Scarlett fumbles human rights

AMP asks Academy Award winner to dump Soda Stream

January 29, 2014

Dear Scarlett Johansson:

Several weeks of negative publicity and letters explaining how Israeli settlements are illegal and deprive Palestinians of their land and human rights have not moved you to end your contract with Soda Stream. Instead, you issued a statement that said, "Soda Stream is a company that is … building a bridge to peace between Israel and Palestine, supporting neighbors working alongside each other, receiving equal pay, equal benefits and equal rights. That is what is happening in their Ma’ale Adumim factory every working day."

I know others have sent you testimony from Palestinian workers in the Soda Stream factory that refute these claims. Just as they’ve sent you reasons how settlements are built on stolen Palestinians land and how they deprive Palestinians of their human rights. Yet you are unmoved.

Had you ever traveled to the West Bank to see life under Israeli military occupation you would not be able to so blithely parrot Soda Stream’s false propaganda. Maybe hearing real stories about real Palestinians will help you understand.

I met a Palestinian journalist on my first trip to the West Bank in 2010. He took me to the exact spot on a hillside outside Ramallah where, when he was 15 years old, an Israeli soldier threw him to the ground, put a gun against his head and pulled the trigger. The gun wasn’t loaded. The soldier didn’t mean to kill him, only humiliate and terrify him.

 I met a young man of 18 who, when he was a child, was kidnapped by Israeli soldiers while on his way home from school. He was held in a military prison without charge or trial for six months. For an entire day, his parents didn’t know what had become of him. I wrote an article about him as well as two younger boys who were burned by cigarette butts, urinated on and kept in freezing cold conditions without clothes for days. 

In fact, you can read a report by Defence for Children International about how Palestinian children are tortured and abused in Israeli prisons here.

There’s a young college student in the Chicago area who told of visiting her grandfather near Nablus in the West Bank one summer. Every day he stood on his rooftop to survey his olive groves, which he can no longer farm as they’ve been taken over by Israeli settlers.

You call Israel a democratic society. There is a road called Shuhada Street in the West Bank town of Hebron upon which Palestinians are forbidden to walk, drive or even cross. It is reserved for Jewish settlers only. I am an American citizen of German descent. During my visit to Hebron, Israeli soldiers also refused to let me cross Shuhada Street as well. Not because I am Palestinian, because I am not. But because I am Muslim and I wear a headscarf. Does this sound like a free and open society to you?

If you do not want to take my word for it, then please read this account about the production of dates in Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley that ran several years ago in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The article spells out how laborers are discriminated against, overworked and underpaid. It talks of how the date farms at one time belonged to Palestinians but the land was stolen by Israel for its settlements. It describes how the new Israeli owners use cranes to place workers – including children as young as nine years old – atop palm trees four stories tall for an entire day’s shift. They called it “distributing monkeys.” In unrelenting sun, the workers hang on with one arm and work with the other. They do not come down during their nine-hour shifts, unless they fall out of the tree.

Ms. Johansson, no one can dispute your talent. As an actor, you are one of the best. But, you are standing on the wrong side of justice with this issue. Soda Stream is not building bridges of peace, it is breaking dreams. Soda Stream is part of Israel’s occupation. It does not empower Palestinians; it hurts them and is complicit in a system that contravenes international law and deprives Palestinians of their human rights. Because you refuse you sever your ties with Soda Stream, you are losing your credibility. You are selling your talent and your humanity for endorsement dollars, all the while ignoring what kind of impact your support of Soda Stream will have on millions of human lives in Palestine.

Ms. Johansson, please rethink your position and find the courage to stand on the right side of history. Please end your relationship with Soda Stream.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Kristin Szremski
Director of media and communications
American Muslims for Palestine