Lack of Work Will Make You Free?

To serve “Palestine,” Palestinians must suffer: Such, at least, is the logic of the the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which just forced Soda-Stream to move its carbonationmachine factory out of the West Bank and into Israel’s Negev desert.

It’s a big win for the BD-Sers, and a loss for the people they claim to support: Palestinians, hundreds of whom just lost their jobs.

“I like it here. It’s good work. It’s good money,” said Ahmed Abdel Wahid, one of only 36 Palestinians who worked at the West Bank factory to get a job at the new plant. “We are treated as equals here.”

BDS leaders don’t care. “This is a clearcut BDS victory against an odiously complicit Israeli company,” said Omar Barghouti, cofounder of the movement.

Soda-Stream CEO Daniel Birnbaum doesn’t see what’s so moral here: “We were the most advanced, technological and largest factory in the West Bank, period. We were the largest private employer of Palestinians in the world, period. How can you fight that? How can you argue that’s bad for the Palestinians?”

Apparently, because the BDS crew cares more about abstract lines on a map — and proving its own power — than about people’s lives.