British SodaStream Repair Store Shut After 2 Years of Protests
Image by getty images
An Israeli-owned store in England that sold replacement parts for SodaStream closed after two years of weekly boycott protests.
The EcoStream shop in the coastal town of Brighton shut down last week, the Jewish Chronicle reported.
The store sold the recyclable bottles for the SodaStream machines made in the factory in the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim.
Since September 2012, pro-Palestinian activists from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign have demonstrated in front of the store every Saturday as part of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. The Sussex Friends of Israel staged regular counter-protests, according to the Chronicle.
“Following a two-year test period, the company has decided to focus its business efforts on other channels,” a SodaStream spokesman told the Jewish Chronicle.
The British department store chain John Lewis recently removed SodaStream products from its shelves as well.
SodaStream had been in the news in recent months following the signing of actress Scarlett Johansson as a spokeswoman and the ensuing controversy over its West Bank factory.
Johansson resigned as a global ambassador for Oxfam over her position with the company, which employs Jewish and Palestinian workers in Maale Adumim.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
