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Monday, January 27, 2014

Scarlett Johansson’s Defense of SodaStream Factory in Occupied West Bank Fails to Sway Critics

A new ad for SodaStream featuring Scarlett Johansson posted online by the Israeli company on Monday.

In a statement released late Friday, the actress Scarlett Johansson rejected criticism of her new endorsement deal with SodaStream, which manufactures home carbonation systems in an Israeli settlement, from opponents of Israel’s continued occupation of the West Bank territory it seized in 1967.

While Ms. Johansson wrote that she “never intended on being the face of any social or political movement, distinction, separation or stance as part of my affiliation with SodaStream,” her decision to act as a “global brand ambassador” for the Israeli company, unveiled in an ad posted online Monday, put her at odds with the charity Oxfam, which she has represented in that role since 2007. Oxfam made clear last week that it “opposes all trade from Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law.”

In her statement, Ms. Johansson attempted to reconcile the conflicting views about the settlements with a defense of the Israeli company’s factory that echoed the language used by SodaStream’s chief executive, Daniel Birnbaum, in a video promoting the plant as a bridge to peaceful cooperation between the two communities. “I remain a supporter of economic cooperation and social interaction between a democratic Israel and Palestine,” Ms. Johansson wrote.

She continued:

SodaStream is a company that is not only committed to the environment but to 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 Maale Adumim factory every working day. As part of my efforts as an Ambassador for Oxfam, I have witnessed first-hand that progress is made when communities join together and work alongside one another and feel proud of the outcome of that work in the quality of their product and work environment, in the pay they bring home to their families and in the benefits they equally receive.

The actress’s argument won her praise online from defenders of Israel’s settlement policy, including Scott Stringer, New York City’s comptroller, but failed to sway Oxfam, which maintains that “businesses that operate in settlements further the ongoing poverty and denial of rights of the Palestinian communities that we work to support,” and said that it is “considering the implications of her new statement” for her role as an Oxfam global ambassador.”

Several critics of Israel’s settlement-building policy noted that Mr. Stringer’s comments seemed at odds with the long-held position of the United States government, which calls the movement of Israeli citizens into the occupied territory an obstacle to the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

Writing on the Israeli news blog +972, Mairav Zonszein called the American actress’s statement “beyond naïve,” for calling Palestinians who work for SodaStream in the occupied West Bank “neighbors” of their Israeli coworkers with equal rights.

“Palestinians live under military rule, are not eligible to vote for the authorities that rule over their lives, are subject to military rather than civilian courts, and experience systematic discrimination in every aspect of life,” Ms. Zonszein wrote. “Even if an Israeli company is green, or treats its workers better than other establishments, it does not make up for the fact that it is situated on land held by force, whose native population is ruled against their will and demand an end to the occupation. Is that really such a difficult concept to understand?”

Leading voices in the Palestinian community also rejected Ms. Johansson’s stance. Rashid Khalidi, a professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University who was an adviser to the Palestinian delegation during peace negotiations with Israel from 1991 to 1993, said in a statement emailed to reporters that the American actress “appears to believe that the continuation of brutal military occupation is just fine, and that peace can be built on such a basis. In fact, it can only be based on an immediate and complete end to illegal occupation, colonization, and the attendant dispossession of the Palestinian population, in all of which SodaStream and similar companies play an integral part.”

In a statement circulated by The Institute for Middle East Understanding, Diana Buttu, a former adviser to the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas based in Ramallah, said Ms. Johansson seemed unaware of the fact that the construction of the settlement where SodaStream’s factory is situated took place only after “more than a thousand Palestinians were forcibly removed from their land and today, just a few miles away from Maale Adumim, Palestinians live without running water, without electricity or sanitation facilities.”

Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian bloggers turned their attention to pressing Oxfam to immediately cut ties with Ms. Johansson by creating a mock ad for the charity that remixed an image of the actress enjoying a SodaStream drink with one of Palestinians crammed together in pens at an Israeli checkpoint.



Au Revoir, Valérie

Valérie Trierweiler, the ex-partner of President François Hollande of France, leaves a children's ward at a Mumbai hospital on Monday.Indranil Mukherjee/Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images Valérie Trierweiler, the ex-partner of President François Hollande of France, leaves a children’s ward at a Mumbai hospital on Monday.

PARIS â€" Just hours after President François Hollande announced over the weekend that he had split up with Valérie Trierweiler, de facto first lady of France, Ms. Trierweiler arrived in the Indian city of Mumbai on Sunday, looking composed, perfectly coiffed and resolute, even as she was swarmed by paparazzi.

It was a striking contrast to recent weeks, with Ms. Trierweler having been hospitalized after an emotional collapse on the day Mr. Hollande’s affair with the French actress Julie Gayet was revealed by a tabloid.

For all the protestations of Gallic indifference to the private lives of politicians, the news media have jockeyed to offer play-by-plays of the breakup worthy of a soccer match.

Television coverage of Valérie Trierweiler’s visit to India Jan. 26.

Le Parisien noted that the separation had been negotiated over the last week in a flurry of text messages, on the telephone and over a lunch Thursday between Mr. Hollande and Ms. Trierweiler. Yet it said that when the president tried to phone Ms. Trierweiler  on Friday night, apparently to hammer out the final details of the breakup, he was greeted by her voice mail.

“She acknowledged with sadness that their relationship was over, but she did not want to co-sign a text, she wanted him to make the decision on his own,” Le Parisien quoted an unnamed friend of Ms. Trierweiler as saying. An unnamed confidante of Mr. Hollande’s, meanwhile, told the paper that Mr. Hollande, often mocked by the French for his Hamlet-like indecisiveness, had hesitated until the last minute. “It is difficult,” the friend said.

“Pressing the button makes things irreparable. François hates that,” he said, adding, “It was she who probably enabled him to become the head of state.”

After her two-day trip to India on behalf of a charity, her first as a private citizen, Ms. Trierweiler will return to the rented apartment in the 15th arrondissement of Paris where she lived with Mr. Hollande before his election in May 2012.

On Saturday, Mr. Hollande, who had promised to clarify his relationship with Ms. Trierweiler before heading to Washington on Feb. 11 to meet President Obama, issued a statement, saying: “I am making it known that I have ended my shared life with Valérie Trierweiler.”

On Twitter, she expressed her gratitude to the “extraordinary personnel” at the Élysée Palace: “I will never forget their dedication, nor the emotion at the time of departure.”

In its post-mortem of their relationship, Le Figaro noted Sunday that Mr. Hollande had once said that Ms. Trierweiler, a twice-divorced journalist, was “the woman of my life.” But it said he had later regretted not having added “today” at the end of that sentence, out of deference to Ségolène Royal, a prominent Socialist politician who was his partner for nearly 30 years and the mother of his four children before he left her for Ms. Trierweiler.

The French - who can be as icy as they are sentimental - never warmed to Ms. Trierweiler, at once elegant and fiercely independent. Questioned by French radio a few days after Mr. Hollande’s election on how she would define her new role as first lady, Ms. Trierweiler got off to a bad start by replying that in her heart, she was foremost a journalist.

Then she created a small scandal in June 2012, shortly after Mr. Hollande’s election, when she lent her support on Twitter to a party dissident who was trying to defeat Ms. Royal. Socialist Party officials and Ms. Royal’s elder son were reported to be furious.

The damage in public opinion was seemingly irreversible. Le Monde noted that she had become one of the most detested personalities in France. In March 2013, an elderly woman was filmed in Dijon asking Mr. Hollande not to marry her. “We don’t like her,” the woman implored. The video quickly went viral on social media.

A Frenchwoman asking Mr. Hollande not to marry Ms. Trierweiler in March 2013.

Ms. Trierweiler, born in 1965, came from humble beginnings. Her father was disabled after losing a leg in a mine explosion in 1944 and her mother worked as a cashier at an ice rink and she grew up on a housing project in Angers, in western France. She studied political science at the Sorbonne before becoming a journalist, most recently for the well-known magazine Paris Match.

Ms. Trierweiler met Mr. Hollande in 1988, and the two became friends in 1997, when she was covering the Socialist Party for Paris Match. She was married at the time.

Nadia Le Brun, the author of a biography of Ms. Trierweiler called “The Queen of Spades,” told RTL, a French radio network, that Ms. Trierweiler did not agree with Mr. Hollande’s decision to split, and that she had not negotiated her exit in the way she would have liked. “She is not the kind of woman who would be rejected like a courtesan during the time of the king,” she said. “She is the kind of woman who stands up for herself.”



In Assad Government Communiqué, a Clue to Syria Peace Talks’ Hurdles

GENEVA â€" As we reported, a tenuous peace conference in Geneva between the Syrian opposition and the government has yet to produce concrete results, and on Monday, the third day of face-to-face talks, a communiqué released by President Bashar al-Assad’s government showed just how far apart they are from any agreement.

The United Nations special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, convened another session of the talks, in which he was said to be bringing an international expert involved in drafting the Geneva I protocols to resolve differences of interpretation. The June 2012 agreement known as Geneva I calls for a fully empowered transitional governing body to be formed by “mutual consent.”

The opposition has demanded that the government formally confirm that it accepts the protocol, but on Monday the Syrian government made its own interpretation clear by submitting what it called “basic elements for a political communiqué.”

One of the Syrian government’s most senior delegates to the conference, Bouthaina Shaaban, a longtime presidential adviser, distributed a copy to reporters on the sidelines.


The document made no mention of the words “transition” or “reform” and appeared to suggest that Syria was already a rule-of-law democracy. The Geneva I protocols, which some members of the Syrian delegation have said they accept as the basis for the current meeting, call for the establishment of a transitional governing body with full executive powers by “mutual consent.”

The government’s document states: “The Syrian Arab Republic is a democratic country on the basis of political pluralism, the rule of law and the independence of judiciary and citizenship and protecting national unity and cultural diversity” and “protecting public freedom.”

Its first agenda item was defending Syrian sovereignty and indivisibility and calling for commitment “to restore all its occupied territories” - apparently a reference to the Golan Heights, seized by Israel in the 1967 war, an issue not previously on the agenda.

It called for an end to foreign interference and foreign supplying of weapons and information to terrorists, and says Syria’s future can be decided only by its citizens at the ballot box. The government has blamed Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and the West for supporting jihadist groups in Syria, but says foreign interference and terrorism do not apply to the intervention of Iran, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite militias on its side in the Syrian war.

Ms. Shaaban said that she was surprised that the opposition delegates rejected the document and that she thought Mr. Brahimi was surprised, too.

“There is nothing to reject here,” she said. “What are you, American?”

Monzer Akbik, a spokesman for the opposition coalition, said it had submitted a document too, and its document was the Geneva I communiqué.

“We recognize the legitimacy of the international community and its resolutions,” he said. “If the talks break up, it won’t be because of us.”

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.



Egyptian Journalist Explains Hunger Strike in Prison Letter

Abdullah Elshamy, an Egyptian journalist for Al Jazeera who was detained in August while covering the bloody crackdown on an Islamist sit-in in Cairo, has embarked on a hunger strike, according to a letter from prison that was posted online by his family on Monday.

Mr. Elshamy, the Qatari network’s West Africa correspondent before his arrest, is one of five Al Jazeera journalists currently being held in jail by the military-backed government that took power in July and swiftly moved to shut down media outlets considered sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood and the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi.

His letter was posted on Facebook by his brother, Mosa’ab Elshamy, a photojournalist and blogger, just hours after another letter from his colleague, Peter Greste, an Australian reporter was released by Al Jazeera’s English-language channel.

Here is the complete text of Mr. Elshamy’s letter:

It’s three in the morning while everyone in the cell is fast asleep. A breeze of air penetrates the ceiling full of iron rods in a hurry, 16 of us are lying in an space of 12 meters. By my right and left bags dangle and are narrowly fit to help us live in this place.

I say life timidly and reluctantly, as there is no life here. Today I complete 160 days of captivity in jail without any charges. Outside, there are colleagues who live with consent to be mouthpieces and witnesses to the violation of the freedom of media and agree to it.

I do not regret any day I’ve stayed in this place. Neither have I made any offense against any human being nor participated in the falsification of anyone’s consciousness. My work is available on the Internet for those who want to see it, I take pride of my work in Al Jazeera network. I will always say that regardless of where I was.

I do not belong to any group or ideology. I belong to my conscience and my humanity, and I do not take interest in what is been said in the local media about me or my colleagues. History doesn’t forget.

Our freedom will prevail, for my colleagues â€" Mohamed Badr, Muhammad Fahmi, Baher Ghorab, Peter Greste â€" and myself.

We are witnesses of freedom and will always be remembered as that. I know that a prosecutor who’s clearly lost his senses of justice or a judge who works by orders from above will all be forgotten and despised.

I chose to be on hunger strike to send a few messages; one to journalists who choose to falsify the facts and cover up for the violations of freedoms and media, the other to the Egyptian junta that I do not fear losing my life in my struggle for freedom. Nothing will break my will or dignity.

Robert Mackey also remixes the news on Twitter @robertmackey.



Egyptian Journalist Explains Hunger Strike in Prison Letter

Abdullah Elshamy, an Egyptian journalist for Al Jazeera who was detained in August while covering the bloody crackdown on an Islamist sit-in in Cairo, has embarked on a hunger strike, according to a letter from prison that was posted online by his family on Monday.

Mr. Elshamy, the Qatari network’s West Africa correspondent before his arrest, is one of five Al Jazeera journalists currently being held in jail by the military-backed government that took power in July and swiftly moved to shut down media outlets considered sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood and the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi.

His letter was posted on Facebook by his brother, Mosa’ab Elshamy, a photojournalist and blogger, just hours after another letter from his colleague, Peter Greste, an Australian reporter was released by Al Jazeera’s English-language channel.

Here is the complete text of Mr. Elshamy’s letter:

It’s three in the morning while everyone in the cell is fast asleep. A breeze of air penetrates the ceiling full of iron rods in a hurry, 16 of us are lying in an space of 12 meters. By my right and left bags dangle and are narrowly fit to help us live in this place.

I say life timidly and reluctantly, as there is no life here. Today I complete 160 days of captivity in jail without any charges. Outside, there are colleagues who live with consent to be mouthpieces and witnesses to the violation of the freedom of media and agree to it.

I do not regret any day I’ve stayed in this place. Neither have I made any offense against any human being nor participated in the falsification of anyone’s consciousness. My work is available on the Internet for those who want to see it, I take pride of my work in Al Jazeera network. I will always say that regardless of where I was.

I do not belong to any group or ideology. I belong to my conscience and my humanity, and I do not take interest in what is been said in the local media about me or my colleagues. History doesn’t forget.

Our freedom will prevail, for my colleagues â€" Mohamed Badr, Muhammad Fahmi, Baher Ghorab, Peter Greste â€" and myself.

We are witnesses of freedom and will always be remembered as that. I know that a prosecutor who’s clearly lost his senses of justice or a judge who works by orders from above will all be forgotten and despised.

I chose to be on hunger strike to send a few messages; one to journalists who choose to falsify the facts and cover up for the violations of freedoms and media, the other to the Egyptian junta that I do not fear losing my life in my struggle for freedom. Nothing will break my will or dignity.

Robert Mackey also remixes the news on Twitter @robertmackey.



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