100 signatures reached
To: All SodaStream Stockists in Aotearoa
Swap Out SodaStream
SodaStream is one of the largest food and beverage manufacturers in Israel. It is deeply implicated in the economic oppression of Palestinian people.
We want your help to urge all SodaStream stockists to Swap Out SodaStream for more ethical alternatives and end all future contracts with them.
These Stockists include The Warehouse Group, Briscoes, Harvey Norman, Farmers, Mitre 10, PB Tech, JB HI-FI, Woolworths, 100% Home, FreshChoice, Kmart, FoodStuffs, Moore Wilsons, Heathcotes, Hammer Hardware
What can we can do about it?
We want your help to urge all SodaStream stockists to Swap Out SodaStream for more ethical alternatives and end all future contracts with them.
These Stockists include The Warehouse Group, Briscoes, Harvey Norman, Farmers, Mitre 10, PB Tech, JB HI-FI, Woolworths, 100% Home, FreshChoice, Kmart, FoodStuffs, Moore Wilsons, Heathcotes, Hammer Hardware
What can we can do about it?
Aotearoa New Zealand has a proud history of being anti-apartheid through its South African anti-apartheid movement. The BDS call urges action to pressure Israel to comply with international law. We are here to answer the call and honour our history.
❌ Don’t buy SodaStream or SodaStream products
✔️Sign & Share our petition calling all retailers to Swap Out SodaStream from their shelves and end all future contracts with the company
✔️Sign & Share our petition calling all retailers to Swap Out SodaStream from their shelves and end all future contracts with the company
✔️Encourage your family, friends, colleagues and neighbours to Swap Out SodaStream, taking it off their shopping lists.
✔️Contact the CEOs of these retailers and urge them to Swap Out SodaStream for an ethical alternative.
✔️Contact your local retailers stocking SodaStream, let them know that stocking SodaStream normalises Israeli apartheid.
✔️ Post on social media about why you want retailers to Swap Out SodaStream.
Why is this important?
Everyone is entitled to live with justice and dignity, this includes Palestinians. These rights are often protected by both national and international laws. Israel is occupying and colonising Palestinian land, discriminating against Palestinians working in Israeli society, and denying Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes.
While political leaders and governments shirk their obligations, far too many corporate entities have profited from Israel’s economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now, genocide. “It’s time for businesses to cut ties with Israel. The very fact of engaging in something that concerns and translates into economic gain and profits, it’s problematic, lest, companies and their executives are ready to face responsibility and even criminal liability”
- Francesca P. Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories
While the government is stalling on imposing sanctions on Israel, we the people will use our consumer power to “push for better” and de-shelve SodaStream from all retailers around the motu.
Why SodaStream
Historical Complicity
SodaStream’s first factory was built over the remains of seven destroyed Palestinian villages in the illegal settlement of Ma'ale Adumim, in the occupied West Bank. Settlements like Ma'ale Adumim, and companies operating in them, are illegal under international law.
In 2014, under constant pressure from the global Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, SodaStream shut down its West Bank factory. This was a big win.
However, SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum claimed: “We are not giving in to the boycott. We are Zionist." He framed the move as a cost-saving decision, despite accusing the BDS campaign of hurting opportunities for Palestinian workers.
New Factory, Still Profiting from Apartheid
After leaving the West Bank, in 2015 SodaStream relocated to the Idan Industrial Zone in the Naqab (Negev) desert. This is land that Israel confiscated from Palestinian Bedouin communities in the 1950s.
That is, SodaStream is still implicated in settler colonial dynamics — just in a different region.
The SodaStream factory is located near the city of Rahat where many Palestinian Bedouins were forcibly relocated. Today, Palestinian Bedouins live under constant threat of displacement by the Israeli state. Across the Naqab, hundreds of Palestinian homes are demolished every year, with the second-highest number of them occurring in Rahat. (176 in 2022 alone). These home demolitions as well as systematic exclusion from basic infrastructure and services, all contribute to Israel's long-term plan to remove them from their land and traditional practices.
SodaStream and other Israeli and international companies receive government financial incentives and subsidies when they base their factories in the Naqab region. The region has been designated a ‘national priority area’ in accordance with Israel’s ten-year “National Strategic Plan for the Negev”, designed to tighten the Israeli state’s hold on the region, and vastly increase the Israeli population there.
After leaving the West Bank, in 2015 SodaStream relocated to the Idan Industrial Zone in the Naqab (Negev) desert. This is land that Israel confiscated from Palestinian Bedouin communities in the 1950s.
That is, SodaStream is still implicated in settler colonial dynamics — just in a different region.
The SodaStream factory is located near the city of Rahat where many Palestinian Bedouins were forcibly relocated. Today, Palestinian Bedouins live under constant threat of displacement by the Israeli state. Across the Naqab, hundreds of Palestinian homes are demolished every year, with the second-highest number of them occurring in Rahat. (176 in 2022 alone). These home demolitions as well as systematic exclusion from basic infrastructure and services, all contribute to Israel's long-term plan to remove them from their land and traditional practices.
SodaStream and other Israeli and international companies receive government financial incentives and subsidies when they base their factories in the Naqab region. The region has been designated a ‘national priority area’ in accordance with Israel’s ten-year “National Strategic Plan for the Negev”, designed to tighten the Israeli state’s hold on the region, and vastly increase the Israeli population there.
SodaStream can thus be seen as an instrument of Israel’s plan to remove indigenous people from their land through urbanisation and industrialisation.
Exploitation of Palestinian Workers
Over 100,000 Palestinians work in Israel and settlements—because their own economy is strangled by occupation and Israeli labour laws are not fairly applied to Palestinian workers. A 2022 report by Kav LaOved (an Israeli workers' rights NGO) found that many Palestinian workers face wage theft, unsafe working conditions, denial of health care or accident compensation, long hours without rest or proper documentation.
SodaStream uses its employment of Palestinians as a public relations tool, portraying itself as a “coexistence” model while hiding the broader apartheid context that underlies the company’s operation, and which created those economic dependencies in the first place.
SodaStream uses its employment of Palestinians as a public relations tool, portraying itself as a “coexistence” model while hiding the broader apartheid context that underlies the company’s operation, and which created those economic dependencies in the first place.
BDS Works!
We’ve seen SodaStream shutdown its illegal factory in the Occupied West Bank due to BDS pressure. In the UK, we recently saw The Co-operative Group vote to remove Israeli products from its shelves. McDonald’s has missed sales targets, Starbucks slashed its annual sales forecast after a slump in growth, Turkey’s parliament voted to remove Coke from the shops and restaurants on its grounds - we can use our collective consumer power to create change.
References:
We’ve seen SodaStream shutdown its illegal factory in the Occupied West Bank due to BDS pressure. In the UK, we recently saw The Co-operative Group vote to remove Israeli products from its shelves. McDonald’s has missed sales targets, Starbucks slashed its annual sales forecast after a slump in growth, Turkey’s parliament voted to remove Coke from the shops and restaurants on its grounds - we can use our collective consumer power to create change.
References:
https://www.whoprofits.org/publications/report/120
https://electronicintifada.net/content/new-sodastream-factory-could-help-destroy-bedouin-agriculture/13182
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2015/9/25/sodastream-factory-shows-palestinian-bedouins-plight
https://www.bdsmovement.net/news/sodastream-close-illegal-settlement-factory-response-growing-boycott-campaign
https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/03/27/471885452/when-500-palestinians-lose-their-jobs-at-sodastream-whos-to-blame