When Scarlett Johansson and Oxfam parted ways, Oxfam said her representation of SodaStream represented “a conflict of interests”.
Oxfam and human rights activists accuse Israeli company SodaStream of manufacturing its product in Jewish settlements in the impoverished Palestinian territories.
They view this as an exploitation of Palestinians and their resources.
“Oxfam believes that businesses, such as SodaStream, that operate in settlements further the ongoing poverty and denial of rights of the Palestinian communities that we work to support,” the poverty fighters said in a prepared statement.
But this rings a bit hollow as SodaStream actually employs and provides jobs for 500 West Bank Palestinians, and has Jewish and Palestinian employees working in harmony. The workers are also being paid more than the prevailing wage. “We will not throw our employees under the bus to promote anyone’s political agenda,” SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum told the Jewish Daily Forward.
Palestinians who work for SodaStream are against the boycott.
“Before boycotting, they should think of the workers who are going to suffer,” says a young man shivering in the pre-dawn darkness in Azzariah, a West Bank town cut off from work opportunities in Jerusalem by the concrete Israeli separation wall. Previously, he earned 20 shekels ($6) a day plucking and cleaning chickens; now he makes nearly 10 times that at SodaStream, which also provides transportation, breakfast, and lunch.
So why is Oxfam taking the lead in a campaign to boycot SodaStream? Maybe it’s anti-Israel sentiment, but maybe there’s also another motive at play here.
One of SodaStream’s most prominent competitors—the Coca Cola company—has donated more than $2.5 million to Oxfam over the past several years, leading some to wonder if Coke is supporting Oxfam as a means to defeat the competition.
“In 2011, Coca Cola contributed $400,000 to a research project ‘analyzing the poverty footprint of beverage giant Coca Cola and multinational bottling company SABMiller in Zambia and El Salvador’ and, in addition, $2.5 million in 2008-2010 for humanitarian work,” the website Israellycool.com reported on Friday.
Scarlett did a commercial for SodaStream for the Super Bowl (see the uncensored ad above), which ad was not accepted, supposedly because of the last sentence in the ad, which talked about how SodaStream was “changing the world” and ended “Sorry Coke and Pepsi”. Pepsi is sponsoring the halftime show, so allegedly was not happy with that and Fox asked SodaStream to remove the last line.
“They’re afraid of Coke and Pepsi,” SodaStream Chief Executive Daniel Birnbaum told USA Today. “This is the kind of stuff that happens in China. I’m disappointed as an American.”
Perhaps the motive is a simple one.. eliminate the competition…