Actions against European firms that own or control West Bank companies have the potential to affect the bottom lines of larger foreign companies operating within settlements, whereas the call for American Jews to read the label before filling their shopping cart for Passover would be no more than a symbolic move.
However Oxfam believes that businesses that operate in settlements further the ongoing poverty and denial of rights of the Palestinian communities that we work to support.
The company, it transpired, manufactures its products in a factory in a settlement on the West Bank, and while "Oxfam respects the independence of our ambassadors," it wrote, it also "believes that businesses that operate in settlements further the ongoing poverty and denial of rights of the Palestinian communities that we work to support".
The number of European corporations who have severed or reviewed links with Israeli companies which operate in settlements is accelerating; the European Union is taking an increasingly tougher line; and the boycott movement is gaining traction in the United States, where it has previously struggled to win support.
Oxfam wrote to her explaining that, although it understood the independence of the stars who volunteer to help, as an organisation it officially "believes that businesses that operate in settlements further the ongoing poverty and denial of rights of the Palestinian communities that we work to support".
"However, Oxfam believes that businesses that operate in settlements further the ongoing poverty and denial of rights of the Palestinian communities that we work to support.
European pension funds are divesting from banks and companies that operate in settlements, and European markets are labeling Israeli goods made in the West Bank.
"Oxfam believes that businesses, such as SodaStream, that operate in settlements further the ongoing poverty and denial of rights of the Palestinian communities that we work to support," said the statement from the organization, which is opposed to all trade from Israeli settlements and deems them "illegal under international law".
Even in states already operating under sweeping settlements, damage suits are playing a more prominent role.
Pilger sees it as unrepentant apartheid, and cites a bizarre act of taxpayer-funded official hysteria: the 2007 "intervention" in the Northern Territory organised by the John Howard government on the pretext that paedophile gangs were operating in Indigenous settlements.
