SodaStream Super Bowl slot adds fizz to controversy over Israel links

Details

Written by Raya Jalabi Raya Jalabi

Published: 05 February 2013 05 February 2013

Hits: 4402 4402

Inter-faith group joins pro-Palestinian calls for boycott over manufacture of products 'in illegal West Bank settlement'


SodaStream's Super Bowl advertisement. Photograph: SodaStream/AP

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6YUqv3vrMsCnL_SX5nhL5Xu83CUBT9c3

"If you love the bubbles, set them free," urged the makers of SodaStream, in an ad that aired during the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLVII.

But the bubbles may be about to burst. SodaStream has come under fire from pro-Palestinian activist groups, who have called for an official boycott of all the company's products.

In a press release, the newly formed Interfaith Boycott Coalition announced that its "representatives from Jewish, Christian and Muslim organizations are calling for a boycott" because SodaStream manufactures its products "in an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied Palestinian West Bank".

The start of the boycott coincided with the airing of the commercial on Sunday night, during an event which attracted more than 108 million viewers.

According to its website, the IBC claims to be committed to ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine through the boycott of companies who "profit from [the] occupation". The IBC is a project of the US Campaign to End the Occupation, a pro-Palestinian activist community which is made up of more than 400 groups.

The coalition has joined several international activist groups – including the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement – which advocate consumer boycotts of goods produced in Jewish settlements.

The root of the controversy surrounds SodaStream's main manufacturing plant, which is located in the Mishor Edomin industrial zone next to Ma'aleh Adumim, one of the largest settlements in the West Bank. In December, the settlement was at the center of the E1 expansion disputes, in which the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, clashed with European leaders over the settlement's expansion into disputed Palestinian territory.

IBC claims that SodaStream has profited from Israel's occupation of the West Bank, including receiving economic incentives at the expense of maltreated Palestinian workers.

The boycott call follows others against SodaStream, including a call from Code Pink, a US-based women's social-justice organization that counts  pro-Palestinian activism on its roster of causes.

The boycott calls have gained ground abroad. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign – the largest pro-Palestinian movement in the UK – has made SodaStream a campaign target for 2013. In April, the group will stage a protest outside SodaStream's UK flagship store in Brighton; the company is on the group's banned consumer goods list. The group previously boycotted an Israeli cosmetics company, Ahava, staging several protests in 2011 which resulted in the company being forced to close down its London shop.

Asked about SodaStream's presence in the West Bank, Daniel Birnbaum, the company's CEO, told the Associated Press:

"We don't strengthen or support the occupation. What we're doing is taking a facility in the occupied territory and giving Palestinians a career and economic benefits. I've got to laugh when they think we're on the wrong side of this. We're part of the solution. We build bridges, not walls."

Posted by
Raya Jalabi
Tuesday 5 February 2013 13.10 EST guardian.co.uk

Glenn Greenwald on the Zionist attempt to suppress academic freedom at Brooklyn College

Details

Written by Glenn Greenwald Glenn Greenwald

Published: 03 February 2013 03 February 2013

Hits: 5267 5267

Brooklyn College's academic freedom increasingly threatened over Israel event

New York politicians join the Alan Dershowitz-led campaign to dictate to colleges what academic events they can hold

Glenn Greenwald

guardian.co.uk, Saturday 2 February 2013 10.35 EST

On Tuesday, I wrote about a brewing controversy that was threatening the academic freedom of Brooklyn College (see Item 7). The controversy was triggered by the sponsorship of the school's Political Science department of an event, scheduled for 7 February, featuring two advocates of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) aimed at stopping Israeli oppression of the Palestinians [one speaker is a Palestinian (Omar Barghouti) and the other a Jewish American (philosopher Judith Butler)]. The event is being co-sponsored by numerous student and community groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine, the college's LGBT group, pro-Palestinian Jewish organizations, and an Occupy Wall Street group.

When I wrote about this earlier in the week, opposition to the event was confined to the usual suspects devoted to so-called "pro-Israel" advocacy, including many with a long history of trying to destroy anyone critical of the Israeli government. The controversy was largely fueled by BC alumnus Alan Dershowitz, who denounced the event in a New York York Daily News Op-Ed as a "hate orgy". Dershowitz - with whom I had a lengthy and contentious email exchange yesterday on this and other topics (see below) - previously led the successful campaign to pressure DePaul University into denying tenure to long-time Israel critic Norman Finkelstein (after his tenure had been approved by an academic committee), all but destroying Finkelstein's career as an academic.

Dershowitz has been joined in his current crusade by a cast of crazed and fanatical Israel-centric characters such as Brooklyn State Assembly member Dov Hikind. Ignoring the BDS movement's explicit non-violence stance, Hikind publicly (and falsely) claimed that the event speakers (to whom he referred as "Barghouti and…the lady") "think Hamas and Hezbollah are nice organizations, and they probably feel the same way about al-Qaida".

Hikind called on the college's President, Karen Gould, to resign, recklessly insinuating (needless to say) that she's an anti-Semite: "Perhaps President Gould wasn't bullied; maybe she secretly approves. . . . I can only speculate to what her motivation or lack of motivation is in allowing this irresponsible endorsement of this loathsome event by her College." In 2011, Hikind led the campaign to force Brooklyn College to fire the young adjunct professor Kristofer Petersen-Overton for the crime of writing a pro-Palestinian paper (after firing him, the college rehired him days later).

Read more: Glenn Greenwald on the Zionist attempt to suppress academic freedom at Brooklyn College

Israel Skips U.N. Review On Rights, A New Move

Details

Written by NICK CUMMING-BRUCE NICK CUMMING-BRUCE

Published: 30 January 2013 30 January 2013

Hits: 4221 4221

GENEVA — Israel became the first country to withhold cooperation from a United Nations review of its human rights practices on Tuesday, shunning efforts by the United States and others to encourage it to participate.

Representatives from Israel did not appear at a session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday for a report by the council as part of what is known as the Universal Periodic Review process, in which all 193 member states had previously participated.
Israel’s mission to the United Nations in Geneva informally notified the Human Rights Council this month that it wanted to delay its participation but did not follow up with a formal request for postponement, creating uncertainty about its intentions. The uncertainty led to intense behind-the-scenes discussions to persuade Israel to reconsider its position.

“We have encouraged the Israelis to come to the council and to tell their story and to present their own narrative of their own human rights situation,” the United States ambassador to the council, Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, said last week. "The United States is absolutely, fully behind the Universal Periodic Review, and we do not want to see the mechanism in any way harmed.”

The underlying concern expressed by many council members in Tuesday’s session is that Israel’s decision to stay away from the review had broken established practice of cooperation observed by all countries, opening the door to noncooperation by others. The greater concern, some members said, is that if Israel persists in this action it will jeopardize a collaborative peer review process widely valued for shedding light on the human rights practices of even the most closed and repressive governments.

“If the Israeli government is not careful, it will ruin an important global human rights process for everybody,” Peter Splinter, a Geneva representative of Amnesty International, commented in a blog post.

The council decided by consensus on Tuesday that its president, Remigiusz Henczel of Poland, should try to persuade Israel to resume cooperation with the review and to report on the result of his efforts in March, with an eye on rescheduling Israel’s review at the latest in November. That careful wording leaves to a future discussion the action the council will take if Israel still declines to cooperate, diplomats said.

“Most people recognize that within the limits of reality Israel tried to make a small gesture,” a senior European diplomat attending the council said, alluding to Israel’s informal request for a deferral of its review.

“The council’s decision recognizes it would be foolish to slap that away,” said the diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter.

Israel’s no-show reflects longstanding frustration with the council’s perceived anti-Israel bias, diplomats say. More than half the resolutions passed by the council since it started work in 2006 have focused on Israel over the treatment of Palestinians in Israeli-occupied or Israeli-controlled areas. Israel is also the only country that is a standing item on the council’s agenda.

Despite these tensions, Israel, until last year, had preferred to work with the council and in December 2008 participated in the council’s review of its human rights practices. Last May, however, Israel informed the council it had decided to disengage from what it called “a political tool and convenient platform, cynically used to advance certain political aims, to bash and demonize Israel.”

Diplomats identify Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister of Israel’s departing government, as the main architect of that decision. Although they believe he had support from officials within the Foreign Ministry, they hope the formation of a new government now under way in Israel presents an opportunity for it to re-engage with the review process.

Israel Skips U.N. Review On Rights, A New Move

Details

Written by NICK CUMMING-BRUCE NICK CUMMING-BRUCE

Published: 30 January 2013 30 January 2013

Hits: 4570 4570

GENEVA — Israel became the first country to withhold cooperation from a United Nations review of its human rights practices on Tuesday, shunning efforts by the United States and others to encourage it to participate.

Representatives from Israel did not appear at a session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday for a report by the council as part of what is known as the Universal Periodic Review process, in which all 193 member states had previously participated.
Israel’s mission to the United Nations in Geneva informally notified the Human Rights Council this month that it wanted to delay its participation but did not follow up with a formal request for postponement, creating uncertainty about its intentions. The uncertainty led to intense behind-the-scenes discussions to persuade Israel to reconsider its position.

“We have encouraged the Israelis to come to the council and to tell their story and to present their own narrative of their own human rights situation,” the United States ambassador to the council, Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, said last week. "The United States is absolutely, fully behind the Universal Periodic Review, and we do not want to see the mechanism in any way harmed.”

The underlying concern expressed by many council members in Tuesday’s session is that Israel’s decision to stay away from the review had broken established practice of cooperation observed by all countries, opening the door to noncooperation by others. The greater concern, some members said, is that if Israel persists in this action it will jeopardize a collaborative peer review process widely valued for shedding light on the human rights practices of even the most closed and repressive governments.

“If the Israeli government is not careful, it will ruin an important global human rights process for everybody,” Peter Splinter, a Geneva representative of Amnesty International, commented in a blog post.

The council decided by consensus on Tuesday that its president, Remigiusz Henczel of Poland, should try to persuade Israel to resume cooperation with the review and to report on the result of his efforts in March, with an eye on rescheduling Israel’s review at the latest in November. That careful wording leaves to a future discussion the action the council will take if Israel still declines to cooperate, diplomats said.

“Most people recognize that within the limits of reality Israel tried to make a small gesture,” a senior European diplomat attending the council said, alluding to Israel’s informal request for a deferral of its review.

“The council’s decision recognizes it would be foolish to slap that away,” said the diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter.

Israel’s no-show reflects longstanding frustration with the council’s perceived anti-Israel bias, diplomats say. More than half the resolutions passed by the council since it started work in 2006 have focused on Israel over the treatment of Palestinians in Israeli-occupied or Israeli-controlled areas. Israel is also the only country that is a standing item on the council’s agenda.

Despite these tensions, Israel, until last year, had preferred to work with the council and in December 2008 participated in the council’s review of its human rights practices. Last May, however, Israel informed the council it had decided to disengage from what it called “a political tool and convenient platform, cynically used to advance certain political aims, to bash and demonize Israel.”

Diplomats identify Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister of Israel’s departing government, as the main architect of that decision. Although they believe he had support from officials within the Foreign Ministry, they hope the formation of a new government now under way in Israel presents an opportunity for it to re-engage with the review process.