As Cold as Self-Righteous Charity

Being Seduced by the Dark Side

Oxfam long ago became seduced by leftwing political ideology.  The trajectory is easy to understand.  A charity is formed to provide relief against famine, aka hunger and malnutrition.  The struggle soon broadens into fighting not just at the bottom of the cliff, but at the top--by which we mean the focus upon preventing or palliating conditions which cause poverty and hunger.   

In every society there are relative disparities of wealth and property.  The facile fix at the top of the cliff is for groups like Oxfam was to begin to advocate for the redistribution of wealth and property as more permanent prevention of hunger.  We call this the first degree of abstraction, representing the initial step towards adopting a left-wing political ideology.

The second degree of abstraction comes when the illuminaries in an organization like Oxfam begin to form the view that fighting hunger at the top of the cliff requires not just paying attention to the socio-economic conditions causing poverty, but focusing upon the power structures, the political regimes which exploit the lower socio-economic sectors, and which use them as tools, keeping them subjected to poverty so they are kept perpetually dependant.   This is the second degree of abstraction into left-wing political ideology--identifying the governments and regimes that are evil exploiters of the poor and vulnerable, and opposing them by the ban and the black-list. 

The third degree of abstraction occurs when organizations like Oxfam begin to exclude certain regimes and practices as inherently evil--regimes that they will ban and boycott to the best of their abilities.  At this point, Oxfam and their fellow-travellers are willing to sacrifice the poor and needy whilst they conduct their politically fashionable campaigns against the fomenters of sin.
  The glorious humanitarian end justifies using means which actually harm poor people.  Top-down, ideological abstraction rules; people become irrelevant pawns in the greater ideological struggle. 

Every so often we get a glimpse of the resulting perversity.  For the latest insight we need to thank actress, Scarlett Johansson who, although a former Oxfam ambassador, has unintentionally exposed the corruption of a once honourable charity into just another ideological puppet.  It turns out that Johansson's cardinal sin was to support publicly a company named SodaStream.  Oxfam recoiled in ideological horror. 

Maybe this company produces something which poisoned the hungry, or which used poor people as unwitting guinea pigs for their product research?  Not at all.

SodaStream was founded decades ago in Europe as a cheap, environmentally friendly, at-home alternative to buying fizzy beverages at the supermarket. Users carbonate their own water using replaceable gas canisters and can flavor the liquid with a variety of syrups, which are also sold by SodaStream. In 1998 the company was acquired by Soda Club, then a seven-year-old Israeli company, which adopted the older company’s name. [National Review Online]

SodaStream's crime?  Setting up shop in "occupied territories" and employing (aka, exploiting) Palestinian labour in their factories.  Well, actually, that's not quite true.  It turns out that SodaStream is a pretty decent employer in a part of the world where good work is hard to come by.

First, SodaStream offers comprehensive benefits, including health insurance, and high wages for the Palestinians it employs in its Ma’aleh Adumim facility — better jobs than are available in most of the West Bank. The company’s CEO “just can’t see how it would help the cause of the Palestinians if we fired them,” as the boycott movement effectively desires.

What about the Palestinian workers fortunate enough to be employed  by SodaStream?  This, from the NZ Herald:

Yasmin Abu Markhia, 22, is proudly Palestinian - when the Herald asked her nationality she lifted her sleeve to show a Palestinian flag-themed bracelet.  Abu Markhia, who lives in Jerusalem, checks and stacks the carbon dioxide canisters that go inside SodaStream machines and has worked at the factory beside a Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank for four months.  She sees no conflict in working at SodaStream. "We are human, we earn good money and the work is good." . .  .

Palestinian worker Nabil Basharat, 40, from a village near Ramallah, has worked for SodaStream for four years and is now a shift manager. He supports his wife and six children on an income he says is high by both Palestinian and Israeli standards.  "We understand their [BDS and Oxfam] opinion, but they need to understand what the factory gives the Palestinian workers and there are a lot of factories in this area doing the same thing," he told the Herald.

Johansson  has now been effectively dumped as an ambassador for Oxfam, which found her actions supporting SodaStream to have betrayed its ideological commitments.

“This is like supporting the apartheid system in the old South Africa,” thundered Mustafa Barghouthi of the Palestinian National Initiative. Johansson “has no excuse for allowing herself to be used to support the violation of international law.”

The boycotters also urged Oxfam, for which ScarJo has served as an ambassador since 2005, to sever its ties with the actress. “Palestinian civil society, and indeed all who care about human rights around the world,” asserted Omar Barghouti, a founder of a leading boycott group, “expects Oxfam to immediately end its relationship with an actress that has knowingly lent her name to whitewashing Israel’s illegal occupation and colonization of Palestinian land.” On Wednesday, Johansson terminated her relationship with Oxfam, citing a “fundamental difference of opinion in regards to the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.”

Now, let's imagine that as a result of SodaStream's scandalous behaviour being exposed and the consequent ratcheting up of the boycott, it closed down its Palenstinian factories and the 500 Palestinian workers it employs lost their jobs.  Oxfam would cheer.  Oxfam would rejoice in the impoverishment of 500 Palestinians and their families.  Oxfam has become an "end justifies the means" exploiter of the poor.  Oxfam has become the very kind of organisation it professes to oppose--as is always the case when one's political ideology uses a utopian end to justify using people as pawns. 

To her credit, Johansson did not back down. 

I remain a supporter of economic cooperation and social interaction between a democratic Israel and Palestine. 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.

Sounds about right.  Sounds like the kind of sentiment that thirty years ago Oxfam would have lauded and championed.  But not now.  Its seduction to the dark side is complete.