As if her otherworldly beauty and screen presence
were not enough, here is another reason to love Scarlett Johansson: Oxfam, of
which she was an ambassador, hinted that she should cut her ties with
SodaStream on the basis that it maintains factories in Israeli settlements and she responded by
cutting her ties with Oxfam!
What’s not to love about this story? A worthy charity
shakes its big head in disapproval at a celeb who has dared to do things for a
company that works in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, no doubt expecting
the celeb to freak out, issue a tear-drenched apology and promise never again
to rub shoulders, or anything else, with these evil Israelis. But instead the
celeb basically tells the worthy charity to get stuffed and says she will carry
on working with and promoting the Israeli company.
Ever since she was signed up as the face of
SodaStream, Ms Johansson has had a tsunami of flak from campaigners who think
that buying Israeli stuff, working with Israeli academics or attending Israeli
theatre performances is the very worst thing a human being could ever do. You
know the kind: they stand outside Marks & Spencer’s on Oxford Street
warning all whom enter that this evil shop sells blood-stained products (ie,
stuff made in Israel), and they screech and wail, these philistines for
Palestine, when an Israeli violinist
starts playing at the Proms. I mean, can you imagine it – a musician
from Israel inside the Royal Albert Hall? *Shudder*.
And so it was that the Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions movement, which calls for decent-minded Westerners to refuse to contaminate
their body, souls or minds with any grub or books from Israel, called on Oxfam
to “immediately
sever ties” with Ms Johansson. Oxfam expressed its concern at
Ms Johansson’s lack of guilt over advertising SodaStream, asking her to
“[consider] the implications”, and said it was thinking about what this all
means “for Ms Johansson’s role as Oxfam global ambassador”. And then,
brilliantly, totally stealing Oxfam’s puffed-up thunder, Ms Johansson’s people
issued a statement saying: “Scarlett
Johansson has respectfully decided to end her ambassador role with Oxfam after
eight years.” Sassy Actress 1, Self-Important Moaners About
Israel 0.
Ms Johansson broke her links with Oxfam over what she
calls “a fundamental difference of opinion in regards to the boycott,
divestment and sanctions movement”. That is, Oxfam thinks this movement is
hunky dory; Ms Johansson thinks it isn’t. In taking this stance, Ms Johansson
is being pretty rebellious. There is enormous pressure on the well-known and
the well-connected to boycott Israel. Any pop singer who dares to perform there
is bombarded with letters, emails and tweets telling them to rethink. Any
Western shop that stocks Israeli produce can expect despressed-looking
middle-class white people in Arafat-style keffiyehs to turn up on a Saturday
morning waving banners saying “Stop supporting Zionism!” Various academic
unions boycott Israeli
universities, turning that nation’s professors into the lepers of
modern intellectual life, as if their words – on stuff as innocent as physics
or philosophy – are wont to poison and corrupt those who hear them.
As for Israeli theatre troupes or dance groups that
come to Western European nations to perform – they will find themselves
hollered at and complained about by our right-on arts world. When Habima,
Israel’s national theatre company, came to Britain in 2012 to take part in an
international Shakespeare festival at the Globe, luvvies wrote open letters
expressing their “dismay” and claiming that by including Habima the Globe was “associating
itself with the policies of exclusion practised by the Israeli state”.
Notably, the presence at the Globe of theatre companies from authoritarian
regimes, including Zimbabwe and China, was not complained about. Nope, just
Israel. Because Israel is different, you see. It’s really horrible. We hate it.
And we love to hate it.
There
is nothing remotely progressive in this campaign to boycott everything Israeli,
with its double standards about various nations’ behaviour and its shrill
rhetoric about everything that comes from Israel being covered in Palestinian
blood. This movement is not designed to have any kind of positive impact in the
Middle East but rather is about making certain Western activists feel righteous
and pure through allowing them to advertise how Israeli-free their lives are.
It’s illiberal, because it effectively demands the censoring of Israeli
academics and performers; it’s hypocritical, because it is led by people who
are only too happy to use iPhones made in undemocratic China and to vote for
the Labour Party, which, er, bombed the hell out of Middle Eastern countries
for the best part of 10 years; and it has unfortunate ugly echoes of earlier
campaigns to boycott Jewish shops and produce. So three cheers for Ms Johansson
for taking a very public stand against this right-on pressure to treat Israel
as the most evil nation on Earth.
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View something about the Sodastream plant
and its virtues at; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl85AL1l0H0
NEVER AGAIN, again.. The European governments are not doing anything about the attacks on Jews, the boycotts of Israeli products,the marches in the streets against Jewish citizens born and raised in their countries because the government leaders do not care,. When the Jews leave, there will be peace..........you think?. Where are the camps? They don't want camps they want JUDENREIN.
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