“If only I could make this message go viral,” Scarlett Johansson muses in her new advertisement for SodaStream the Israeli home fizzy-drink dispenser company that helps the environment, she says, by using “less sugar, less bottles”.

Ms Johansson’s new brand ambassador role and advert for SodaStream, launched online earlier this month and due to air during  Sunday’s Super Bowl, has indeed now gone viral – but in ways neither the husky-voiced Hollywood actress nor the Nasdaq-listed company probably imagined:

The international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement has seized on Ms Johansson and her association with SodaStream as a rare opportunity to add some unpaid star wattage to their long-running campaign to isolate Israel economically until it withdraws from occupied Palestinian land. SodaStream makes some of its dispensers, CO2 cylinders and bottles at a former munitions factory in the Mishor Adumim industrial zone, outside Jerusalem, in one of Israel’s sprawling settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are illegal under international law. 

BDS campaigners are now gathering signatures to pressure Oxfam, for which Ms Johansson has also served as an ambassador since 2005, to drop her. The charity says it is opposed to all trade with Israeli settlements, and that it is now “engaged in dialogue” with Ms Johansson over her association with Oxfam. Scarlett Johansson | Oxfam International

Oxfam is under mounting pressure from anti-Israel campaigners to sever ties with Scarlett Johansson after she agreed to star in an advertising campaign for a fizzy drinks company with a factory in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. Activists have launched the Twitter hashtag #ScarJos FavoriteSodaStream Flavor, garnering suggestions such as Doctor Pepper Spray, Gaza Calorie Count and Palestinian Punch

Johansson has been an Oxfam goodwill ambassador since 2005. The campaigners say her position is untenable.

"Oxfam is a human rights organisation. They cannot maintain an ambassador if they are involved in a complicit Israeli company built in a settlement. They can't keep both. You can't maintain something and its contradiction," the boycott campaign founder Omar Barghouti told the Guardian.

"Activists everywhere, particularly in the US, UK and Palestine as well as affiliated organisations and major Palestinian figures are writing, tweeting, or calling Oxfam to dismiss Johansson as ambassador, because of her conscious decision to lend her name to whitewashing Israeli occupation and apartheid," Barghouti said. Source:http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/29/oxfam-pressure-scarlett-johansson-sodastream-israel 

Behind The Scenes Of Our New SuperBowl Commercial:

The actress has however defended her controversial contract with SodaStream. 

“I remain a supporter of economic cooperation and social interaction between a democratic Israel and Palestine,” she said in a statement published by the Huffington Post. “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 Ma’ale Adumim factory every working day.” Despite Johansson also praising Oxfam, the group reacted by saying it was “considering the implications of her new statement and what it means for Ms. Johansson’s role as an Oxfam global ambassador.” #SodaStream employs 550 Palestinians at its West Bank factory and echoes Johansson’s statement by saying they work on equal terms with their Israeli co-workers.