Radical Left-wing activists demonstrated in Vancouver, Canada on Sunday in a call to boycott Israeli company SodaStream for operating in “occupied territories” and “mistreating” Palestinian workers.
It has been discriminated against by the boycott movement for holding its headquarters in the eastern Jerusalem suburb city of Ma’ale Adumim, located over the 1949 Armistice lines.
Shalom Toronto reports that the protest Sunday opposite a Vancouver “London Drugs” store which sells the Israeli product brought tens of radical leftist activists.
At the event the “Solidarity Notes Labour Choir,” which is identified with the extreme Left, sang songs such as “the occupation” and “liberate Palestine.”
A similar demonstration was held a month ago in front of a Canadian Tire store in Hamilton, Ontario.
Jewish and non-Jewish activists organized a counter-protest opposite the pro-Palestinian demonstrators, and in an act of protest bought all the SodaStream products in the store.
The Facebook page of “Boycott SodaStream: Vancouver Protest” reveals that the movement is part of the Canada-wide Canadian Boycott Coalition, and is organized by two local Vancouver groups, Independent Jewish Voices and the Boycott Israel Apartheid Campaign.
A post on the page said London Drugs was the site of the boycott’s Vancouver campaign launch.
The Vancouver demonstration is the latest in a list of boycott calls against Israeli businesses, despite the fact that such boycotts harm ecological interests and Arab employment.
For many the economic and ecological sense of SodaStream has won out over the boycotts. Despite weekly pickets, EcoStream, an Israeli-owned shop in England which sells SodaStream recyclable bottles, reported a 38 per cent increase in trade in August.
The Israeli civil rights group Shurat HaDin filed a class action complaint under a Racial Discrimination Act in July over boycotts of Israeli goods in Australia.
The group noted that boycotts of “settlement” products such as SodaStream and Ahava harm Arab workers who are employed by the companies.
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