Clovis Maksoud: Johansson on 'Wrong Side of History'

posted on: Feb 4, 2014

The resignation of the well-known actress Scarlett Johansson from Oxfam creates an intellectual and sentimental challenge on how one should deal with this critical issue.

For the past eight years, this prominent Hollywood actress has been a “global ambassador” for Oxfam. No doubt this was motivated by a yearning to empower people who are excluded from national and human rights. Oxfam has always advocated and is committed to human rights. That Johansson served Oxfam for eight years is proof of the idealism that constituted her commitment to empower the disempowered. We cannot but appreciate her service, and simultaneously share disappointment for the reason behind her resignation from Oxfam.

Johannson resigned from Oxfam to endorse SodaStream, an Israeli company manufacturing home carbonation systems, which is located in an Israeli settlement in the occupied Palestinian territories

Of course, Oxfam International issued a statement on Jan. 30 accepting her decision because “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.” Oxfam further stated it was “opposed to all trade from Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law.”

It must have been very sad for Oxfam to lose its “ambassador”!

It is in this context that we are witnessing a dilemma, whereby utilitarian priorities take precedent over principled commitments. It further shows the serious damage posed by the proliferation of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories of Palestine, specifically in terms of serious political and moral dilemmas for the constituency of conscience throughout the world.

Johansson’s statement — that she remains “a supporter of economic cooperation and social interaction between a democratic Israel and Palestine” — constitutes a derailment of truth. Social interaction between “a democratic Israel” and Palestine is a disappointing excuse since the Palestine she refers to is a conquered territory by the so-called democratic Israel.

This is where sadness pervades our reactions, and, I am sure, the sentiments of many in Oxfam.

This brings us to the issue of semantics, specially pertaining to the question of Palestine. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, when US State Department spokespersons describe settlements as “illegitimate,” that is correct morally. But unless the State Department describes the Palestinians under Israeli control as occupied, then legal consequences become obvious and the Fourth Geneva Convention articles become applicable and enforceable.

Perhaps Johansson did not realize that a company in an illegal settlement is a serious provocation to moral and political realities, as the European Union has shown and as Oxfam is a custodian of.

I refer to this dilemma because the issue of settlements is a projection of conquest, in as much as it represents an Israeli policy of claiming territories as a right. That is why a growing constituency of conscience worldwide, represented by Oxfam but also by the American Studies Association and others, will remember Johansson “for having stood on the wrong side of history,” as Rafeef Ziadah, a spokeswoman for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee, said.

Clovis Maksoud
Al Monitor