Scarlett Johansson channels a Baptist minister

One of the odd stories in the lead-up to the Super Bowl, which I understand is tomorrow, is the news about Scarlett Johansson.


There are always stories about the commercials that are going to be on the Super Bowl, or that were on the Super Bowl in the past, or that didn't make it past the censors for the Super Bowl.

It turns out that Ms. Johansson's commercial made headlines for more than being in two of the mentioned categories. It's a commercial for Sodastream, the kitchen appliance that is going to save you big bucks that you would otherwise be spending on soda at the store, like Coke or Pepsi.
Oops--that's how they didn't make it past the censors. Since Coke and Pepsi are big advertisers, no fair mentioning the competition, so it's back to the drawing board for Sodastream.

The big story, though, is the conflict between Ms. Johansson's decision to rake in the bucks--I haven't been able to find out exactly how many--and her role as a spokesperson for Oxfam, one of the leading human rights and antipoverty organizations worldwide.

You see, Sodastream makes its home soda machines in a settlement in the occupied territories in Palestine, so her support of Sodastream puts her in direct conflict with Oxfam, because "Oxfam is opposed to all trade from Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law."

The story percolated for a few days, with human rights activists criticizing Ms. Johansson, but Oxfam not dropping her as a spokesperson. Eventually, though, she resigned her position with Oxfam, who accepted the resignation.

 This is the only way it could have ended, obviously. Ms. Johansson couched her endorsement of Sodastream in the self-serving language Sodastream itself uses, the humanitarian mission of providing employment for Palestinians, never mentioning the sizable checks that are obviously flowing her way. She sure doesn't come out of this looking good.

 I haven't seen the comparison made, but the parallel that strikes me about this is South Africa and the Sullivan Principles. Leon Sullivan was a Baptist minister from Philadelphia on the board of General Motors, and when anti-apartheid activitists were agitating for divestment of American companies from South Africa Sullivan came up with the Sullivan Principles, a set of standards designed to justify American corporations making big bucks off apartheid.

In the case of the Sullivan Principles, as in the case of Sodastream, humanitarian reasons were trotted out to justify corporate policies: we're a positive force for change, the people need the jobs, blah, blah, blah.

Never mind that the activists on the ground supported divestment as the only effective tactic against apartheid, either in South Africa or Palestine.  Ms. Johansson's "argument cuts no ice with Palestinian groups, who say SodaStream pays Palestinians less than Israelis, or with Oxfam, which says that trading with Israeli companies operating in West Bank settlements legitimates the occupation regardless of how they treat their workers."

 Don't expect this to have any impact on Ms. Johansson's career, but at least we can hope that it creates some greater visibility to the settlement issue in the wider world.

That's what I like: tolerance!

Two dispatches from the world of the religious.

First, from our open-minded ally in Israel:

The Netanyahu government's Ministry of Immigrant Absorption is sponsoring advertisements in at least five American communities that warn Israeli expatriates that they will lose their identities if they don't return home.

Supporters of Israel love to talk about how Israel is the best, most tolerant country in the Middle East, but as we've noted here before, the government of Israel, or at least the current incumbents, are as oppressive and narrow-minded as anyone else in the Middle East. Watch the videos. Even if you don't speak Hebrew, you'll get the idea.

Of course, we expect better in the good old USA, right?

One eastern Kentucky community is divided after a Pike County church voted Sunday not to allow interracial couples to be members or participate in church services. According to members of the Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church, not everyone is in agreement with yesterday's vote. Melvin Thompson, who actually submitted the proposal to the church, defended his position, and says he doesn't feel this will affect the Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church at all. "I do not believe in interracial marriages, and I do not believe this will give our church a black eye at all.

Apparently it's a small church, and there was opposition, but it's still hard to get around how scummy people can be in the name of god, huh?

Or, as my brother Dan points out, religion can be such a comfort.

Israel blows it

This week Israel had the chance to draw a contrast between its own ideas and religious totalitarianism. It had the chance to demonstrate that unlike countries dominated by radical Islam, Israel is a land and a culture of free expression and open debate.

You won't be surprised to learn that Israel once again failed the test.

Look at Pakistan and what do you see? Vicious government suppression of dissent, the use of the death penalty for blasphemy, and the assassination of a state governor for his opposition to blasphemy laws.

And in Israel? Noam Chomsky, a man who single-handedly started a scientific revolution in the field of linguistics, and who is known the world over for his progressive politics and writings, is denied entry.

Typically, Israel won't give a reason. Nevertheless, if the government of Israel is determined to silence its critics, it has little claim to the support or respect of the United States.

It's about damn time.

Thanks to Violetta for letting me know about this.

WASHINGTON – The House may vote next week on a measure that could damage U.S. relations with critical ally Turkey: a resolution declaring the World War I-era killings of Armenians a genocide.

We've written about this before, but just to refresh your recollection, the Turks slaughtered a million and a half Armenians around the time of World War I in what is considered the first act of genocide of the Twentieth Century.

Turkey, of course, doesn't like it when people have the bad tasted to remind them of this. Turkey, a NATO ally with a pivotal role for U.S. interests in the Middle East and Afghanistan, has warned that the resolution's approval could jeopardize U.S-Turkish cooperation and set back negotiations aimed at opening the border between Turkey and Armenia. Turkey also currently holds one of the rotating seats in the United Nations' Security Council that will have to approve sanctions against Iran.

Here's what Barack Obama said about the genocide in 2008:

I also share with Armenian Americans – so many of whom are descended from genocide survivors - a principled commitment to commemorating and ending genocide. That starts with acknowledging the tragic instances of genocide in world history. As a U.S. Senator, I have stood with the Armenian American community in calling for Turkey's acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide. Two years ago, I criticized the Secretary of State for the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, John Evans, after he properly used the term "genocide" to describe Turkey's slaughter of thousands of Armenians starting in 1915. I shared with Secretary Rice my firmly held conviction that the Armenian Genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but rather a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence. The facts are undeniable. An official policy that calls on diplomats to distort the historical facts is an untenable policy. As a senator, I strongly support passage of the Armenian Genocide Resolution (H.Res.106 and S.Res.106), and as President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide.

Since then he has been less forthcoming. For instance, here's what he said earlier this year:

“On this solemn day of remembrance, we pause to recall that 95 years ago one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century began,” Mr. Obama said in the statement, which largely echoed the same language he used on this date a year ago. “In that dark moment of history, 1.5 million Armenians were massacred or marched to their death in the final days of the Ottoman Empire.”

Still a strong condemnation, but not what he promised, and not what the world knows to be the case.

The time is long overdue. Call on your representatives in the House and Senate to support the Armenian genocide resolution.

The ADL gets it right

Over the years I've criticized the Anti-Defamation League. In fact, I could have sworn I'd excoriated them on these very pages, but I'm not finding it.

Where to begin? Of course, over the years they've demonstrated that they're on record supporting the Turkish genocide of the Armenians.

Or there was the time during the Gaza war when the ADL called Bill Moyers a racist for criticizing Israel's attacks on the civilians of Gaza.

Or, when Israel was at war with Lebanon, the way the ADL called for the use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians.

Still, as I say, fair is fair. If we're going to call them out when they're wrong, they deserve credit when they're right, and today is that day.

Henry Kissinger came under a lot of criticism over the last couple of days because of his comments about a potential genocide against Soviet Jews. In new Nixon tapes that were just released, tapes that once again illustrate the vicious racism and anti-Semitism of Richard Nixon, there is an exchange between Nixon and Kissinger about Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union.

An indication of Nixon’s complex relationship with Jews came the afternoon Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister, came to visit on March 1, 1973. The tapes capture Meir offering warm and effusive thanks to Nixon for the way he had treated her and Israel.

But moments after she left, Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were brutally dismissive in response to requests that the United States press the Soviet Union to permit Jews to emigrate and escape persecution there.

“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” Mr. Kissinger said. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”

Fortunately, the ADL is ever at the ready to come to the defense of the poor, maligned Kissinger. Here's the conclusion of their statement from earlier today:

The Nixon Tapes should not change history's verdict on the important contributions and ultimate legacy of Henry Kissinger.

When you're right, you're right.

In Slate today, Christopher Hitchens gives an eloquent assessment of all the reasons Henry Kissinger should never be allowed to be at large among civilized people. One could have demanded this at almost any time during the years since his role as the only unindicted conspirator in the Nixon/Watergate gang, and since the exposure of his war crimes and crimes against humanity in Indochina, Chile, Argentina, Cyprus, East Timor, and several other places.

So it's a matter of context. It would be hard to find someone in our history whose record of war crimes, depravity, and villainy extends to so many disparate countries; who has crushed the legitimate aspirations for democracy of so many peoples; and who has simultaneously demonstrated such abject sycophancy in the presence of the powerful.

Set alongside such a record, a few vile comments made to the most atrocious criminal ever to grace the Oval Office rest like a feather added to the deck of a supertanker.

So have some respect for the ADL. When they say we don't need to judge Kissinger any more harshly than we already do because of these latest revealed statements, for once they're right.

Time for some prosecutions

At last! Thanks to the Supreme Court we now have a tool to prosecute people in the United States who are financing terrorism in the Middle East.

You may have heard of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project.

Under the law, It is a federal crime to "knowingly provid[e] material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization." 18 U. S. C. §2339B(a)(1). The authority to designate an entity a "foreign terrorist organization" rests with the Secretary of State, and is subject to judicial review. "[T]he term 'material support or resources' means any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instruments or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel (1 or more individuals who may be or include oneself), and transportation, except medicine or religious materials." §2339A(b)(1).

The Supreme Court, in one of its last decisions this term, held that Americans who provide aid to organizations that engage in terrorist activities can be criminally prosecuted for violating this law, even if the assistance they provide is designated to support humanitarian, not terrorist, activities.


This week the Times published an investigation of American assistance to terrorist activities in the Middle East, but I suspect we won't be seeing prosecutions any time soon.

As the American government seeks to end the four-decade Jewish settlement enterprise and foster a Palestinian state in the West Bank, the American Treasury helps sustain the settlements through tax breaks on donations to support them.

A New York Times examination of public records in the United States and Israel identified at least 40 American groups that have collected more than $200 million in tax-deductible gifts for Jewish settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem over the last decade. The money goes mostly to schools, synagogues, recreation centers and the like, legitimate expenditures under the tax law. But it has also paid for more legally questionable commodities: housing as well as guard dogs, bulletproof vests, rifle scopes and vehicles to secure outposts deep in occupied areas.

That's right: Americans are getting tax deductions for giving money to support the terrorist activities of the Israeli government: building settlements in occupied territories and maintaining what Jimmy Carter has rightly characterized as a system of apartheid in the occupied territories.

The outposts receiving tax-deductible donations — distinct from established settlements financed by Israel’s government — are illegal under Israeli law. And a decade ago, Israel ended tax breaks for contributions to groups devoted exclusively to settlement-building in the West Bank.

So tell me: Is the United States really opposed to terrorism, or do our allies get a break on that?

We know who's making the contributions because they're claiming an income tax deduction. Somehow, though, I suspect we shouldn't hold our breath waiting for the first prosecution.

Who's blocking peace in the Middle East? More evidence.

Here's a story that hasn't been in the Times yet, probably because it's a New England centered story. It could be read as just one more petty story of intra-diplomatic intrigue, but it seems to be revealing of one of the main barriers to peace in the Middle East.

Leaders of Boston’s Jewish community yesterday rallied strongly behind Israel’s consul general for New England, Nadav Tamir, who was summoned to Jerusalem this week to explain his controversial memo saying Israel’s handling of its relations with the United States was “causing strategic damage’’ to American public support for Israel.

Here's a quote from the memo:

Throughout the years, opinion polls have shown that the two most significant factors in US public support are the perception of a partnership in values and interests, and the perception that Israel seeks to end the conflict with its neighbors (hence the consistent public support of our right to self defense). These two parameters have suffered greatly recently. In many American circles, there is a feeling these days, that while the Obama administration tries to resolve global conflicts, it must deal with the refusal to cooperate by governments in Iran, North Korea, and Israel. Aaron Miller's words, spoken after the Obama-Netanyahu meeting, clearly show this feeling. He said it was a meeting between Obama yes we can and Netanyahu no you won't.

So what's he talking about? How about the fact that after years of international recognition that Israel's settlements in the occupied territories are illegal, and years of politely requesting that Israel stop, the Obama administration is showing signs that it might be serious about it? How about the fact that Netanyahu is continuing to insist on expanding Israel's illegal settlements? How about the fact that Americans are finally starting to catch on that Israel is pursuing a maximalist policy?

Of course, this kind of thing never gets leaked by accident. Whenever you see one of these diplomatic kerfuffles, whether it be the U-2 spy plane case back in the 1960's, the confrontations with Iran in the Persian Gulf a few years ago, or this, you need to think about who's doing the leaking and why.

In this case, it appears to be the hardliners, leaking the memo in order to publicly recall the consul general and undermine his position.

In other words, the opponents of peace with the Palestinians are demonstrating that they have the upper hand. Not surprising considering Netanyahu is on top, is it?

What's indecent?

I'm fond of pointing it out when Islam is revealed as the sexist, oppressive force that it is, but don't get the idea that I'm singling Islam out.

Here, for example, are two photographs published this week in Israel.

They look very similar, don't they?

See if you can play "Junior Detective" and find the differences.

All done?

That's right, the top picture has two women, both members of the Israeli cabinet. The bottom picture is the same shot, but it has replaced the two women with men.

Now why would somebody do that? It's because the bottom picture was published in an ultra-Orthodox Israeli newspaper that determined that publishing the pictures of women would be indecent.

If you ask me, what's indecent is oppressing women and distorting the truth.

Israel Lobby Crushes Debate

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair announced today that Ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. has requested that his selection to be Chairman of the National Intelligence Council not proceed. Director Blair accepted Ambassador Freeman’s decision with regret.

This story just popped up on my radar the other day, so I haven't been following it closely, but it appears that this is another example of the Israel lobby making sure that the President can't get independent intelligence or dissent on U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Freeman, who seems to be universally called "Chas", is a diplomatic veteran. Freeman — a former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia who once served as President Nixon’s chief translator in China in 1972 — not only opposed the Iraq war, but has demonstrated a commitment to a well-rounded understanding of key U.S. national security issues and the importance of an even-handed U.S. role in the Israel-Palestine dispute:

“We abandoned the role of Middle East peacemaker to back Israel’s efforts to pacify its captive and increasingly ghettoized Arab populations. We wring our hands while sitting on them as the Jewish state continues to seize ever more Arab land for its colonists. This has convinced most Palestinians that Israel cannot be appeased and is persuading increasing numbers of them that a two-state solution is infeasible.”

In other words, he has the temerity to utter statements that run counter to U.S.-Israeli orthodoxy. We have known for years that the permissible scope of political debate on the Middle East is far more strictly circumscribed in the United States than it is in Israel: criticisms that are commonplace in Israel, from prominent Israeli speakers, would immediately be attacked as anti-Semitic if spoken in the United States.

It's obvious that Freeman, while stating that he withdrew his name, was, in fact, kicked to the curb, thrown under the bus, made to walk the plank, or otherwise summarily dismissed in the face of right-wing agitation. For instance, here's what Chuck Schumer said about it: Charles Freeman was the wrong guy for this position. His statements against Israel were way over the top and severely out of step with the administration. I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, and I am glad they did the right thing.

One of the interesting things about this whole debate is that a couple of years ago two academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, were viciously attacked when they published a book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, for daring to suggest that American supporters of Israel wield influence over the foreign policy of the United States. In the minds of Measheimer and Walt's attackers, simply to raise the question is beyond the pale, a sure sign of anti-Semitism. Nothing could be more absurd than the idea that supporters of Israel in the United States would try to influence U.S. foreign policy.

Except now Jonathan Chait, editor of the New Republic, has let the veil slip. Here's what he says about the Freeman defenestration: Of course I recognize that the Israel lobby is powerful, and was a key element in the pushback against Freeman, and that it is not always a force for good.

In other words, the Israel lobby is a fiction, and it will crush anyone who dares to challenge it.

Good luck finding a new adviser who will tell the truth about Israel.