SodaStream is an Israeli company which makes a really cool and really popular product, essentially a make your own soda at home device. I plan on getting one. Its U.S. division is SodaStreamUSA.
This video shows the SodaStream story of building bridges between Jews and Arabs:
Nonetheless, SodaStream has been the subject of a vicious boycott by the anti-Israel BDS movement, that grouping of Islamist, anti-Israel leftists and academics and other fringe players like Code Pink, which seeks to delegitimize Israel. The latest iteration, as you know, was the pressure campaign which succeeded in convincing Stephen Hawking to boycott an Israeli conference.
SodaStream is not alone as a BDS target. We previously have written about Sabra hummus and Aroma Café (and we urged a “BUYcott”).
Ironically, this commercial was banned by CBS during the SuperBowl not because of the BDS movement (which did try to get SodaStream banned) but because it upset certain other advertisers:
Because SodaStream recently began advertising on the Rush Limbaugh show, SodaStream now also is subjected to the secondary boycott run by Media Matters and that assemblage of real and fictitious activists using the banner of “Stop Rush” and “Flush Rush” who seek to win the argument by depriving Limbaugh and other conservatives of platforms.
We wrote about this phenomenon recently, Why is Daily Kos so afraid of some speech competition from the Koch Brothers?
BDS and Stop Rush are joined at the hip, as this Daily Kos post calling for a joint boycott of SodaStream shows:
The usual tactics are being used against SodaStream, tweets from the assemblage of real and fake Twitter and Facebook accounts to make it seem to SodaStream that there is a mass movement behind the boycott, when in fact it is just the usual Media Matters astroturfed Potemkin social media village.
I reached out to SodaStreamUSA to ask its position on the boycott, and whether it would stop advertising.
The response was direct and pretty clear:
“We continue to advertise”
Let’s hope SodaStreamUSA stands strong. The same people who hate SodaStreamUSA for advertising on the No. 1 Talk Radio Show already hate it for being Israeli.
You can’t appease haters.
[BTW, this is the 9000th post published at LI]
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