WASHINGTON
— Scarlett Johansson politely declined an invitation to speak to the
14,000 people gathering here Sunday for the annual meeting of the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, as the nation’s most
powerful pro-Israel lobbying group is known.
She
has to be in Paris to collect an honorary César film award, her
publicist said, and then she is promoting two new movies, “Under the
Skin” and “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.” Aipac’s members will
have to settle for Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew as a Sunday
headliner.
But
the Hollywood actress will be at Aipac in spirit. After refusing to
give up an endorsement deal with SodaStream, an Israeli company that has
a factory in a Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Ms.
Johansson has become a hero to pro-Israel activists — a living,
breathing, deeply glamorous repudiation of the movement to boycott
Israel.
In
speeches by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials next
week, Aipac plans to pound the drums about what it regards as the
pernicious motives of the anti-Israel campaign, known formally as the
boycott, divestment and sanctions, or B.D.S., movement.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/world/middleeast/a-counterstrike-against-israel-boycotts-with-a-glamorous-face.html?ref=todayspaper
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