BDS continues its destructive campaign, which ultimately hurts the Palestinians. This time BDS hit Harvard, but the university president is not sitting idly by. 

A Palestinian woman works at the Israeli SodaStream factory. (Photo: Nati Shohat/Flash90)

Harvard University President Drew Faust has requested an investigation into the decision by the university’s dining service to stop buying Israeli-made SodaStream equipment.

Harvard’s University Dining Services (HUDS) reportedly suspended its contract with SodaStream, the Israeli soda-machine manufacturer.

This move comes after a panel advocating support for the anti-Israel BDS Movement (Boycott , Divestment and Sanction Israel) took place during an event in Harvard earlier this month.

Crimson, the Harvard newspaper, reported that the university’s dining service agreed in April to stop buying the equipment following protests by Palestinian students and their supporters. HUDS reportedly agreed to remove the SodaStream labels on existing water machines and purchase new ones from American companies after university officials met in April with members of the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee and the Harvard Islamic Society.

Provost Alan Garber responded with anger to the decision, telling the Crimson: “Harvard University’s procurement decisions should not and will not be driven by individuals’ views of highly contested matters of political controversy. If this policy is not currently known or understood in some parts of the university. That will be rectified now.”

Garber claimed in the statement that neither he nor Faust was aware of the decision before reading about it in the newspaper.

BDS – ‘Irrational, Anti-Semitic’

Former US Governor Mike Huckabee at the Knesset. (Photo: Miriam Alster/Flash90)

SodaStream itself seems to have buckled to BDS pressure and is moving its operation to a site that is allegedly more acceptable to the BDS movement.

Regardless, SodaStream has been the focus of BDS attacks for a long time, although the company provides hundreds of well-paying jobs to Palestinians. Some 1,100 employees work in the Maale Adumim plant, including 850 who are Arab-Israelis or Palestinian Arabs.

Many of the Arabs could lose their jobs if BDS activists get their way.

Speaking in Israel earlier this year, former US Governor Mike Huckabee told United with Israel that he could not understand the BDS attack on SodaStream. “It should be obvious to anyone that the company provides extraordinary opportunity not only for work but for social gatherings. Their kids [Jewish and Arab] play together…. It should be given national and international awards instead of being targeted by BDS, which is inexplicable to me,” he declared.

Huckabee described BDS as an “irrational, anti-Semitic effort on the part of some organizations and nations.”

By: United with Israel Staff