JNS.org) Jewish groups condemned a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign that was launched this week by the United Church of Canada. The campaign, titled “Unsettling Goods,” urges the boycotting of Ahava, Keter Plastics, and SodaStream, which all have factories in Judea and Samaria.

A SodaStream device. SodaStream is one of three Israeli companies targeted by the United Church of Canada’s BDS campaign. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

“How shameful that any Christian, much less the United Church of Canada, would choose to ignore the ongoing persecution of Christians in the Middle East and instead incite hatred for Israel, the only democracy in the region where tolerance and religious freedoms are practiced. There can be only one conclusion—the nearly irrelevant United Church of Canada’s leaders have fallen prey to the world’s oldest hatred, and their motives can only be attributed to bigotry and anti-Semitism,” Meryle Kates, executive director of the Canada branch of the pro-Israel education group StandWithUs, told JNS.org.

B’nai B’rith Canada CEO Frank Dimant said the United Church of Canada “would realize who they really are hurting” if they took “time to examine the facts,” noting that SodaStream “employs 500 Palestinians as well as 400 additional Arabs living in eastern Jerusalem at its Ma’ale Adumim manufacturing facility alone,” Israel National News reported. 

Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center President and CEO Avi Benlolo said, “Despite Hamas’ repeated calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews, based on Article 13 of the Hamas Covenant, which states ‘There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad,’ and despite calls by Fatah officials for a third violent intifada against Israel, the United Church sees fit to pray for a successful boycott against Jewish businesses in Israel, while ignoring the ongoing incitement to violence and genocide against Israel and Jews coming from Palestinian leaders.”