PRESS RELEASE

January 30, 2014

Press Contact:
Mahmoud Zwahra (+972 599 586 004)
Bab al Shams Village Council (in coalition with The Jahalin Association)
Urges
Scarlett Johansson to End Her Relationship with SodaStream
Bab al Shams Village Council (in coalition with The Jahalin Association) joins the
growing chorus of human rights advocates, Palestinian civil society organizations
such as the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network (PNGO), the
Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) and
other conscientious citizens of the world, calling on actress Scarlett Johansson to
terminate her endorsement deal with SodaStream, whose factory in the illegal
Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim is on Palestinian land in the occupied West
Bank.
Maale Adumim, like all other Israeli settlements built on occupied land, is illegal
and constitutes a war crime under international law. All companies operating in
settlements directly support Israel's illegal occupation and colonization of
Palestinian land by paying taxes to municipal settlement governments, employing
local settlers, and providing the economic infrastructure for Israel's settlement
expansion. The settlements have always been labelled a problem for peace by
successive U.S. administrations, the United Nations and peace negotiators.
Recent European Union guidelines state that no settlements should benefit from
European Union taxpayers money; President Obama has repeated that Maale
Adumims E1 Development Plan is a red line for his Administration.
While Johansson and company officials claim to be advancing the cause of
peace and to support the two-state solution, they are in fact supporting a nearly
half-century old Israeli military regime that brutally represses Palestinian rights,
illegally exploits Palestinian resources, and denies millions of people the most

fundamental of freedoms. Palestinian families, in particular Bedouins, are being

forcibly displaced so settlements like Maale Adumim can grow. Currently, some
3,000 Bedouin face expulsion from Palestinian lands, so that the massive colony
of Maale Adumim can expand further.
For Palestinians to enjoy genuine and lasting economic prosperity, they require
freedom from Israeli domination, and an end to occupation and colonization of
their land as supported by SodaStream. If Ms. Johansson truly wants to
contribute to a more peaceful future for Israelis and Palestinians, she should
begin by ending her endorsement of a company that profits from Israeli human
rights abuses.
Israel has been saying its serious about peace for over 20 years. Those words
have proved empty when you see how settlements have massively expanded in
that time. Or when you see how indigenous Palestinians have been displaced as
a result of settlement expansionism, said Bab al Shams village mayor, Jamil
Barghouti. How can you be talking peace when war crimes and colonialism are
being committed under the guise of that talk? And how can someone like Scarlett
Johansson be part of that deception? She should now withdraw for the sake of
her own integrity.
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Bab al Shams Village Council (in coalition with The Jahalin Association) is a
network of Palestinian popular committees, international and Israeli grassroots
activists, working non-violently together to protect Palestinian rights to Jerusalem
as a shared capital, with especial focus on preventing the eastern entry (the E1
area) to Jerusalem from being colonized by Maale Adumim expansion.