demonizing SodaStream.

Oxfam is talking about settlements. And that the land SodaStream is on is Palestinian.

Aside from the inaccuracy of classifying Mishor Adumim as a settlement on illegal land; aside from the fact that SodaStream is not a settlement, but a factory in an industrial zone; and aside from the fact that SodaStream is doing so much good in leading the way for collaborative Israeli and Palestinian employment and prosperity, so what if the factory is on Palestinian land?

What if tomorrow there is a two-state solution and Mishor Adumim is Palestinian? So, an Israeli can’t have a company in a Palestinian state?

What, a Palestinian state needs to be Judenrein?

Arabs profit from working in Israel — why can’t it go the other way around, too?

People, Israelis and Palestinians, are being treated well. They are happy at SodaStream, grateful for the job and the healthy, positive work environment.

But the human rights groups would have the factory shut down and these people, including the Palestinians they are supposedly advocating for, out on the street, or better yet, dependent on their charity and goodwill. What kind of “human rights” is this?

There are so many companies in the world to go after who are getting it wrong. But SodaStream is getting it right. It is a beacon.

For human rights groups to go after SodaStream exposes their real motive — being anti Israel.

Wanting to see the Israelis gone from what others deem to be settlements, even when they aren’t. Because, to some, the entire State of Israel is one big settlement.

Going after good guys like SodaStream just shows that nothing Israel or Israelis do seems ever to be good enough.

It makes you wonder if an agreement can ever be reached when the well being of human beings is so casually tossed aside for a political motive.

You don’t agree with settlements? Fine. You want to try and find a solution to the current political conflict in a two-state solution? Fine. But to be spreading hate for Israel, fixating on settlements to the point of damaging the well being of the Palestinian themselves when there is no actual settlement even involved, brings the credibility of the anti-settlement cause into sharp question.

I am worried. This boycott of Israel and Israeli products is disturbing. To cripple a state, as occurred in South Africa, brings on pressures that yield results. But boycotting and destroying Israel in the name of the moral high ground is backward, when it is places like SodaStream that are being boycotted.

If it weren’t sad it would almost be funny.

Because SodaStream are the “good guys.” As the saying goes, SodaStream is part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Peace doesn’t fall from the sky. You want to know how peace comes? From things like SodaStream, or the Rami Levy supermarket chain. These places give us a glimpse of peace: normal, everyday life, shared everyday activities, safely, by both Israelis and Palestinians. This is what peace should look like.

So, SodaStream — make it mainstream.

Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountain Jewish News


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Tehilla Goldberg

IJN columnist | View from Central Park


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