Some types of squatting okay by hypocrite Weatherly

Hove Tory MP Mike Weatherley likes to go on about squatters.  He is quite the crusader when it comes to homeless people squatting empty unused property.

Strangely though he has a somewhat different attitude to organisations which squat the land of other people and dispossess those people of the means to make a living. 

Witness his strange reaction to the regular protests taking place outside the recently-opened EcoStream store in Western Road. 

He's even got the Israeli Embassy involved. He seems less keen on defending his constituents' right to protest. 

Report below from Tony Greenstein

Zion­ists try­ing to avoid anoth­er Ahava-like humil­i­a­tion

The stall did a roar­ing trade

 

One of the Bedouin slat­ed for removal from the land

Today, was the begin­ning of a large pick­et and stall out­side the Israeli shop Sodastream.  A num­ber of our oppo­nents, includ­ing two mad Chris­t­ian Fun­da­men­tal­ists, were on hand, but the vast major­i­ty of Brighton peo­ple pass­ing by gave us their sup­port and we ran out in 2 hours of over 500 leaflets.  There are a num­ber of pic­tures of our pick­et and also a video, whose qual­i­ty leaves a lot to be desired but gives a flavour of the exchanges.  

So suc­cess­ful though was our first out­ing that we’ve decid­ed that instead of mount­ing pick­ets every 2 weeks, as hap­pened at Ahava, we are going to do week­ly pick­ets of this Apartheid shop. 

Its brand­ing in Green Brighton is interesting.  It calls itself ‘Eco’ stream – part of an attempt to green­wash its activ­i­ties just as the Jew­ish Nation­al Fund calls itself an eco-friendly organ­i­sa­tion, build­ing all those forests and parks, even if they are on top of razed Arab vil­lages whose inhab­i­tants have been expelled from the West Bank!  But there is noth­ing eco friend­ly about Ecostream’s base and activ­i­ties. 

As the infor­ma­tion below shows, Sodas­tream is based in the Mishor Adu­mim indus­tri­al zone, which is part of the grow­ing num­ber of Jew­ish only set­tle­ments on the out­skirts of Jerusalem, Ma’ale Adu­mim. 

Amongst our oppo­nents was a Chris­t­ian Fun­da­men­tal­ist who claimed to live near­by, but was dis­turbed by our ‘offen­sive’ message.  His neig­bours described him as a 'w*****' and a mad Black female fun­da­men­tal­ist who seems to think Apartheid was and is ok, and 2 or 3 Zion­ists who repeat­ed the same hoary lines.  One of them at one point asked me ‘what about the 6 mil­lion’!  As if the dead at the hands of the Nazis jus­ti­fy fur­ther racism, as I asked what was the log­i­cal con­nec­tion. 

This is Sodas­tream’s first UK out­let and it is rumoured they have a 6 month lease.  It is incum­bent upon us to ensure that it is not renewed and Sodas­tream get the mes­sage that stolen goods from stolen land are not wel­come here.

Tony Green­stein 

Israeli apartheid prof­i­teer Sodas­tream opens new store in UK

August 22, 2012, Cor­po­rate Watch 

Sodas­tream, a car­bon­at­ed bev­er­age man­u­fac­tur­er, is based in the Mishor Adu­mim set­tle­ment indus­tri­al zone. Mishor Adu­mim is an indus­tri­al area  attached to the res­i­den­tial set­tle­ment of Ma’ale Adu­mim, East of  Jerusalem in the Israeli occu­pied West Bank. Israeli com­pa­ny Soda Club, which owns the Sodas­tream brand­name, has  opened a new store called Ecostream on West­ern Road in Brighton, UK.

How­ev­er, Pales­tini­ans liv­ing in the vil­lages around Mishor Adu­mim are pre­vent­ed from build­ing any per­ma­nent struc­ture under Israeli mil­i­tary  orders. Their tents and huts, and even a pri­ma­ry school at Khan-al-Ahmar, are sub­ject to demo­li­tion by the army 

The Israeli army plans to forcibly evict and trans­fer 20 Pales­tin­ian com­mu­ni­ties, some 2,300 peo­ple, from their homes in the area of the Ma’ale Adu­mim set­tle­ment bloc in the occu­pied West Bank. The plan aims to relo­cate the com­mu­ni­ties, a major­i­ty of which are Jahalin Bedouin, to a site about 300m away from the Jerusalem munic­i­pal garbage dump.  Israeli author­i­ties have not con­sult­ed with the com­mu­ni­ties and the res­i­dents oppose the move. Mil­i­tary offi­cials have said that the army will begin imple­ment­ing the plan in early 2012.  If car­ried out, this forced trans­fer would vio­late Israel’s oblig­a­tions under inter­na­tion­al law and uproot some of the poor­est com­mu­ni­ties in the West Bank. 

These build­ing restric­tions pre­vent the estab­lish­ment of any Pales­tin­ian busi­ness­es, mean­ing that local Pales­tini­ans are forced to work in the set­tle­ments. Pales­tin­ian agri­cul­ture is lim­it­ed by the set­tle­ments monop­oly on land and the restric­tions placed on the graz­ing of cat­tle, often lead­ing to the seizure of cat­tle by the army. 

Pales­tini­ans work­ing for Sodas­tream in Mishor Adu­mim are work­ing in the con­text of the occu­pa­tion. In Jan­u­ary 2012 activists from Stop Sodas­tream Italy made the fol­low­ing state­ment in response to claims by the com­pa­ny that its work­ers were well treat­ed: “the fact remains that, as sub­jects of an occu­pa­tion regime, these work­ers do not enjoy civil rights (includ­ing the right of work­ers to orga­nize) and are under con­stant threat of hav­ing their per­mits to work in the set­tle­ment revoked by the com­pa­ny at any moment.” 

“Pales­tin­ian work­ers often have no choice but to work in the set­tle­ments, with high unem­ploy­ment rates that are a direct result of the Israeli occu­pa­tion. The 2011 Unit­ed Nations Con­fer­ence on Trade and Devel­op­ment report explic­it­ly links the decline in Pales­tin­ian agri­cul­tur­al and indus­tri­al sec­tors and the dire human­i­tar­i­an con­di­tions with Israeli gov­ern­ment poli­cies, in par­tic­u­lar the con­fis­ca­tion of land and nat­ur­al resources, restric­tions on move­ment of peo­ple and goods, and iso­la­tion from inter­na­tion­al mar­kets. Only a colo­nial mind­set could claim to pro­vide jobs to the very same peo­ple whose land and free­dom have been stolen.” 

Bedouin tent slat­ed for removal

The Pales­tin­ian call for boy­cott, divest­ment and sanc­tions urges a boy­cott of all Israeli com­pa­nies until Israel com­plies with inter­na­tion­al human­i­tar­i­an law, rec­og­nizes the fun­da­men­tal rights of the Arab-Palestinian cit­i­zens of Israel to full equal­i­ty, the rights of return of refugees and ends the siege of Gaza and the occu­pa­tion of all lands occu­pied in 1967. 

Sodas­tream prod­ucts are sold in the UK at Robert Dyas, John Lewis, Argos, Comet, Lake­land and some Sains­bury and Asda stores.

For more infor­ma­tion on Soda Club see here, pages 96-102. 

Orig­i­nal link: