Of ScarJo, Soda, Settlements, and Super Bowls. By Michael M. Rosen. National Review Online, January 31, 2014.
Oxfam is Wrong on Israel. By Michael Curtis. American Thinker, February 1, 2014.
Demonizing Israel; Demonizing ScarJo. By Jonathan S. Tobin. NJBR, January 28, 2014.
Rosen:
Of all
the possible defenders of the Israeli town of Ma’aleh Adumim, a burg of 40,000
located five miles east of Jerusalem’s Western Wall, a gorgeous worldwide movie
star is hardly the most likely candidate. But there was Scarlett Johansson, the
29-year-old screen and stage actress, vigorously doubling down on her decision
to sign on as a spokesperson for SodaStream, a do-it-yourself-soda company
headquartered in Israel, and to appear on its behalf in a provocative ad during
this Sunday’s Super Bowl.
“I
stand behind the SodaStream product. . . . I am happy that light is being shed
on this issue in hopes that a greater number of voices will contribute to the
conversation of a peaceful two state solution in the near future,” she wrote in
the Huffington Post late last week.
Why such
a fuss over bubbly water?
Because
SodaStream’s largest manufacturing facility is in Ma’aleh Adumim, just over the
“green line” separating pre-1967 Israel from the West Bank, Johansson has come
under withering attack from worldwide anti-Israel forces promoting a boycott of
Israeli products and services.
But the
fortitude displayed by ScarJo (a leading celebrity exponent of numerous liberal
causes, as readers of this site well know), speaks volumes about the
righteousness of Israel’s cause and the moral bankruptcy — and rank ineffectiveness
— of the boycott crowd.
SodaStream
was founded decades ago in Europe as a cheap, environmentally friendly, at-home
alternative to buying fizzy beverages at the supermarket. Users carbonate their
own water using replaceable gas canisters and can flavor the liquid with a
variety of syrups, which are also sold by SodaStream. In 1998 the company was
acquired by Soda Club, then a seven-year-old Israeli company, which adopted the
older company’s name.
The
outfit has grown rapidly in recent years, especially in Europe, where one in
every five Swedish households owns a machine. By 2011, the company’s U.S. sales
had multiplied tenfold over the course of four years, and in May 2012,
SodaStream began distributing through Walmart. SodaStream, a Nasdaq-traded stock
with more than $500 million in annual revenue, has frequently been mentioned as
an acquisition target by the big soda makers, and in Johansson, the company
appeared to find a breakthrough pop-culture soda-water carrier.
And
yet, because the company operates one of its facilities in the West Bank, where
it employs 500 Palestinian workers, it and, by extension, ScarJo have endured
the slings and arrows of anti-Israel activists.
“This
is like supporting the apartheid system in the old South Africa,” thundered
Mustafa Barghouthi of the Palestinian National Initiative. Johansson “has no
excuse for allowing herself to be used to support the violation of
international law.”
The
boycotters also urged Oxfam, for which ScarJo has served as an ambassador since
2005, to sever its ties with the actress. “Palestinian civil society, and
indeed all who care about human rights around the world,” asserted Omar
Barghouti, a founder of a leading boycott group, “expects Oxfam to immediately
end its relationship with an actress that has knowingly lent her name to
whitewashing Israel’s illegal occupation and colonization of Palestinian land.”
On Wednesday, Johansson terminated her relationship with Oxfam, citing a
“fundamental difference of opinion in regards to the boycott, divestment and
sanctions movement.”
Indeed,
as is typical for the Israel-hating crowd, the boycotters get both their facts
and their inferences wrong. First, SodaStream offers comprehensive benefits,
including health insurance, and high wages for the Palestinians it employs in
its Ma’aleh Adumim facility — better jobs than are available in most of the
West Bank. The company’s CEO “just can’t see how it would help the cause of the
Palestinians if we fired them,” as the boycott movement effectively desires.
Second,
because of its size and proximity to Jerusalem, Ma’aleh Adumim itself, along
with the SodaStream factory, is all but certain to be included within the final
borders of Israel after a peace agreement with the Palestinians is concluded.
The town and the facility are no far-flung outposts surrounded by a seething
Palestinian population, as the boycotters would have the world believe, but
essentially a garden suburb of Jerusalem, which itself will largely if not
completely remain under Israeli control.
Johansson
echoed these responses in her HuffPo statement:
I
remain a supporter of economic cooperation and social interaction between a
democratic Israel and Palestine. SodaStream is a company that is not only
committed to the environment but to building a bridge to peace between Israel
and Palestine, supporting neighbors working alongside each other, receiving
equal pay, equal benefits and equal rights.
Sure
enough, in addition to the 500 Palestinians employed in the factory, 400 Arabs
from eastern Jerusalem and hundreds more Jewish residents, Israeli citizens
all, work there side-by-side. The facility also includes a mosque and a
synagogue, prompting the head of one left-wing, pro-Israel American
organization to praise the company for “making real efforts to engage the
Palestinian workers with fair wages and in management positions.”
ScarJo
echoed these thoughts, noting that:
as part
of my efforts as an Ambassador for Oxfam, I have witnessed first-hand that
progress is made when communities join together and work alongside one another
and feel proud of the outcome of that work in the quality of their product and
work environment, in the pay they bring home to their families and in the
benefits they equally receive.
It’s
difficult to improve upon that formulation, and perhaps the boycott movement
underestimated not only Johansson’s eloquence and commitment to her beliefs,
but the actual justice of those beliefs and how they resonate with Israelis,
Americans, and the Arab world alike.
Finally,
after all this controversy, the Super Bowl ad, which can be found here, likely
will not air on Sunday, as Fox reportedly bowed to pressure from Coke and
Pepsi, both of which found the spot too aggressive. But that, and not the rabid
demonization of the Jewish state, is the kind of boycott that Israelis and
their supporters around the globe can probably live with.
