The Harvard University dining services removed the labels from its SodaStream machines and agreed to replace them with American-made water machines in April after members of the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee and the Harvard Islamic Society said they were offended by the machines.
“For Palestinian students at Harvard, the presence of the SodaStream label represented a direct endorsement of land theft that has destroyed their communities and left thousands without homes,” the Palestine Solidarity Committee said in a statement reported by the Harvard Crimson.
“These machines can be seen as a microaggression to Palestinian students and their families and like the University doesn’t care about Palestinian human rights,” Rachel J. Sandalow-Ash, a member of the Harvard College Progressive Jewish Alliance, told the Crimson.
University President Drew G. Faust got wind of the boycott last week and called for an investigation. “Harvard University’s procurement decisions should not and will not be driven by individuals’ views of highly contested matters of political controversy,” provost Alan M. Garber wrote in a statement to the Harvard Crimson.
Campus Jewish groups supported the investigation. In a statement reported by the Crimson, Harvard Hillel, Harvard Students for Israel and the Israel Public Affairs Committee wrote: “We regret that neither we nor the greater student body were included in the conversation. We stand strongly against efforts to boycott and delegitimize the State of Israel.”
In response to the investigation, dining services apologized. Spokesman Crista Martin told the Crimson they “mistakenly factored political concerns” into their purchasing decision. But Harvard’s dining hall is no stranger to taking political stands. In 2013, it stopped buying Barilla pasta after the company’s chairman said they would never feature gay families in their ads.
Speaking to the Web site Electric Intifada, a Palestinian Solidarity Committee spokesman called the walkback of the SodsStream boycott “contradictory” in light of the previous boycott against Barilla. It is unclear whether that boycott still stands.
In a Crimson op-ed, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz condemned the “unilateral” decision to “join the boycott movement against Israel without full and open discussion by the entire university community.” He defended SodaStream, arguing the location of its factory in the Ma’ale Adunim Israeli West Bank settlement “is not really disputed territory” and doesn’t “pose any barrier to a two-state solution” even though settlements outside the 1967 armistice line are considered illegal under international law.
Ma’ale Adumim’s former mayor would probably disagree with Dershowitz. He is quoted in a 2012 article about the settlement in Foreign Policy magazine titled “The Settlement that Broke the Two State Solution,” saying the settlement was built to make a contiguous Palestinian state impossible.
In October, Sodastream announced plans to relocate its main factory to southern Israel by the end of 2015. Chief executive Daniel Birnbaum told the Independent the company will apply for permits its Palestinian workers to travel to the new factory. SodaStream is one of the largest employers of Palestinians, with roughly 900 workers. The unemployment rate in the West Bank is an estimated 22 percent.