A visit to the SodaStream factory relocated from the West Bank to the Israeli desert allowed me to fully appreciate my teachers’ insistence that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement actually hurts the Palestinians it claims to be helping.
Seven months ago, I started my gap year in Israel with Young Judaea Year Course and a fellowship with the Core 18 Leaders Lab. The Young Judaea program is for students who have just graduated high school, while Core 18 — run through Jerusalem University — teaches gap-year students how to be effective leaders and advocates for the state of Israel on U.S. college campuses.
While in Israel, I have had many impactful experiences alongside the fear and heartache I feel living here during the current “Wave of Terror.” I have volunteered with the Israeli ambulance service, Magen David Adom, spent Shabbat in more than a dozen homes across Israel reflecting the political and religious spectrum, and taken classes ranging from Jewish Law to Comparative Religion.
I also am a participant in Year Course’s Business Track, learning about a multitude of Israeli businesses from tech industry startups in Tel Aviv to small businesses in the secluded desert.
I toured the SodaStream factory in the Negev desert with Business Track two days after the 74 remaining Palestinian employees were released; 526 others previously lost their jobs due to the factory’s move to the other side of the Green Line.
During my tour, we watched bottles and other parts being constructed and learned about the history of SodaStream. The main factory had been located until last September in Mishor Adumim, an industrial park in the West Bank. The company employed 600 Palestinians, who for many years worked alongside Jews and received equal pay and benefits.
Unfortunately, BDS did what it always does. The movement called for a boycott of SodaStream and claimed credit for pressuring the company to leave the West Bank. Although many of the Palestinian workers commuted from the West Bank to SodaStream’s new location for months, their work permits expired after many renewals at the end of February.
During our visit to the factory, tour guide Nufar welled up with tears as she described how the last 74 Palestinian workers were escorted to the front of the factory to take their final bus ride home to the West Bank. She said she had to say goodbye to many friends that day: shift managers, assembly line workers and line managers. She said her heart aches for the Palestinian victims of BDS, and so does mine.
Even with the Palestinians’ recent departure, Soda-Stream is still a place of coexistence in the workplace despite a rocky political status in this region. The company was and is a true proponent for peace with the Palestinians and for equality among workers. I witnessed such equality on my tour, as Bedouins from Rahat were working alongside Ethiopians and other Israelis.
This story is but one of many showing how BDS is counterproductive. The tour finally allowed me to understand the essence of what my teachers from the Year Course and fellowship have been saying: “BDS is BS.’’
Arielle Zoken, 18, is from San Rafael. She attended Brandeis Hillel Day School and Camp Ramah in California, and her family is affiliated with both Congregation Kol Shofar and Congregation Rodef Sholom. She will enter U.C. Davis next fall.