I’d like to see a million responses like this to the Trumps of the world, and all those who have enabled and empowered him.
And to all those who would divide us at just the moment we most need each other.
I’d like to see a million responses like this to the Trumps of the world, and all those who have enabled and empowered him.
And to all those who would divide us at just the moment we most need each other.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SodaStream
It’s unrelated to climate so far as I can see. Greenman should have >=2 bloggie things.
It is highly relevant. The point Peter is trying to make I think is that if Israelis and Palestinians can work together to produce Soda Stream (a small thing), then the rest of us should be able to work together to solve the big problems, like climate change. It is the politics of division (and the exploitation of that by vested interests) that has prevented serious action on climate change and Trump is the poster child for that.
Absolutely! And thank you.
Likely so if you say so. I know nothing of these things. I’ve studied WGI (from entertaining videos I mean, not reading, yuck) for a few hundred hours. I never studied WGII or WGIII. I meant WGI, I didn’t clarify that. I like science. Humans, not so much.
This post is in error. SodaStream is targeted by a global boycott because it is located in an Israeli settlement on stolen Palestinian land. The settlements are illegal under international law and people of conscience are asked not to buy products from these settlements. (BDSMovement.net)
Because of the Israeli occupation of their land, Palestinians have little to no control over their economy. They are forced to work in factories like SodaStream because they have been robbed of their resources and way of life.
If this video was about an environmental polluter, you would say this ad was greenwashing. Israel is trying to white wash its theft of Palestinian land by promoting this idea of “can’t we all just get along.” Easier for the occupier to say.
thanks for that perspective. I am open to being corrected.
I still would like to see more messaging along these lines, I hope truthful, but in place of the truly ugly hate speech we’ve been hearing in this cycle.
Here’s another perspective:
There is no such thing as “Palestinian land”, no land has been stolen, the settlements are not illegal under international law, there is no “occupation” going on. No one is forcing anybody to work at SodaStream, this is not green washing – these folks actually ARE happy working together.
And the boycott is antisemitic to the core, unbelievably hypocritical, and is hurting real people of different backgrounds and religions.
It might be another perspective, but it is one which is rather delusional.
To begin with: When you have territory that you took an a war and control but have not annexed, it is _BY DEFINITION_ an occupation. (Seriously, that’s what an occupation is.)
What’s really “rather delusional” is nit-picking over DEFINITIONS and semantics and ignoring the history of an area and of human “civilizations” overall. I will repeat—GB nailed it, and those who are up-thumbing ralphiesmom and Chakat and down-thumbing GB and I here need to do a little soul-searching—-they are behaving very much as anti-semites would.
PS Would Chakat like to look at the “definitions” surrounding colonialism and imperialism in general and the western expansion of the U.S. in particular? Was what we did in the American West in the 1800’s an “occupation”? Did it become OK once we “annexed” the western territories by forcing the Native Americans to sign “treaties” and move onto reservations? Does not Chakat understand that the Arabs who did NOT abandon their homes in Israel at the behest of the attacking Arab armies in 1948 (and become homeless and stateless refugees) were allowed to remain and become Israeli citizens? And that they make up ~20% of the Israeli population? And that Israel only took the West Bank as a buffer after one of the wars that the Arabs initiated? And that Israel gave back the Sinai once a peace accord was reached with the Egyptians? And that Israel would have done the same IF the other Arab nations hadn’t refused to make a proper peace? Some folks need to get educated. (Unless what I said in my other comment holds true—to repeat “Of course, any anti-semites who just want to bash Israel need not waste the time to do any research (or thinking)”.
It is the height of hypocrisy to single out and condemn the Jews for their behavior, especially considering that those people they “stole” the land from have vowed to wipe them off the face of the Earth and have tried to do so more than once. Are the Israelis behaving perfectly? Not always, but they are trying much harder than those who condemn them—–can’t recall any Israeli suicide bombers blowing up buses or knife wielding women attacking civilians in Arab cities.
Here’s yet more “perspective”. Peter needs no “correcting”, because this simple little Crock throw-off “feel good” piece did exactly what it was supposed to do—-show how some people somewhere on this planet can cooperate minimally even in the face of centuries-old divisions and “get along”, and as ECT says, it IS relevant to AGW and the political disaster now taking place in the U.S. Perfect cooperation? No, because that’s not the way humans work, and the Repugnant Party and all its self-serving morons (except maybe Kasich a bit) are the prime present-day example.
If we want to talk about “error”, Ralphiesmom needs to “correct” HER thinking by studying some history, because the ONLY “state” that ever existed in what is now called Palestine by some is the Jewish state, and it’s over 2000 years old. The British diddled around in “Palestine” for 40 years after WW1, the Arabs tried to eradicate the Jews that were resettling THEIR homeland during that time, and the Jews finally had to fight everyone to reclaim THEIR “stolen land”—-the “Palestinians” (Arabs) are the ones who “stole” it. Gingerbaker nailed it with his comment, but anyone who wants a bit more detail can look at this history that is short and sweet and has nice maps (ignore the irrelevant Christian “overlay” that appears in places”). Of course, any anti-semites who just want to bash Israel need not waste the time to do any research (or thinking).
Considering how old and how complicated the situation is, NO ONE has much chance of figuring it out and solving it any time soon. and I won’t remind everyone of the fact that it is the “Palestinians” who keep rejecting the excellent deals they are offered because they don’t get 110% of what they want (which is basically the eradication of Israel and the Jews).
http://www.contenderministries.org/articles/israelhistory.php
PS I wonder if Ralphiesmom worries as much about abused animals and poor children who go to bed hungry each night in the USA? Those are problems that are much closer to home and far less complicated, and yet we don’t seem to be making much progress on them either.
While i think ralphiesmom has done a fine job responding to this, and i have never posted to this blog before, although i am a regular reader, i do feel the need to respond to dumboldguy’s post. this is challenging to do, because the level of ignorance and arrogance is so high, but let me just point out – the “Jewish” state is not 2000 years old. there have been Jews in this region for thousands of years but there have been Christians and Muslims there as well. The land is holy to (at least) 3 religions. When a portion of the land was taken from its inhabitants and given to Jews to create the state of Israel there were conditions imposed. These conditions have been repeatedly violated by the Zionist state over the nearly 70 years of its existence. the State of Israel was founded in may of 1948 – curious what founding you think occurred 2000 years ago? wasn’t it part of the roman empire 2000 years ago? if you are calling it a Jewish state under the roman empire, you have to call it a Palestinian state under the ottoman empire, and the british empire that followed, don’t you? i mean if your only qualification for calling something a state is the ethnicity of the people who live there then it has been a palestinian state – populated by palestinian jews, christians and muslims from the founding of each of these religions. Yes there has never formally been a “Palestinian” state on this land but there were always “Palestinians” there.
The Jews who founded the Zionist state of Israel in 1948 were European settlers who colonized the country. many Israeli historians acknowledge this fact. although the settlers claim the land was given to them by God, they do acknowledge that they came from elsewhere to TAKE it from the indigenous population – the Palestinians (“the bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man” – cable sent back to Vienna by two rabbis sent to Palestine to explore the possibility of creating a Jewish state there, 1890s). a similar process occurred on this STOLEN land. that was called “manifest destiny”. when Europeans steal land from an indigenous population they tend to say that God wants them to do it. this is an attempt to put legal and moral authority behind utterly illegal and immoral THEFT.
Consider the following scenario – i come to your house, and announce that God gave it to me. i kill off members of your family, and take over strategic areas of your house – like all the doors, the main bedroom and the bathrooms. i control the ability of your family to get medical attention, to travel to school, to work, to worship, all of your comings and goings. then i say that i want us to get along. i offer you square footage inside your house that amounts to less than 25%, none of it contiguous, in a way that does not really give you anything like sovereignty over property that was all yours until I arrived. would you really think my offer was generous? if i said that you didn’t want peace because you turned down my generous offer would that characterize you fairly?
As a white person, I am appalled at genocide that allowed whites to take this country from the natives and “settle” it. As a Jew, i am equally appalled by what white, European Jews have done in my name in Palestine. I support full Palestinian sovereignty over the land that is now called Israel. That absolutely does not mean that I am “anti-Semitic” or want the Jews destroyed. people shared this land pretty effectively before the Zionist project started in the late 19th century. Zionism is the problem. Zionism is an ideology that says the land needs to be exclusively Jewish. what if you are not Jewish and you have always lived there? how is peace between multiple populations on this land consistent with an idea that says all the land belongs exclusively to one people? it simply is not. for peace to prevail Zionism (an ideology that is about 130 years old) not Judaism (a religion which is 6000 years old) must be defeated!
You really don’t know enough history about the area, nor even the rudiments of how Israel works. Your comment is chock full of things which false generalities. You might be a Jew, but your viewpoints, currently, are pure antisemitism.
I suggest you start by finding the charter (why it was formed – what is it’s mission) of the State of Trans-Jordan, and then introduce yourself to the idea that all Israelis are Palestinian Jews.
Sorry – all Israeli Jews are Palestinian Jews.
ralphisom, SodaStream closed its factory at an Israeli settlement and reopened in BeerSheba, a region assigned to Israel by the UN partition plan despite having a majority Palestianian population at the time. Consequently, while the claim of ‘stolen Palestinian land’ is probably true, the factory is never-the-less on land that has generally been considered Israeli since 1967, and would probably be Israeli on any two state resolution of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.
The political situation with SodaStream appears to be complex. SodaStream do appear to benefit from Israeli suppression of development on Palestinian lands, and do appear to by insensitive to Palestinian religious needs (see wikipedia article quoted above). On the other hand, they do also appear to have some genuine concern for the Palestinian employees – a concern, however, which does not protect their employees from the injustice of the situation:
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ryan-rodrick-beiler/sodastream-factory-peace-remains-myth
“The political situation with SodaStream appears to be complex.”
It’s not complex, really. They were the targets of a global boycott for exploiting Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank. They use Palestinian labor because it is cheap, and because Israel having crushed the Palestinian economy, skilled labor is plentiful (the unemployment rate in the Palestinian territories is 27%.)
This video is SodaStream’s “I have black friends” argument. You could of made the same video in the mines of apartheid South Africa, or in the sharecropper days of the Deep South, or in the German arms factories in the latter days of WWII. Take the land, then force the people to work for you, or starve. This is not a noble tale of cooperation between enemies (though you can find such stories in the history of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict); it’s garden-variety exploitation of a subject population for the enrichment of the occupiers.
Thank you Peter, for a great feel good peace video and making my Monday morning (especially after the shock of NASA’s GISS stats for February) . Bearing in mind the video is promotional, reading the comments and negative stuff on Wikipedia, it may not be quite the melting pot that is portrayed. However back in the 1980s I worked in a similar multi-ethnic environment in Saudi Arabia and a similar melting pot spirit existed. Friendships were made across racial divides. I purged any xenophobic impulses I may have had, and dislike observing them in others. This reminds me of that time and I appreciate your sentiments. It is also very relevant to climate change as we need to tackle this together. “United we stand, divided we fall” was never more apt.
The world we can build……one bridge at a time..:)
I think many of you are missing the central, and simple, point of the piece. That human beings can transcend the political and cultural differences that divide them. When we come together and interact personally, we find we are much more alike than different. The relationships we see in the piece are the real, and necessary, foundation for the change we all seek.
While i think ralphiesmom has done a fine job responding to this, and i have never posted to this blog before, although i am a regular reader, i do feel the need to respond to dumboldguy’s post. this is challenging to do, because the level of ignorance and arrogance is so high, but let me just point out – the “Jewish” state is not 2000 years old. there have been Jews in this region for thousands of years but there have been Christians and Muslims there as well. The land is holy to (at least) 3 religions. When a portion of the land was taken from its inhabitants and given to Jews to create the state of Israel there were conditions imposed. These conditions have been repeatedly violated by the Zionist state over the nearly 70 years of its existence. the State of Israel was founded in may of 1948 – curious what founding you think occurred 2000 years ago? wasn’t it part of the roman empire 2000 years ago? if you are calling it a Jewish state under the roman empire, you have to call it a Palestinian state under the ottoman empire, and the british empire that followed, don’t you? i mean if your only qualification for calling something a state is the ethnicity of the people who live there then it has been a palestinian state – populated by palestinian jews, christians and muslims from the founding of each of these religions. Yes there has never formally been a “Palestinian” state on this land but there were always “Palestinians” there.
The Jews who founded the Zionist state of Israel in 1948 were European settlers who colonized the country. many Israeli historians acknowledge this fact. although the settlers claim the land was given to them by God, they do acknowledge that they came from elsewhere to TAKE it from the indigenous population – the Palestinians (“the bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man” – cable sent back to Vienna by two rabbis sent to Palestine to explore the possibility of creating a Jewish state there, 1890s). a similar process occurred on this STOLEN land. that was called “manifest destiny”. when Europeans steal land from an indigenous population they tend to say that God wants them to do it. this is an attempt to put legal and moral authority behind utterly illegal and immoral THEFT.
Consider the following scenario – i come to your house, and announce that God gave it to me. i kill off members of your family, and take over strategic areas of your house – like all the doors, the main bedroom and the bathrooms. i control the ability of your family to get medical attention, to travel to school, to work, to worship, all of your comings and goings. then i say that i want us to get along. i offer you square footage inside your house that amounts to less than 25%, none of it contiguous, in a way that does not really give you anything like sovereignty over property that was all yours until I arrived. would you really think my offer was generous? if i said that you didn’t want peace because you turned down my generous offer would that characterize you fairly?
As a white person, I am appalled at genocide that allowed whites to take this country from the natives and “settle” it. As a Jew, i am equally appalled by what white, European Jews have done in my name in Palestine. I support full Palestinian sovereignty over the land that is now called Israel. That absolutely does not mean that I am “anti-Semitic” or want the Jews destroyed. people shared this land pretty effectively before the Zionist project started in the late 19th century. Zionism is the problem. Zionism is an ideology that says the land needs to be exclusively Jewish. what if you are not Jewish and you have always lived there? how is peace between multiple populations on this land consistent with an idea that says all the land belongs exclusively to one people? it simply is not. for peace to prevail Zionism (an ideology that is about 130 years old) not Judaism (a religion which is 6000 years old) must be defeated!
(In response to Karen RS at 10″02 AM on 3/15)
Welcome to the ranks of commenters on Crock. It puzzles me that you say you find it “difficult” to respond to my post because it has such a “high and challenging level of ignorance and arrogance”. I say that I am perplexed because this, YOUR first post here, is characterized by quite a bit of “arrogance and ignorance” (and error) itself.
You should read others’ comments more carefully before you allow your confirmation bias to drive you to “point out” others errors and make accusations. In addition, you need to pay particular attention to the use of “qualifying” quotation marks and quoting what others say accurately rather than try to put words in their mouths.
For instance, I was not thinking of a “founding 2000 years ago” when I talked of the Jewish “state” being “OVER 2000 years old”—-actually, the Jews have been in the Holy Land (let’s call it that from now on since you don’t seem to know where the name “Palestine” came from) for at least 3300 to 3800 years. Muslims did not arrive in the Holy land until ~1500 years ago, and their holy sites there are not as important to them as the Jewish and Christian ones are to Jews and Christians. Christians were originally “followers” or “disciples” of Christ—-he and they were all Jews—-and the name “Christian” did not come into common use for decades or even centuries after his death, so in that regard they too are come-latelys compared to the Jews..
If you had any real familiarity with the history of Zionism, the Balfour Declaration, the British Mandate, the UN deliberations, and the Israel War of Independence, you would know that “a portion of the land was NOT ‘taken’ from its inhabitants and GIVEN to Jews to create the state of Israel”. The Israelis merely got tired of waiting for the UN to do its job, declared their independence, and claimed some territory, at which time the armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq attacked, with the stated purpose of annihilating the Jews. The Arab countries tried several times over the years to destroy Israel, and some haven’t given up yet. Did Israel “take” some land and treat some “Palestinians” harshly and “unfairly”. They sure did, and they did it mainly because they HAD to in order to survive. And the U.S. and many other countries have supported Israel strongly from Day One, because after the Holocaust and the unending persecution of Jews in country after country down through time it’s the RIGHT thing to do.
The huge mess in the Holy Land grows mainly out of Arab intransigence, and IMO the Jews have little choice but to follow the present path. All your semantic and rhetorical bullshit here is meaningless navel-gazing, and it’s actually quite surprising that you are a Jew and say what you do.
“As a Jew, i am equally appalled by what white, European Jews have done in my name in Palestine. I support full Palestinian sovereignty over the land that is now called Israel”. You sound like a white American Jew who is unconnected to her Jewishness and the historical travails of Jews around the world, and is actually an anti-semite. After looking at the history of Israel and the Holy Land since 1948, do you really think there is much chance of “effectively sharing” any time soon? Wake up and get educated—some more references.
http://theisraelconnection.blogspot.com/2008/09/origin-of-name-palestine-truth-is.html
A timeline of Christianity and Judaism
http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/christia.html
Israel’s Legal Borders under International Law
http://seekingtruth.co.uk/israel_borders.html