Black Friday (November 29th) saw the Portland Palestine SodaStream Boycott Coalition joining with national efforts to boycott SodaStream which is made in an illegal Israeli settlement.

Hundreds of flyers where handed out in downtown Portland, Oregon in front of Macy's and Target which both sell SodaStream.  The stores had received letters from the coalition detailing their concerns.

The coalition plans to leaflet every Saturday until Christmas.

Click Here to signup to our campaign

For more than a year, religious and human rights organizations across the country have urged Macy’s and Target to de-shelve SodaStream products because of SodaStream's complicity with Israel's occupation and settlements. This fall, Friends of Sabeel – North America began a “SodaStream 14” campaign to send letters to CEOs of Macy’s, Target and other corporations. Local Human Rights organizations and concerned citizens have also contacted the downtown Macy's and Target Galleria stores, providing information about SodaStream’s role in the military occupation of Palestine, and requesting that these stores de-shelve SodaStream products.  Leafleting and speaking with customers who shop at these stores is a logical and necessary next step. Click here to see the letters we sent locally to Target or Macy's. For more information about the SodaStream boycott campaign go to: www.sodastreamboycott.org

It’s barely 100 meters, but a fence Israel plans to build through four villages in the heart of the iconic hills of the West Bank shows how deep the occupation reaches into Palestinian life.

Earlier this month, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) ordered the construction of a separation fence in the north central West Bank on agricultural land belonging to four Palestinian villages. The “security fence,” or “security wall,” from the Hebrew and Arabic appropriation orders respectively, will run east-west along highway 5, near Tapuach Junction, a checkpoint between Ramallah and Nablus.

This fence is not an extension of the famous separation barrier. Rather it will be a free-floating chain linked plank in the heart of the West Bank. A miniature version of the wall, it separates nothing and can easily be bypassed on foot. It only stretches 3.8 dunums in length, well under one kilometer. Still this fence is part of a patchwork of barriers in the Nablus district that trace the highway system.

The fence is slated for construction on farms lands belonging to the hillside localities of Beita, Osrain, Qabalan and Yitma. Together the four villages form a square with two to the north and two to the south of an Israeli highway. The planned path of the fence lines the bisecting highway.
Read more: Israel to build security fence in the heart of the West Bank

Here are several links to organizations helping Syrians face this terrible crisis

Mercy Corps: http://www.mercycorps.org/articles/jordan-lebanon-syria/quick-facts-what-you-need-know-about-syrian-refugee-crisis

Oxfam: http://www.oxfam.org/en/emergencies/syria-crisis

Medical Teams International: http://www.medicalteams.org/donate/syrian-refugees-relief

World Vision: http://www.worldvision.org/news-stories-videos/faqs-war-syria-children-and-refugee-crisis

This from Oxfam:

More than two million refugees have now fled violence in Syria and are in desperate need of shelter, food and water. Over half of them are children.

The scale of the Syria crisis is rapidly deepening, particularly as winter approaches, leaving relief agencies overstretched and struggling to cope with massive numbers of refugees, who are often living in inadequate shelter in neighboring countries.

We've reached more than 220,000 people with aid. Any donation, no matter how small, will help us support more families caught up in this crisis.

The scale of the Syrian crisis

Fighting continues to escalate across northern Syria and its western border. With growing numbers of people fleeing the conflict in Syria, the situation has become critical. Aid agencies and host countries have almost reached their capacity to cope with recent surges.

The UN estimates that almost 7 million Syrians inside of Syria are in need of assistance, including 4.25 million internally displaced.
Thousands continue to flee Syria daily.
The total number of refugees in neighboring countries is now more than 2.1 million.
It is estimated that the population of Lebanon has increased by more than 10% and the population of Jordan by 6%. This is putting extreme pressure on local infrastructure.
Additionally, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, the majority of Syrian refugees in Jordan live in urban areas, outside of formal camp settings. This makes it harder for them to access vital help.

Campaign Shows the Power of Local BDS Efforts

In a dramatic conclusion to nearly one year of effort and vigilance by the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) and coalition partners, the St. Louis mayor’s office announced on October 29, 2013 that Veolia Water North America was withdrawing itself from consideration for a contract to consult with the St. Louis Water Division.  Veolia is a major, global target of the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) movement because of its complicity in Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights. Veolia profits from Israel’s occupation of the West Bank by providing services, such as trash collection, water services and, until recently, bus lines, to illegal Israeli settlements built on Palestinian land.

When the contract came to light, the PSC helped form a local coalition to “Dump Veolia.”   The Coalition included a wide spectrum of the St. Louis community, as well as national organizations.  The broad based opposition caused Veolia to withdraw from our city, reportedly deciding St. Louis “is not worth it. It is not worth the damage to [Veolia’s] business.”