TELL BARTELL: Stop Selling SodaStream
Sample Letter to Bartell:

Bartell Drugs
4025 Delridge Way SW, Suite 400
Seattle, WA 98106

Dear Management,

We are Bartell customers urgently concerned that Bartell is continuing to sell SodaStream products, which are manufactured in an illegal Israeli settlement.  We are writing to ask that Bartell stores stop selling SodaStream and all products that are produced in circumstances that violate international humanitarian law.

As your customers, we know that Bartell is a regional store that strives to maintain good values, so we assume that you are unaware of the reasons for the international human-rights boycott campaign against SodaStream.

SodaStream products are fraudulently labeled as “Made in Israel”, but SodaStream’s factory is in an industrial zone which is part of Maale Adumum, an illegal Israeli settlement in the Occupied West Bank, outside the internationally-recognized borders of Israel.  Israeli settlements are built on land confiscated from the original Palestinian owners.  These settlements are illegal under international law and are believed by many Israelis and Palestinians to be a major obstacle to peace.

Like other Israeli companies operating illegally in the occupied West Bank, SodaStream profits from low rent, lax enforcement of labor and environmental regulations, and cheap water using resources confiscated from Palestinians under Israel’s military occupation.  SodaStream employs desperate Palestinian workers under the discriminatory and exploitative conditions imposed by military occupation, including severe restrictions of movement.  Palestinians are often made to work long hours at low pay, with few if any benefits, and are prevented from advancing to better-paid jobs, which are only available to Israelis.

We are outraged that Sodastream advertises its product as “green” and environment-friendly, while in fact its factory relies on stolen land and water resources and lax environmental regulations.  By choosing to locate its factory in a settlement industrial zone, SodaStream has chosen to support the illegal Israeli settlements that are so destructive of life, land and peace.

There are alternative soda-making products that Bartell could carry.  Several are described at: http://www.globalexchange.org/economicactivism/sodastream/alternatives.  For more information on the background of SodaStream in the Occupied Territories, see http://whoprofits.org/content/production-settlements-case-sodastream.

Please stand up for a just peace for the people of both Palestine and Israel. The settlements are an impediment to peace. Please stop carrying SodaStream.

Sincerely
Members of the Northwest Regional BDS* Coalition
*BDS – Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction