Not quite so idyllic...

The maddening lunacy of students who get on a bandwagon for a ‘cause’ almost always ends in some poor sap having to deal with the fallout. In the wake of Israel’s targeted action against Hamas in Gaza, the student fury over the Eden Springs water contract has roused itself from the doldrums where it belonged.

Basically, Eden Springs UK are a subsidiary of Danone Springs of Eden, a leading water supplier in Europe. No problem so far. The complication comes here: Mayanot Eden Ltd. is an Israeli mineral water producer which operates in Europe under the Eden Springs brand. It extracts water from the Golan Heights in Israel, and this is where Palestinian Solidarity groups have taken offence. Mayanot, they claim, oppress the Palestinians and steal their water, as the Golan Heights were illegally annexed. It’s the old ‘Israel the Villain’ argument, and guess what, it’s EUSA and the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Society who are peddling it.

Some students are really good at causes. They do their research, look at all angles of an argument, reason out the good from the ill and make their stand accordingly. Others, and probably most, jump on the nearest bandwagon for the nearest underdog and shout as loud as they can, whether or not their case actually has any validity.

Which brings me to this case: Eden Springs UK does not supply you with water from the Golan Heights. Their parent company is majority owned by Group Danone with a 58% stake, not Mayanot. If you really want to dig into it, Eden Springs UK is held by Danone Springs of Eden BV (a Dutch company) which is ultimately owned by Danone SA – a French company. None of these companies have been charged or convicted of a criminal offence. Eden Springs UK are in fact a Scottish operated group – so all that EUSA/SPSS are doing is promoting the boycott of a Scottish company. Well done there!

So the sins of the father shall be visited upon the son. In this case, whether any sin has been committed at all is a matter of perspective, but let’s leave that out of it. The Golan Heights have been Israeli territory since 1981. Why penalise a UK holding of a French company for something that one of the partner organisations may or may not have done wrong?

While this has been bubbling along for a while, the Gaza conflict has once again brought it to the fore. The result of the renewed interest has been that a lot of University contract teams are under pressure from students to cancel the contract. Legally, they are under no obligation to do so, as you must have an actual, valid reason to cancel a contract. In this case, a bunch of students in a tizzy does not constitute a valid reason. Criminal conviction, breach of contract, failure to supply and so on – those would be good reasons to review the contract. If there are break clauses they may be able to exploit these, but they’d really have to ask why the heck they’d want to rather than tell the students to go forth and multiply.