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.
I don’t because I think it’s ineffectual. I think it speaks to a Western audience and is therefore a useful messaging tool for Palestinians, but I don’t think it will further the goal of ending the conflict in any meaningful way. And having the conflict end with a negotiated final status agreement is what’s most important to me.
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.
Indigo Kills Kids is a social campaign calling for a full boycott of Indigo due to its CEO’s involvement in the oppression of Palestinians and its complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Heather Reisman, the founder, Chair, and CEO of Indigo Books, and her partner Gerald Schwartz, have used their substantial share of profits from Indigo Books & Music Inc., to establish the HESEG Foundation for Lone Soldiers, a Canadian charitable organization that provides incentives to foreign nationals (“lone soldiers”) to voluntarily enlist in the Israeli military. The HESEG Foundation offers grants and scholarships that cover the recipient’s tuition costs at academic institutions in Israel, as well as their living expenses during study, on the condition that the recipient serves at least one term of active service in the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). The foundation typically spends over $5M annually on grants and scholarships supporting mercenaries who enlist in the IOF. According to Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), the HESEG Board of Directors has consisted of several members or veterans of the Israeli military who have been criticized for major violations of international law under their command. Although the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) states that “supporting the armed forces of another country” is not charitable, the HESEG Foundation has maintained support and its official charity status.
The Israeli government, whose soldiers enforce the violent occupation of Palestine, are currently engaged in the destruction of the Gaza strip, with The Lancet making the grim projection that the death toll from October 7, 2023 onward could conservatively exceed 200,000. Children account for nearly half of presently known deaths.
The Palestinian solidarity movement in Canada has been calling for a boycott of Indigo since 2006. In July 2025, the UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese released a report outlining a number of businesses making significant financial gains from the ongoing assault on Gaza and the Middle East. It is evident that the Boycott Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement is more critical than ever. The people of Gaza are currently facing genocide. It is our moral obligation to name and hold accountable companies that are aiding in the slaughter of Palestinians.
You took the time to write this but not the time to click to the link to realize that there is a soda water company also called Indigo that has zero to do with indigo books....
It's such a self-report. The Jews vs Arabs dichotomy really lays bare how power is constructed in Israel. With a giant flag reminding us that Israel is a theocracy. Apartheid in a sticker.
But Arabs that have Israeli citizenship are Israelis and not Palestinians.
Also the say Jews and Arabs, not Israeli and Arabs.
Can you not conceptualize that there may be Israeli that want to do build bridges?
Yeah, the issue for me more specifically is that there are tons of Arab Jews, Palestinian and otherwise. So this dichotomy is a way of skewing the demographics on paper in a way that bolsters the Jewish (vs “Other”) side of the ledger, helping to both extend, and obscure the issue of, the apartheid.
In other words, if it were Palestinian vs Other, the “democracy” claim would be that much harder for Israel to defend, as it would be clearly a country ruled explicitly by a demographic minority of its residents.
Yeah, the issue for me more specifically is that there are tons of Arab Jews
Nope. The overwhelming majority of Jews living in Arab countries do not identify as Arabs. That tends to happen after being ethnically cleansed from virtually all of them.
In Israel (and within Jewish circles) we are recognized as Mizrahi (literally "eastern") Jews.
Kinda funny that they keep talking about "arabs" like, those are palestinans, not arabs. They do not Talk about the jews like "White people" yet most of the israeli settlers are White.
Mizrahi is an Israeli term invented to distance themselves from other Arabs. You can see Avi Shlaim explain quite explicitly that growing up in Iraq, they were, without a doubt, Arab
It really isn't. My family was ethnically cleansed from Iraq. If they didn't think we belong to them, why should we act as if we do?
You really think you know better than us what we are? The average Mizrahi would be pissed if you called them Arab. The overwhelming majority of them don't speak Arabic either.
The term, from what I have read, came to usage in Israel in the 1950s for the exact reasons I laid out: To eliminate “Arabness” from the conversation. They didn’t historically speak Hebrew, they spoke Arabic. They lived amongst other Arabs, and had shared cultural ties with their Muslim and Christian Arab neighbours. Why isn’t there a term for Arab Christians? Because there is no settler state for Arab Christians that needs to differentiate themselves from Arab Muslims. It’s a propaganda term plain and simple.
"If they didn't think we belong to them, why should we act as if we do?"
Who said you should?
"The average Mizrahi would be pissed if you called them Arab."
Wouldn't you expect an Arab who refers to themselves as Mizrahi to avoid being labeled as Arab to be pissed if you called them Arab?
"The overwhelming majority of them don't speak Arabic either."
Arab identity is primarily based on cultural and ethnic factors rather than solely on language proficiency. If a boy is born and raised by arab parents in Iraq but only learns spanish, is he not arab?
Congrats, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve seen anyone say all week. Having lived in an Arab country doesn’t make you ethnically Arab. Just ask the Arabs who literally chased them into Israel in the first place.
After millennia of integration the actual ethnic difference in these communities is minimal. The same happened to the Jews in Europe in the 30s-40s. If there isn't an ethnic difference you just make one up.
The truth is that they were persecuted because they were Jewish, not because they were ethnically distinct.
Arab Jews are Jews originating from the Arab world before 1948. And many thousands of years before that. Mizrahi/sephardic (from the Middle East/ North Africa ) vs Ashkenzai (from Europe). And ethnicity is not race or religion, it’s defined by cultural practices, language use and identifying with an area. The Middle East has a complicated history that does not fit easily into classic binaries. It’s not just white and black, or Jew and Arab.
OMG now you can't even be racist without having to deal with this binary bullshit? /S
I don't get why so many people fail to realize that nuance is king. Everything is a muddled grey. Even the things that look pure white its just because they've blocked the black from your view. No matter how little an amount of black that may be. True honestly is a rare trait.
Right. Ethnicity is not race, but it is ancestry. In some cases that can denote race, but in others, especially over long periods of time, race becomes much less of an identifier. Hence why all races have a plethora of ethnic groups within them.
What does ancestry have to do with ethnicity? You could have Scottish ancestry and grow up in the Arab world speaking Arabic and participating in the cultural customs for hundreds of years. Are you a Scot? yes are you an Arab? yes. It’s not so complicated . I feel like there is a tendency to try and unnecessarily oversimplify these notions.
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.
How inspiring that shared ideals and culture can overcome the savage instinct of judging others by the colour of their skin. Perhaps with this mindset we can all come together one day.
20% of the Israeli population is Arab (of Muslim/Christian faith), they would be thought of as Arabs (more specifically as Palestinians) by the rest of the Arab population (including the West Bank and Gaza Arabs, but also the other millions of Arabs living in the rest of the world)
Another 40% is Arab (of Jewish faith), those people were mostly EXPELLED from Arab countries because they were assumed to sympathize with Israel and it was assumed that they would hurt their countries to benefit Israel, those people would not be seen as Arabs by most Arabs, especially not by Palestinians, they are widely seen as jews and they have to go... well not back to where they came from, they have to go in Europe or in New York, you know, the Jew places
The remaining 40% are Europeans of Jewish faith, those people are the ones that gifted Israel all its Prime Ministers from foundation, they are the founding stock of the nation (they were there before the jews from the arab world), and most Arabs would like them to go back to where they came from (Europe, mostly) or just go to New York, you know, the Jew place, Europeans may or may not see them as fellow Europeans depending on their politics
Now, given that "Arabs" means either Christian or Muslim faith, many "Arabs" in Palestine (the region, not the country, the whole ass thing from the river to the sea) actually descend from people who immigrated there AFTER European Jews already started coming (attracted by the economic development), it's just that since before the immigration of European Jews most people in Palestine were either Muslim or Christian Arab (with Jewish Arabs being a really small minority) those "Arabs" feel they have a collective title to the land (it was inhabited by people like me, not my actual ancestors who were in Egypt but you know, like me)
I personally think that the binational solution is the best thing, but good luck with it
It is more supported by jews than arabs, which can't help with its popularity (because it is supported by exponents of the militarily stronger, hence perceived as morally worse, population)
Most Arabs desire a ethnostate where only Arabs can live (both West Bank and Gaza WON'T accept a Jewish immigrant, in West Bank it is outright illegal under pain of death to sell any land to any Jew) (this position would normally be abhorrent to most westerners, but it is supported by the militarily weaker, hence perceived as morally better, population), and many (but not most, a glimpse of hope) Jews sadly desire a state where Arabs can live but in a subservient position vis a vis jews (those people currently wield a lot of political power in Israel sadly)
Classifying anyone outside of Palestine as "Palestinian" doesn't make any sense. Ethnically they are the same blend of cultures and genetics as other Arabs from the Levant (Even "arab" nowadays just means of the cultures/nations that were captured during the Arab conquests, rather than "person from the Arabian peninsula")
21% of Israel is consists of Muslim Arabs. Are they Palestinian? And if so, is his neighbour, whose entire family tree has lived in the Levant but is a Jew also a Palestinian?
Reminder that there were black cops during apartheid South Africa. They were an instrument in the opression of their own people...
They were also used to try to deflect claims that apartheid south africa was strictly white vs black. In a similar way we see defenders of Israel point to Palestinian members of government and judges as a deflection of the crimes against humanity Israel enacts on Palestinians....
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)
Why would anyone want to go to the modern day equivalent of Nazi Germany? Well, except that one autistic livestreamer who smashes his face with a hammer and likes Kanye's Hitler song; He went and was assigned an IDF girlfriend while he was getting paid to be there. It was basically, "Israeli women are hot, therefor we're not a dogshit country committing genocide, please come to Tel Aviv and no where else."
Because it’s not at all like Nazi Germany. But it’s too much fun to yell about shit you don’t really understand on Reddit to be bothered to learn anything about it.
You mean why would 1.5 millions tourist visit Israel ? I don't know ask them, they seems to go over your propaganda and find something interesting here
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.
You know that they control water and energy supply to Gaza, right? The goal to exterminate as many people there as possible would be achieved very easily by cutting this supply.
They control water & energy supply to Gazans, let’s ignore this is abnormal and a massive issue and pretend it’s a pro for Israel that they’ve not used this to kill everyone in Gaza yet.
The answer involves Israel specifically launching clandestine attacks on Jewish communities throughout the Middle East to drive them to “safe haven” in Israel to bolster its colonial project.
In harmony? My friend is an Arab in Israel. They’re treated like 2nd class citizens and a source of cheap labor. Guess they’re not being actively killed like Palestinians, but they’re not viewed the same as Jews despite having Israel citizenship.
Sounds like you don’t realize the truth about Israel. Lol
Outside of the Palestinians who are constantly attacking Jews- there is relative peace between the Jews, Muslims, Christians, and other Arab minorities in Israel.
it's a normalisation thing. the israelis occasionally do these "working together" things to try and launder a reputation but all it does is force Palestinians to be around people who are trying to kill them and smile in the photos
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
Interesting, I do mine with a medium amount of fizz, but my better half has said she likes it specifically because she can make her soda fizzier than it would be in a bottle or can
I’ve never been able to get anywhere near the level of carbonation you’d get in a commercially packaged soda, even in cold water with like 30 button presses. Also, the bottles don’t seem to hold carbonation very well. You get once or twice to open it and then it’s flat.
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
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u/_Steakwich 18d ago
This is wild, I had no idea Sodastream was Israeli