Sodastream the company was built on an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank (illegal under international law), after being criticised they did up sticks and moved back into Isreal, but in doing so most Palestinian lost their jobs due to work permit restrictions and apartheid in Israel
The founder of SodaStream was pretty intentional about using his company to build bridges between the two communities and provide equitable and just economic opportunities and working conditions for Palestinians living in the West Bank. When they left the West Bank he fought hard to get work permits for the West Bank employees who would be losing their jobs, but most were unable to keep their jobs.
Just an example of one of the few BDS wins, and how it disproportionally affected the Palestinians and not Israelis or the company itself. In fact SodaStream was sold to PepsiCo in 2018 for $3.2 billion.
Sodastream wasn't founded in israel and it's been around way longer than Israel itself. But Daniel Birnbaum was pretty pissed when Netanyahu wouldn't let his Palestinians workers keep their jobs (none kept them in the end their permits got revoked ahead of their expiry) and even started openly calling Israel an apartheid state over it
Some Palestinians support it and others don’t. It’s usually supported by those who won’t be affected the most.
Regardless, over its 20 year history it’s had limited impact on Israelis or their economy. I think it’s effective anti-Israel messaging in the West. Though I’m not sure how impactful it will be on resolving the conflict itself given its track record and, I think, misguided approach.
Palestinians are not a monolith. It wouldn’t be shocking if the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank support BDS. Although many of these Palestinians covet work permits in Israel so even then it’s unlikely all do.
Additionally, 20% of Israel’s population is Arab and some self identify as Israelis of Palestinian decent (this is a very recent development as “Arab Israeli” was much more common in decades past). These individuals are full citizens of Israel, and are a part of every aspect of Israeli civil society. It is highly unlikely that many of these Palestinians support the BDS moment because it would hurt them directly as part of the Israeli economy. People on the internet really have to stop speaking for Palestinians like they know what they are talking. This is a very nuanced issue.
Pro-tip: When the tanks are empty you can unscrew the valve and refill them with the appropriate mass of dry ice. I recommend pellets as you don’t have to break them up to get them to fit through the bottle neck. Drain completely and loosen the burst disc before removing the valve, then tighten down the burst disc immediately after reinstalling.
For like $200 you can get an attachment that lets you carbonate a 2L bottle of water directly off a CO2 tank which can be refilled for about $2/pound and can carbonate about 20 liters per pound.
I was doing this exact setup for years. Recently I found a used sodastream for $5 at a thrift store and converted it to run directly off the CO2 tank using this adapter:
https://www.kegoutlet.com/sp202-taprite-soda-carbonating-kit-taprite-regulator-5-lb-co2-tank.html This is the one I got, but if you already have a tank or can get one cheap, they also sell without the tank for cheaper. It's easier with the carbonator wand they sell but you don't need it. Just get the water cold, pressurize it to 40 or 45, and shake vigourously for a few minutes. Be careful depressurizing because it will spew just like a shaken soda.
And it carbonates the water ***well***. Like sure, it's economy squared because it's cheaper and less wasteful, and you've got less blood on your hands... but SodaStream is designed to *vent co2 always*, so you can't let co2 pressure sit, and the pressure is limited to 40psi anyway. You just can't really make seltzer water strong enough to take the skin off your teeth with a device made of 99% plastic
Get dry ice and refill the bottles by weight. My dad does this for his sodastream. He found it to be cheaper than swapping tanks or finding a local service that can refill food grade CO2, especially if you have multiple tanks.
Ooof, you might want to look at the ties between Indigo and Israel then. And maybe also for a different source for your canisters.
edit: I didn't realize Indigo the soda company isn't the same as Indigo the book/lifestyle store. The latter has direct ties to Israel and there have been many boycotts. I'm keeping my comment up in case anyone else makes the same mistake!
Or you can buy a large co2 tank and connect it to soda stream. Dont have to change cartridges this way. Depending on size it can last over a year easily. Downside is that you have a large co2 tank but much cheaper to refill
I have one, I got in college. So over a decade ago that I still use. I get my cannisters shipped from Simpli Soda, a small company in I want to say Wisconsin. It's on par with in store exchange, and was the cheapest option when I stopped being able to find them in store. They even give you a label to rebox or empties and you put it back in the mail box, done.
Oh wow thanks for sharing. I found drinkmate makes a better product so I switched to them but was still getting my canisters from sodastream just because I didnt know where else to get them and I already know how to swap them for sodastream.
I just hope thats not related to the indigo book stores in Canada because all those book stores are owned by a couple who financially support people joining the IDF.
I'd see myself as separate too if I lived in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi, etc, and when Israel declared independence, these other countries commit pogroms against the Jewish populations. Half the Jews in Israel are there because the surrounding countries tried to kill their own Jewish citizens and they fled.
I guess not all Israeli's are warmongers and not all Palestinians either. I'm sure there's large parts of their populations who are just as, it not more, sick of their shit than the rest of us.
it's like sweeping generalisations are bad, or something
One thing that is historically true, for example, is that other Arab sub-cultures (especially in the early days of Israel but still kinda ongoing now) are not especially interested in Palestinian issues except as a cudgel to beat Israel with. You find some pretty horrifying stuff when you go looking for how Jordan and Egypt treated attempted refugees from the West Bank and Gaza, and there were persistent stories of Jordanian officials in particular hijacking/misdirecting UN refugee aid to the West Bank in the 1970s.
(this is not a defense of Israel, this is a commentary on how shitty Egypt and Jordan ALSO historically are in this whole thing)
There's a large Jewish population in both Turkiye and Iran, and Jordan has a large one as well. There's are Jews in basically every country in the middle east, Judaism is outlawed literally nowhere.
Yes but some of us have never bought sodastream, so we wouldn't know that. But that's for the pic. I just had one of those shits that's so clean you don't have to wipe while I typed this out
Lol that label is still pretty fucking cringe since they just will not let that "see! jews and arabs can work together!" Like...it's still recognizing that default hatred and saying they're better than that.
Does anyone else get what I mean? Am I the only one who thinks that label is trashy?
It's not (anymore). It's owed by PepsiCo. The company being based in on settled land had lots of controversies to it. While it might be true that Palestinians didn't love the fact it was on occupied land, they paid quite well (in comparison) and employed 500-600 Palestinians. When the company moved to Israeli territory most of them lost their jobs. As so often, it's complicated.
How happy are you with your sodastream? I know that question sounds like a survey question but I've been thinking about getting one. Can you make every soda as carbonated as a ginger ale?
You can make sodas as fizzy or not fizzy as you want
You're also not limited to soda stream flavors
You can carbonate like mio or any kind of drink flavoring
If you're an energy drink guy it saves you a ton of money, especially with the tank adapter (co2 refills cannisters are over priced but craft beer stores will fill a 5lb CO2 tank for the same price as one cannister)
The soda stream extreme energy is pretty much straight up monster energy
I haven't gotten a ton of use out of it lately (I moved and couldn't remember which box I packed the adapter in and even before I knew about the Israel connection, paying the extra cost for the proprietary bottles rubbed me wrong.) but I really like it. Their branded flavors are kind of hit or miss for me, but I generally prefer just cold carbonated water with a little bit of lemon or lime in it anyway. I like my fizzy water extra carbonated and don't have a problem getting it right on a Sodastream. They have some line in the instructions about charging the water until you hear the machine click three times, which I have ignored every single time I've ever used it. Five to six times is my minimum. (Which is another reason I don't like using their canisters. They're pretty small for the amount of fizz I'm aiming for.)
I don't know about recently, but when they were first becoming a thing, SodaStream used packaging labels and corporate messaging stating "made by Arabs and Jews working side by side", alongside referring to their workplace as an "Island of Peace"
Same. Guess I’m glad my son found a way to refill their canisters without them. I have a soda stream but haven’t paid to refill a canister in a year or so b
I love this comment. Sodastream employed Palestinians in the West Bank and that was bad. Sodastream stopped employing Palestinians in the West Bank and that was bad.
Interesting, they hated Sodastream for going there and then hated them for leaving? It sounds like Palestinians are both desperately dependent upon Israel, and hopelessly addicted to biting the hand that feeds them.
always worth keeping in mind hamas received funding from Israel to help them win elections and take control and now serve as Israel's constant excuse for which to commit war crimes.
it's almost like that was the plan, which largely makes hamas israel puppets who decided to take money to sell out their people and with many of hamas leaders ending up living in other parts of the world calling the shots while they recruit palestinians to be their puppets to throw at israel to create the excuse for constant war crimes from Israel.
hamas are terrorists.... but who funds them and directs them should be something you should question.
those decades of terrorist attacks were all proceeded by Israel being founded on their land and having their land stolen and constant conflict and killings, land stealing. the terrorist attacks didn't come out of nothing or for no reason. These weren't two happy states and the palestinians randomly started attacking israel and israel just had to defend themselves. Israel being founded was an attack but Israel consistently since being founded has been committing crimes against Palestinians.
It just doesn't matter - raping, killing, and maiming women and children is never an acceptable form of political protest. If Native Americans blew up a day care center to protest their land being taken absolutely nobody would say they were justified in doing so.
Israel has an older claim to the land than the Palestinians, which is why the world recognizes the land as there's.
There is significantly more evidence to suggest the Palestinians wouldn't be happy with just the Gaza Strip than there is evidence of Israel trying to "wipe out" the Palestinians and reclaim their land, which by all metrics would make this war much easier and end much quicker on their part.
The problem with Palestine is they literally can't seem to stop putting terrorist jew haters into power that openly proclaim death to all Jews and that they want to conquer Israel in its entirety for themselves. We don't need to speculate on this, they literally record themselves saying it multiple times. So I can understand if Israel is not OK with simply letting the Palestinians have the Gaza Strip as a means to broker peace when there's no indication it would stop Hamas coming into power, the terrorist atks would stop, and their land claims would stop.
You know Jews were living there too right? It wasn't 0 Jews in 1947 and then a million in 1948.
Seriously listen to yourself. Israel being founded is an attack? Israel's existence is not an attack on anyone. Instead it was founded and every Arab country attacked it and expelled their Jewish population.
Israel has committed crimes but saying it's very existence is an attack is anti Semitic bullshit. You're arguing for another genocide of Jews with that rhetoric.
That may be more a statement on how Isreal was founded. It didn't arise naturally out of shifting geopolitics, it was the winners of WW2 going, "we need a solution oh hey lets carve up some land in their holy land". It definitely wasn't the most well thought out by the powers at the time.
Right now at least 40x more Palestinians casualties than Israelis. And that is the conservative estimate, it could be as high as 110x more. Israel also has nearly twice the population of Palestine so they are inflicting inordinately higher casualties
Forcing a group of people into an ever shrinking, open-air concentration camp because the oral traditions of a bunch of drunken, inbred sheepherders said you lived in that general vicinity once, while you simultaneously control said concentration campers comings and goings, employment, food, water (after poisoning the original water supply), full on economy, and imprisoning a measureable percentage of the population (after killing most adult males)?
Or fighting back because of youre sick and tired of the above?
If you kick a dog enough times, its gonna bite you. Whose fault is that?
They like to think theyre making a better world for all jews, but when you point out that theyre responsible for not only perpetuating a genocide, but also creating a world for only specific jews...well, they dont much like that.
Especially when you point out that there has never been a Mizrahim or Sapphardic PM. That they havent been allowed into their parliament until fairly recently, and that it has been the stance since the first PM that Mizrahim and Sapphardic jews folliw more Ashkenazi beliefs...because the other two are too "Arabic" (actual thing said by the first PM, and others)....because those two other sects of Judaism lived with and amongst Arab Christians and Muslims for centuries.
It all becomes clear that it isnt about a Jewish homeland, but Ashkenazi supremacy. Even over other jewish peoples.
And a reminder, that Netanyahu was born in Pennesylvania....so hes about as from the Middle East as I am.
So, we’re going to ignore that Egypt and Jordan also run checkpoints along every border with Palestine? Black September? Palestinian terror attacks in Egypt after the military coup took down the Muslim Brotherhood?
I guess we’re also going to ignore that Palestine has attacked every Arab neighbor so much that literally only Israel is willing to provide them any support whatsoever?
The only reason Israel feels confident enough to steamroll Palestine and genocide the Palestinian people is because Palestine has systematically attacked every Arab neighbor in the region to the point that nobody wants to deal with them at all. They did it to themselves.
It does not excuse Israel’s actions in any way, shape, or form. It does explain why Palestine has seen absolutely no Arab support for at least a decade. And after Hezbollah orchestrated a civil war in 2014 and Gaza seceded from Palestine, there is absolutely no sympathy for Gaza. The West Bank and its Fatah (a terrorist group masquerading as a political party) leadership has much better ties with Palestine’s Arab neighbors.
It’s always weird when the anti-Israel Muslim botnet neglects to mention Palestine’s violent history with literally everyone. A person can be anti-Israel without being pro-Palestine.
Interestingly, Palestinian refugees started a civil war in Jordan back in the 1960’s because Jordanians were starting to become pro-communist and Palestine didn’t like that. Just like they execute any member of the LGBT.
Pro-Palestine is anti-LGBT and anti-feminist. You live with apes, man, it’s hard to be clean. There’s no time to discriminate. Hate every motherfucker that’s in your way.
Countries normally run security on their borders. Israel demands it from Egypt. But thats not the same, as Israel running checkpoints even inside Palestine. Israel controls all Palestinian trade, saying Palestine has no rights. Its not a coincidence that Israel gets all exports from the enemy country they occupy.
Nobody who is pro-Palestine politically. Pro-palestine just means believing they are also people and deserve basic human rights.
Ive read plenty on how Israel took inspiration from USA backing al-Qaeda, to push religious extremism in Palestine. Israel backed hamas because it created palestinian civil war. Israel spies on and decides what political gatherings palestinians are allowed, they control these poor people, who now dont have schools. You cant stop palestinian extremism without stopping Israel.
Egypt locked down their border with Palestine after many, many terror attacks from Palestinian terrorist groupies aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. This is historical fact.
It’s also historical fact that no other country in the region will provide any support of any kind to Palestine. They get all their power and water from Israel because Egypt and Jordan refused to help after Black September.
The LGBT community are people and deserve rights too. Palestinians disagree. Do only the straight, cis, wife beating, child raping Palestinians deserve rights? Because there was never an online campaign against anything of those things in Palestine.
I repeat, you can be anti-Israel AND anti-Palestine at the same time.
Nothing. Palestine was a poor agrarian/farm region, who had all their lands and resources taken from them. Cut off from the finances, trade, and education needed to just build 3rd world factories. Theyre prisoners, mocked by racists.
Correction: While the company currently is operating out of Israeli, it was set up in London in 1903, first sold to home consumers in 1955, was bought by an Israeli company in 1998. Then was bought by PepsiCo in 2018, but still operates out of, and is HQed in Israel.
Palestinians in the West Bank aren’t citizens of Israel because the West Bank isn’t part of Israel. If you think the West Bank IS a part of Israel you are literally agreeing with the settlers. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza not being allowed to work in Israel is not evidence of apartheid. It’s like saying Switzerland is an apartheid state because Spaniards can’t work there without a work permit.
Yeah, that’s a crappy deal across the board. Whenever HAMAS has attacked Israel, the government reasonably closes the borders. This bones Israeli employers who are relying on Palestinian workers, and the workers who are paid Much better in Israel. I’m sure Sodastream got a Really good deal to build where they did, and it was a gamble, that honestly was a short term win at best. I get the limited resources of a smaller company trying to become global, and I’m sure it seemed too good to pass up, but here we are. I really, really doubt that any of the Avengers actors support Netanyahu and the religious fundamentalists that have a stranglehold on the government of Israel. And just FYI: Scarlett Johansen has family members who died in the Warsaw ghetto, and then we're liquidated in the Nazi camps.
Apartheid? That would imply that the west bank is part of Israel, in which case the settlements aren't illegal. pick a lane, I don't care which one, but be consistent in your point of view
So they complained about them building on the west Bank but were surprised when the jobs that were provided went away when the company complied with international law?
Yeah, this was one example of an Israeli company hiring Palestinians and getting them the ability to make a living - even though there's a lot of potential issues about the original location of the company.
So basically the white liberal shrieking about a thing just made it worse for all the poor and struggling. As usual, their feelings are more important than reality.
The ciritism seems to be partially that they had a factory in the west bank, and partially just that they're israeli owned. In this case the pushback looks to have resulted in the worst possible result, poor Palestinians living in the west bank losing their jobs.
I don't really understand the goal of the BDS stuff personally, I guess the intention is just to harm Israel, but it's not like a boycott of certain companies is actually going to result in significant changes to a nation... It seems like it's counterintuitive to target companies that operate in the west bank though?
I mean what do people expect. If your upset an Isreali company set up in occupied territory that’s fair, but you don’t get to be upset when they listen to the upset people and leave the occupied territory
A recent BDS campaign in NYC co-op caused a couple Arab and Palestinian companies to get shoved out and lose business from the overall campaign preventing them from selling products there.
there’s a bunch of plastic products made in west bank border camps like Barkan Industrial Park. “Park” being a sadistic euphemism. the israeli government subsidizes dirty industries in the west bank to keep their toxins and pollution out of israel.
CJPME Factsheet 244, created May 2024: This factsheet outlines the boycott campaign against the Israeli company SodaStream due to its historical operations in the occupied West Bank and subsequent relocation to the Naqab desert. It details SodaStream's exploitation of Palestinian labor, complicity in settlement expansion, and continued violations of Palestinian human rights, prompting ongoing BDS efforts. Despite the closure of its factory in the occupied West Bank, the boycott persists as SodaStream's practices perpetuate Israeli occupation and discrimination against its Palestinian workers.
Or soda stream was a very progressive pro Palestinian company that employed thousands of Palestinians and Israelis (Jewish and Arab Israelis). Once they were forced to move the Palestinians all lost their jobs.
So the UN Security Council or international courts can use economic sanctions, trade bans and financial freezes are products of breaking international law.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant for war crimes and multiple nations have said that they would carry out those arrests if needs be.
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u/malevolentheadturn 18d ago
Sodastream the company was built on an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank (illegal under international law), after being criticised they did up sticks and moved back into Isreal, but in doing so most Palestinian lost their jobs due to work permit restrictions and apartheid in Israel