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Guest post written by Abraham Miller

Mr. Miller is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Cincinnati.

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel appears to have won a Pyrrhic victory over SodaStream, resulting in 900 Palestinian workers, who received Israeli wages and benefits, being thrown out of their jobs. SodaStream is putting a good face on the potential closing, saying it is not submitting to the terror-aligned BDS campaign. But two hundred Palestinian workers have already been let go, and to many observers in Israel, the handwriting is on the wall.

In the front ranks of the campaign against SodaStream has been the sanctimonious Oxfam, which proudly reminds us that it does not support BDS, but it is for boycotting SodaStream.

The thing most to be admired about the left is how they are so good at achieving moral clarity, enunciated sometimes with an Oxbridge accent, as long as it is someone elses pocket to be picked and someone elses job that is on the line.

Whether youre a California Central Valley farmer who has been driven into ruin by a man-made drought to save the Delta smelt, a bait fish, or a logger sent to the unemployed lines to save the spotted owl, rest assured that your personal economic disaster was part of a noble venture celebrated by trust fund babies and effete liberals who never got their hands dirty save when changing the ink cartridge on a printer.

Now the left can celebrate sending 900 Palestinians into poverty, people who made four times the going rate for wages in the Palestinian Territoriesthat is if they could have found jobs in an economy with 40% unemployment.

In the Berkeley hills, the peace and justice crew and the gaggle of assorted leftists are opening fine bottles of California wine, looking out over their million-dollar views, and clinking crystal glasses in celebration. Meanwhile some of these 900 former factory workers will find their way into the territories sole thriving industry, terrorism.

As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in The Old Regime and the French Revolution, there is among some segments of society a true absence of the heart, an inability to comprehend or care how their actions affect the lives of others.

The leftist retort is that the settlements are illegal and they impoverish the Palestinians. Like most things that come from the left, the legality or illegality of the settlements is far and away more complex than stated, especially in the SodaStream case, which operates in Area C, an area legally under joint Israeli/Palestinian administration.

Go here to read the rest:
Western Progressives Successfully Prevent Israel's SodaStream From Employing Palestinian Workers