Photos in which the film star
looks at her best appeared prominently on Yediot Aharonot’s front pages, under the title “Scarlett
for Israel”: Supporting Israel has become a real professional risk to the world’s
artists, writes Tzippy Shmilovitz. Anyone daring to come here or even say a
good word about Israel is subject to great pressure and intimidation and most
of them fold up. Not, however, Scarlett Johansson. She had to choose between
old position as goodwill ambassador for the anti-poverty organization Oxfam,
which is doing humanitarian work worldwide, and her new contract to act as “a global
brand ambassador” for the SodaStream company, which produces domestic soda
machines in a West Bank settlement, she
bravely chose for the latter, concludes Shmilovitz.
In the same vein Minister
Naftali Bennet, leader of the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home Party, displayed Scarlett
Johansson’s photo on his Facebook page with the caption “she is as beautiful on
the inside as on the outside.”
Among the praise heaped on Scarlett
Johansson for her bravery, there was scarce mention of the fact that her work
with Oxfam had been charity, while SodaStream paid her handsomely for appearing
in the ad due to be broadcast to the enormous TV audience who are glued to
their screens on the occasion of the
American Super Bowl. She had already gotten quite a bit of income from
advertising various commercial commodities, among them Calvin Klein, L'Oréal, Louis
Vuitton, Dolce & Gabbana. Breaking an advertising contract with SodaStream
could have gotten her in legal problems and certainly jeopardized her chance of
getting further such contracts.
On the other hand, Scarlett
Johansson’s politics are not precisely the same as those of her Israeli
admirers. Bennet and his settler friends are not especially fond of John Kerry
and Barack Obama, both of whom got endorsements from Scarlett Johansson during their presidential campaigns in 2004 and 2008 respectively.
Indeed, Daniel Birnbaum, CEO
of SodaStream, very proud of his famous acquisition, is striving mightily to
distance himself from the outspokenly nationalist settlers of Bennet’s ilk and
establish credentials as a “non political settler”. Indeed, Birnbaum has on
several occasions presented himself as the new apostle of Israeli-Palestinian
coexistence, daily building up bridges of peace on his factory floor “without
waiting for the politicians and diplomats.”
Birnbaum’s ace in the hole
are the hundreds of Palestinian workers at the SodaStream factory. Well made video
footage spread by the company show Palestinian workers m highly satisfied with
their jobs, their salaries and working conditions, and on terms of perfect
amity with Jewish co-workers, though they prefer to lunch separately.
Until a few years ago,
Israeli employers at the settlements grossly discriminated and exploited
Palestinian workers, cynically citing the fact that they operate outside
Israeli sovereign territory and therefore Israeli laws on minimum salary do not
apply to them. Following appeals to the Supreme Court, it was ruled some years
ago that in settlements – which are in effect Israeli enclaves within a
non-Israeli territory – laws on minimum salary and other labor laws do apply,
and Palestinian workers should gat the same pay as Israeli ones. Not all
Israeli employers in the settlements did actually comply with the court’s
ruling. It might be that SodaStream did
– if only to have a watertight alibi to present internationally.
In line with Birnbaum, Scarlett
Johansson explained that she “supports
economic cooperation between a democratic Israel and Palestine." But where
exactly would the democratic Palestine be located? Where would be its border
with the democratic Israel? Would it have a territorial continuity, or be
broken up into a series of disconnected enclaves?
It is doubtful that the famous Holywood star had even seen a detailed
map of the Israeli settlements on the West Bank and their location in relation
to the Palestinian towns and village, such as are published by various Israeli
and Palestinian groups. Such a map would clearly show that Israeli government
planners had placed the settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim so as to drive a deep
wedge into Palestinian territory, cutting off the northern part of the West
Bank from its south, and that Mishor Adumim, the settlement’s industrial zone,
is located at the cutting edge of that wedge into Palestine. And right there,
at that cutting edge, is located the SodaStream factory, surrounded by an ugly
concrete wall topped with barbed wire.
