When the American actress Scarlett Johansson was asked to become a global brand ambassador for SodaStream, she had little reason to object. After all, she had learned that the Israeli company gives fair and equal wages to its Israeli and Palestinian workers. Little did Johansson suspect that her cooperation — with a firm whose main factory is located in the occupied Palestinian territories in contravention of international law — would explode in her face, forcing her to choose between money and ethics. After months of back and forth between Johansson and the charity that she supported, Johansson declared on Jan. 29 that she was resigning as an Oxfam ambassador.  

Her decision was no doubt accelerated by the public position of Oxfam regarding the illegality of settlements and the need to boycott products produced in them. In a statement released Jan. 30, the charity announced, “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 actress had for eight years been a global ambassador for Oxfam, an international coalition of 17 organizations working to fight poverty and injustice. Johansson helped raise money for Oxfam and traveled on its behalf around the world, but when she decided to endorse the Israeli company, both she and Oxfam had to make a choice. 

Palestinians and their supporters around the world raised the simple but strategic question of how an ambassador for a charity fighting poverty can so publicly be associated with a company profiting from a factory built in an illegal Jewish settlement in Palestine. The Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem has documented in great detail how the Israelis confiscated tens of thousands of dunums owned by Palestinians for the establishment of the Ma’ale Adumim settlement, east of Jerusalem, where the SodaStream factory is located.