© Anna WesterSodastream lists pressure on companies to leave the West Bank as a โrisk factorโ in its SEC filing.
The summer of 2011 has been a long, hot one for Israeli and international companies complicit in human rights violations in the occupied West Bank.
Facing an intense Europe-wide boycott campaign, Israel's largest produce exporter, Agrexco, filed for bankruptcy. French multinational Veolia, an urban systems corporation contracted with the Israeli government to provide light rail services for Israeli settlers in the West Bank, announced massive losses due to sustained pressure by activists around the world.
Meanwhile, in Sweden, the Israeli maker of home carbonation devices, Sodastream, took a direct hit when the Coop supermarket chain announced on 19 July that it would stop all purchases of its products due to the company's activity in illegal Israeli settlements. This marked another important victory for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (
BDS) movement, as Sweden is Sodastream's largest market, with an estimated one in five households owning a Sodastream product ("
Coop Sweden stops all purchases of Soda Stream carbonation devices," 21 July 2011).
The Israeli company has been the target of a two-year campaign by Swedish activists who seek to highlight the company's complicity with the Israeli occupation. The main production facilities for Sodastream are located at Mishor Adumim, the industrial zone of the Israeli settlement Maaleh Adumim in the occupied West Bank.
Sodastream, whose products are sold in 41 countries, has repeatedly attempted to deflect attention from the factory in the occupied West Bank, claiming that it is just one of many around the world.
In an interview last March with the Israeli financial daily
The Marker (published by
Haaretz), Sodastream CEO Daniel Birnbaum went so far as
to say that "all Sodastream products sold in Sweden are made in China, not Israel" ("Sodastream setting up plant within Green Line," 3 March 2011).