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| Harvard President Drew Faust rejected an attempt to boycott university purchases of Sodastream machines. |
(NYP) To serve “Palestine,” Palestinians must suffer: Such, at least, is the logic of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which just forced SodaStream to move its carbonation-machine factory out of the West Bank and into Israel’s Negev desert.
It’s a big win for the BDSers, and a loss for the people they claim to support: Palestinians, hundreds of whom just lost their jobs.
“I like it here. It’s good work. It’s good money,” said Ahmed Abdel Wahid, one of only 36 Palestinians who worked at the West Bank factory to get a job at the new plant. “We are treated as equals here.”
BDS leaders don’t care. “This is a clear-cut BDS victory against an odiously complicit Israeli company,” said Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the movement.
SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum doesn’t see what’s so moral here: “We were the most advanced, technological and largest factory in the West Bank, period. We were the largest private employer of Palestinians in the world, period. How can you fight that? How can you argue that’s bad for the Palestinians?”
Apparently, because the BDS crew cares more about abstract lines on a map — and proving its own power — than about people’s lives.
