First, Keith Olbermann featured the story on ESPN II segment, “World’s Worst Persons in the sports world.” His focus was the contradiction between Johansson’s role as Oxfam’s global ambassador and her cluelessness re Palestine. SodaStream is manufactured in a “controversial Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank territory,” Olbermann says, hastening to add, “Without getting into that debate…” As if it’s fine if you’re for those settlements.
The liberal Zionist Brooklyn rabbi Andy Bachman, who aligns with J Street, has been promoting Scarlett Johansson and SodaStream on his twitter feed. When a pro-Palestinian group said that Johansson was standing up for occupation, Bachman begged to differ, and said that the huge settlement that SodaStream produces in will be part of Israel in the coming two-state solution:
Her statement was far more complex. And wouldn’t Maale Adumim be in any peace deal land-swap?
— andybachman (@andybachman) January 26, 2014
Bachman blames both sides for the absence of Palestinian rights:
My view is that it’s an equal opportunity mess. Terror hardened Israelis, as settlement policy did Palestinians.
— andybachman (@andybachman) January 27, 2014
But the terror is long over; and the settlements move on apace. And the Israelis get to vote for the government that effects the policies.
Bachman brags on the jobs at SodaStream, a refrain that can be heard too in Emily Harris’s piece on the controversy at National Public Radio. The NPR hosts sold her piece as being about the employment opportunities, though Harris undercut that claim, somewhat. Notice her ending– that the SodaStream flap is raising consciousness.
HARRIS: It seems everyone in this town knows someone who works at SodaStream. While it’s seen as a good job, college senior Fadi Abu Nemeh says after Israel built its separation barrier in and around the West Bank, people here have few real choices.
FADI ABU NEMEH: A lot of people had their jobs in Jerusalem, like in Arab companies or at like Arab businesses in East Jerusalem. And after the wall, they lost their jobs, so they had to work in places like SodaStream.
HARRIS: …Hubert Murray, the grandson of an Oxfam founder, says Oxfam should have let Johansson go before she resigned.
HUBERT MURRAY: This is a very subtle and complex ethical issue. That’s why it is so important for organizations like Oxfam to have paid very clear adherence to principle, and not shilly-shally and prevaricate.
HARRIS: If SodaStream’s Super Bowl ad helps market shares significantly, U.S. consumers may be drawn more in to the political fray over made in settlement products.
The NYT also has a good news piece describing the “fuss” as indicative of the growing boycott movement that has frightened Israeli leaders.
Fearing just that sort of isolation, last weekend Jane Eisner of the Forward came out for SodaStream at Huffpo, joining forces with Mike Huckabee. Now Eisner’s published an editorial at the Forward that is dispiriting, when you consider, this is a progressive voice in the Jewish community?
The headline is “Bursting Bubbles of SodaStream Haters.” So the critics of the occupation are the problem.
Examining the facts, as opposed to the propaganda, leads us to a more basic conclusion: The only legitimate criticism of SodaStream is that one of its 13 locations is where it is, in the occupied territory where Palestinians do not share the same rights as Israelis.
Precisely: that’s the criticism. It has nothing to do with propaganda. Is that a flimsy issue? I’ve been there, and it’s apartheid on steroids. But The Forward explains that occupation is not-such-a-bad-thing (unlike countless other issues where liberal Jews have supported boycott):
If you believe that buying any product from the territories reinforces the occupation, and that by doing so violates a consumer moral code, then Coke and Pepsi might indeed be better for your conscience.
For us, it’s not that simple. A blanket boycott of Israeli goods produced in the Palestinian territories — formulated as a more targeted version of the boycott, divestment and sanction movement known as BDS — is shortsighted, unfair, largely unenforceable, and ultimately self-defeating. Some Palestinian leaders have called for sympathizers to take up this cause. Some Palestinian workers, clearly, don’t agree.
Ilene Cohen has this response to SodaStream ceo Daniel Birnbaum’s jobs claims:
With the hubris that comes with unbridled paternalism, Massa Danny boasts about how well he treats his house slaves (he’s doing it for them) and Scarlett thinks it’s all just swell (“a bridge of peace” and all).
But colonial occupation is wrong, just as slavery is wrong. Unfortunately, the majority of twenty-first-century Jews in “the only democracy in the Middle East” don’t get it.
Yes, if it’s so great that they’re working for you, why not give these people the vote over the government that has sovereignty? Can a liberal Jewish newspaper say that? Apparently not.
Flash from the past, 1984:
A survey among black South African factory workers that was published today shows overwhelming resistance to the notion that United States companies should withdraw investment in this racially divided nation to force change.
Of 551 workers interviewed in the main industrial centers, 75 percent said they disagreed with campaigns in the United States and elsewhere for divestment in South Africa. Of that number, according to the survey, 54 percent said divestment would reduce the number of jobs, and 41 percent said divestment would harm blacks.
The battle anticipates the coming battle over whether the John Kerry framework could produce a viable Palestinian state on chunks of land. A British Labour minister who long supported the two-state solution has called for consideration of a one-state solution. This kind of discussion is sure to come to the U.S. soon…
But I am increasingly unsure about whether [2SS is] still achievable – mainly because, as time has marched on, and successive negotiating initiatives have come and gone, the land earmarked for a viable Palestinian state has been remorselessly occupied by Israeli settlers.
And I’m not alone. John Kerry and William Hague have both talked of “the window for a two-state solution” closing…. The fundamental problem is this: sooner rather than later the land available to constitute a future Palestinian state will have all but disappeared.
I caught Jane Eisner doing free SodaStream advertising today on social media. It’s not just seltzer. It is fancy seltzer.
Re: SodaStream
Dear Ms. Johansson:
You have been a young actress who has grown up in the public eye, which process has been quite charming to watch through the media. My family and I have appreciated your films, such as The Prestige. It has been heartwarming that you have regularly made efforts on behalf of President Obama’s Presidential campaigns.
We appreciate that, for a young person in particular, choices are never easy, especially in light of significant financial incentive and powerful groupthink. We also know that, especially for a lady, the film business is stressful and uncertain. As an astute person, you certainly know that the expropriation of land in the West Bank is the official policy of Israel. While it directly benefits from this state-sanctioned theft, you have decided to work on behalf of SodaStream. In our view, this has been a very poor decision.
While your decision may result in the beneficence of a few influential studio executives, this beneficence will be short-lived. Integrity is essential. In our opinion, your SodaStream relationship has significantly deteriorated your status with a vibrant segment of film viewers.
If, as buyer, I sign a P&S agreement for your house, can I move in today, or do I have to wait until I get a mortgage, and pay you, and the move-in date rolls around?
Bachman seems to say (recalling the Mikado)
If I could hold Bachman’s feet to the fire (and the feet of other dimwits — and moral/legal cripples — as well, of course), I’d ask him if he believes that “the huge settlement that SodaStream produces in will be part of Israel in the coming two-state solution:” is the same as “that huge settlement is part of Israel now.”
And I’d ask him,
In fact, there is no peace treaty on any reasonable horizon, and hasn’t been for 46 years since Israel decided to “own” the OPTs instead of make peace. So that’s one thing. Until (remote and very future possibility) Israel will sign a peace treaty specifying as border the green-line, there will be no 2-state-solution, and SodaStream will not be made in Israel until then.
The other thing is the possibility that apartheid will go on for quite a while (in which case, the settlement will still not be part of Israel for quite a while) — and the more remote possibility that there will be a total swallowing of OPTs by Israel in some kind of (different from today) 1-state-solution, in which case the settlements will not be part of “Israel” but, rather, part of “Israstine”.
In all three cases, SodaStream is NOT manufactured inside Israel TODAY, and in some readings of the tea leaves, not in the future either.
i tried leaving this comment over at the forward but it kept rejecting my twitter login. i’m tech challenged tho so it was probably something i did. anyway, here’s the comment i tried to leave:
it’s disingenuous to claim soda stream is not profiting from the occupation when it’s getting huge tax breaks designed to entice companies to become complicit in israel colonization of more palestinian land. when laborers who once worked in east jerusalem are denied access to land now unilaterally annexed eisner claims some are “clearly” unsympathetic to calls for boycott. and we all know how some slaves loved their masters too, just ask them! when the alternative is not feeding your family then it’s AOK and such a relief working in factories on stolen land.
BDS works precisely because it’s the people’s choice. so it doesn’t matter if it’s “largely unenforceable” because consumers can decide for themselves, and we will.
drink your bloodbubbles if it quenches your thirst, and the occupation (like a vampire) could live on forever.
So The Jewish Daily Forward – which pretends to be a liberal newspaper – brands critics of the occupation as ‘haters’.
This is very succint summary of the total intellectual and moral freefall of “liberal” Zionism.
It’s actually quite amazing the level of which all the same arguments used by the pro-Apartheid lobbyists are re-used and recycled by Israel’s pro-Apartheid lobbyists.
It didn’t work then and it won’t work now.
But as a Jew it’s fucking depressing to watch the depth of racism we’ve fallen to in our community when pro-occupation trash pieces like that is considered within the mainstream of the liberal concensus.