02/27 Links Pt2: Scarlett Johansson Breaks Her Silence on SodaStream; “Sky Shield” Tested

From Ian:

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Scarlett Johansson defends herself for first time since Super Bowl SodaStream ad which saw her dropped as Oxfam ambassador for breaching charity's Israeli boycott

She quit her role as Oxfam ambassador in a row over her controversial Super Bowl advert for SodaStream - and chose to keep her links with the Israeli fizzy drink firm.
Now speaking for the first time since she severed her ties with the humanitarian group, Scarlett Johansson insists she never saw herself as a role model in the first place.
In an interview with Dazed magazine, Johansson did not directly address the row with Oxfam, but said: 'I don’t see myself as being a role model; I never wanted to step into those shoes.
The 29-year-old actress said she had a 'fundamental difference of opinion' with the charity after it said it opposed all trade from Israeli settlements because they say it is illegal and denies Palestinian rights

Forgotten Even By Us: Judaism’s Historic Ties to Israel

With Palestinian Arabs claiming Canaanite descent, the Jewish people must make their case for their historical ties to the land of Israel. The biblical era, from Israelite origins in the land through the Second Temple’s destruction, is well-known in the West. The tenacious continued Jewish presence thereafter isn’t.‎
Former President Carter voiced a widely-believed misperception when he wrote regarding the year 135 CE: “Romans suppress(ed) a Jewish revolt, killing or forcing almost all Jews of Judaea into exile.” But the forgotten fact is that the Jews never left.
The great significance of this, stated by eminent British historian James Parkes, is that Jews have always had strong ties to the land due to the “heroic endurance of those who had maintained a Jewish presence in The Land all through the centuries, and in spite of every discouragement,” which gave the Zionists’“real title deeds.” Every ruler in between was a foreign invader, and mostly non-Arab at that. The homeland Jewish Yishuv saw them all arrive and depart.‎

Irreconcilable Conflict

Literary editor of the New Republic Leon Wieseltier is calling a new book written by his TNR colleague John Judis, a senior editor, “shallow, derivative, tendentious, imprecise, and sometimes risibly inaccurate” and also “insulting” and “nasty.”
The scathing remarks are contained in an email Wieseltier sent to historian Ron Radosh praising his negative review of the Judis book, which argues that Israel should not exist. Marty Peretz, the longtime former editor of TNR, remarked in 2010 that on the Middle East, “John Judis knows zero.”