Allow me to tell you the story of the ‘innocuous tweet’

By Simon Cobbs – Sussex Friends of Israel

Following last Saturday’s very successful pro-Israel demonstration at Ecostream I noticed a very worrying tweet by the Brighton division of the BDS. When I had a little search on the Internet about the BDS I found this tag line; “the truth will not be silenced” “the truth will not be silenced!” Oh dear. For the truth not to silenced the hope is that the organisation making this claim, will be, well, telling the truth.

I’m afraid to say but the Brighton BDS seem to be telling ‘fibs’ (again).

In the tweet, that had me so perturbed, the BDS proudly proclaim, “Lakeland store in Brighton has stopped selling Sodastream!” This would, of course, be a victory for the BDS.

A major chain, directly as a result of its campaign (for the truth) had indeed stopped selling products, made by the Israeli owned company, Sodastream! Could they, at last, have a tangible result from their many years of demonising Israel?

Please, call me a sceptic, if you wish, when it comes to any claims coming from the BDS but things didn’t add up. The Lakeland store in Brighton is in the Churchill Square shopping centre and any kind of demonstration in the center would be unlikely and surely a major chain pulling Sodastream products because of the BDS campaign would make much greater ‘noise’ than one little tweet on a local BDS twitter feed.

So, off to Lakeland I go and to be truthful, I feared the worst. Inside the shop, there was no sign of Sodastream anywhere. No machines, no syrups nothing. So I started to leave, despondent, dejected and full of despair. However, on my way to the exit I spied a lady who was obviously in charge. I thought, at least she can tell me why Lakeland had bowed to the pressure of the BDS,

As the BDS are so fond of saying “the truth will not be silenced” this lovely lady first told me that “the Sodastream stock had been removed, purely, to make way for Christmas lines” as the shop in Brighton was “quite small, and space, at Christmas, is a premium”.

She went on to tell me that “Sodastream will be back in January” and then the killer blow, not only had she never heard of the BDS but she knew nothing of their campaign.

With all of this in mind, I would like to send a message to the Brighton arm of the BDS:
1. If you’re going to tell lies, make sure you can’t get found out.
2. Have you heard of the boy who cried wolf? If you continue to lie and claim victories that don’t exist, when, in the unlikely event, that you do get some kind of result, no one will believe you.
And 3. Now that you have been caught telling lies you need to go and sit on the ‘naughty step’ for a couple of hours and think of the consequences of your story telling.