Cartoonists, illustrators protest SodaStream sponsorship of Angouleme comic festival

Comments ¹⁰

1. Justin Riley

   I’m sure the Palestinians employed by SodaStream are glad to have jobs, but the anti-Israel crowd and the anti-capitalists don’t really care about that. Oh, well… not everyone is a clear thinker.

2. Bearman Cartoons

   Interesting the “alleged exploitation” Several articles I read say the workers themselves say they earn 3-4 times what other jobs offer in the area and it would be upsetting if they moved the factory jobs elsewhere. Seems the company already has plants in other places and could probably shift production easily.

   http://www.ibtimes.com/sodastream-boycott-west-bank-factory-palestinian-workers-reveal-what-they-think-about-their-employer

   http://gawker.com/what-sodastreams-palestinian-employees-think-about-sca-1513475552

3. Rich Diesslin

   I wonder if they hire Scarlett Johansson to do plant security there?

4. Carl Moore

   A beautiful example of the leftist herd instinct.

5. Mike Cope

   There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, pop machines, and the Great Pumpkin.

6. Terry LaBan

   Giving people who would otherwise be subsisting on UN charity decent jobs is a “crime”? I guess when it comes to Israel, the bar for outrage is pretty low. It’s sad to see so many cartoonists whose work I greatly respect on this list. Whatever the status of the land SodaStream sits on, it’s difficult to see how throwing its employees out of work would help them or Palestinians generally. And if a peace settlement ever is reached, companies like SodaStream will be important sources of income in the new Palestinian economy. It only makes me more proud to be a SodaStream customer. I think I’ll have a soda right now.

7. Dave Stephens

   They employ PALESTINIANS.

   They pay a decent wage to those Palestinians.

   And this is a “bad thing?”

   And if those Palestinians were suddenly without an income for their families, then THAT would be a “good thing.”

   Ain’t politics a trip?

8. Ethan Heitner

   It may be perfectly true that SodaStream provides good jobs to Palestinian workers.

   However, the goal of the boycott movement is to end the military occupation of Palestinian land that forces Palestinian workers to depend on Israeli companies for good jobs.

   Palestinian workers at SodaStream may have higher wages than their Palestinian neighbors, but they do not have the right to vote, freedom of movement, freedom of association, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention that their Jewish coworkers in the same plant have.

   SodaStream built its factory on land expropriated by the Israeli military from a half-dozen Palestinian villages. It operates in an environment with little or no labor and environmental regulation, due to the occupation. Its workers are entirely at the mercy of the factory bosses: to enter into a labor dispute, for example, is grounds for losing their “security clearance”– which is determined by the Israeli army, and is the only thing that allows them to pass through multiple checkpoints run by that army to get to their jobs.

   The arguments of Laban, Bearman and Riley mirror those used by the Apartheid South African government and its right-wing allies abroad to justify breaking the boycott of South Africa, which eventually brought the Apartheid regime to an end. As will, eventually, the boycott of Israeli goods bring the regime of racial injustice there to an end.

9. Karsten Schley

   Hmmm… when this factory closes it’s doors and the workers are jobless the “military occupation of Palestinian land” will end?

   Political propaganda on the back of workers who need their jobs to feed their families.

10. Terry LaBan

    @Ethan Heitner “The arguments of Laban, Bearman and Riley mirror those used by the Apartheid South African government and its right-wing allies abroad to justify breaking the boycott of South Africa, which eventually brought the Apartheid regime to an end. ”

    Really? How’s that? All I said was that SodaStream was providing it’s Palestinian workers with better opportunities than they’d otherwise have. The situation of the SodaStream employees is no different than that of any Palestinians on the West Bank. It isn’t SodaStream’s fault and wouldn’t be improved if SodaStream was shut down.By any measure it would be worse. The petition makes no sense

    I don’t approve of everything Israel does, but comparing it to apartheid South Africa is just ignorance. No doubt soon you’ll trot the Nazis out as well. It’s deeply ironic that the only country in the Middle East that has a truly functioning democracy and guarantees freedom of religion, equal rights and political representation for women, gays and ethnic minorities is the one that self-righteous lefties circulate petitions about. Meanwhile just to the north Syria’s butchering and displacing thousands of it’s own citizens every week and to the south the Egyptians are jailing journalists and burning churches. And France, home of Angouleme, is, in addition to having a long history of treating its Muslim immigrants and their kids as second-class citizens, widely regarded as the most antiSemitic country in Western Europe. Have a soda, buddy. It might clear your head.