By the light of the dwindling stars

This posting has these items responding to Scarlett Johansson’s decision to advertise Sodastream rather than continue as an Oxfam ambassador: the publicity ensures that no-one can now buy this settlement product in ignorance.

1) Al Monitor: Johansson, SodaStream row bolstering Palestinian cause? Scarlett Johansson has done what only a film star can do – brought worldwide publicity to the wrongness of Israel’s occupation;
2) Financial Times: Scarlett Johansson’s defence of her sponsor is naive, an FT editorial comes down firmly on the side of law – and thus against settlement enterprises such as Sodastream;
3) Economist: Vicky Cristina Jerusalem, the moral dithering of ScarJo in film is embodied in real/advertising life;
4) Ha’aretz: The sip heard around the world: Scarlett Johansson, Super Bowl and SodaStream , Irene Prusher mocks the regal indifference of Queen Scarlett;
5) JPost: Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters slams Scarlett Johansson, Neil Young for Israel ties;
6) Reuters Israeli settlement factory sparks Super Bowl-sized controversy, straight story;
7) Notes and links, on Scarlett Johansson and Neil Young”s charitable works;

Scarlett Johansson branded with the Scarlet Letter – A for apartheid. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s original story, the Scarlet Letter, Hester must wear the scarlet letter A for adultery, a punishment inflicted by the puritanical society in which she lives, made more vindictive by her beauty. This particular, much reposted image, would not work for a man paid to advertise a settlement product as the shame of whoring or adultery is not attached to men. This is not meant to excuse her choice of endorsing Sodastream rather than being an Oxfam ambassador.

Johansson, SodaStream row bolstering Palestinian cause?

By Daoud Kuttab, Palestine Pulse /Al Monitor
January 31, 2014

When the American actress Scarlett Johansson was asked to become a global brand ambassador for SodaStream, she had little reason to object. After all, she had learned that the Israeli company gives fair and equal wages to its Israeli and Palestinian workers. Little did Johansson suspect that her cooperation — with a firm whose main factory is located in the occupied Palestinian territories in contravention of international law — would explode in her face, forcing her to choose between money and ethics. After months of back and forth between Johansson and the charity that she supported, Johansson declared on Jan. 29 that she was resigning as an Oxfam ambassador.

Her decision was no doubt accelerated by the public position of Oxfam regarding the illegality of settlements and the need to boycott products produced in them. In a statement released Jan. 30, the charity announced, “Oxfam believes that businesses, such as SodaStream, that operate in settlements further the ongoing poverty and denial of rights of the Palestinian communities that we work to support.”

The actress had for eight years been a global ambassador for Oxfam, an international coalition of 17 organizations working to fight poverty and injustice. Johansson helped raise money for Oxfam and traveled on its behalf around the world, but when she decided to endorse the Israeli company, both she and Oxfam had to make a choice.

Palestinians and their supporters around the world raised the simple but strategic question of how an ambassador for a charity fighting poverty can so publicly be associated with a company profiting from a factory built in an illegal Jewish settlement in Palestine. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has documented in great detail how the Israelis confiscated tens of thousands of dunums owned by Palestinians for the establishment of the Ma’ale Adumim settlement, east of Jerusalem, where the SodaStream factory is located.

Attempts by Johansson, who was born to an American Jewish mother and a Danish father, and SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum to paint the company as a “bridge” between Israelis and Palestinians, failed to quiet the campaign. Palestinians and their supporters did not feel that that they should get a pass for having a factory in a settlement.

Many observers have compared the discussions on jobs versus justice to similar debates that took place at the height of the boycott of the South African apartheid regime. As in the case of those who opposed the boycott and divestment from South Africa as hurting blacks, supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement have pushed aside attempts at beautifying the occupation or a particularly benevolent company. The concept of a liberal “sugar daddy” providing work for the needy natives did not work in the 1990s, and it won’t fly in the 21st century. BDS supporters contend that the current boycott seems to be working much faster than the South African campaign, which took 20 to 30 years before bearing results.

Corporate Watch, a nongovernmental organization that investigates corporations, has challenged the premise that SodaStream is such an upright and progressive company to its Palestinian workers. An initial report by the organization highlights a number of discrepancies and inaccuracies in the Israeli company’s claims about equality of rights and wages for its Palestinian workers. Questions posed by Corporate Watch were dismissed, and attempts to visit the site were denied.

One media outlet that was allowed to visit the disputed factory succeeded in speaking to Palestinian workers, who spoke about racism at the factory. A Reuters report quotes an unnamed Palestinian worker as saying, “Most of the managers are Israeli, and West Bank employees feel they can’t ask for pay rises or more benefits because they can be fired and easily replaced.” A much more detailed analysis, including an interview with a Palestinian worker, appears on the pro-BDS website Electronic Intifada.

Cases of a celebrity attempting to play both sides of a moral fence usually do not last long. In this instance, it was clearly just a matter of time before the Hollywood star or the charity would make a firm decision. The resignation of Johansson, whose TV commercial for SodaStream is scheduled to air Feb. 2 during the Super Bowl, is seen by some as a failure for the BDS movement. Others believe that the controversy has elevated the profile of the BDS movement, which will no doubt benefit from the free publicity.

Furthermore, the campaign that forced an American film star to give up her coveted role with an international charity will serve as a warning to others not to profit or be involved in anything to do with the occupation and its illegal settlements. This, according to Palestinians and their supporters, is a long-term success.

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A star stumbles in the settlements

Financial Times editorial
January 31, 2014

The decision by actress Scarlett Johansson to stop being an ambassador for Oxfam, the social justice charity, and continue as brand ambassador to SodaStream, an Israeli company that makes home-carbonated drink dispensers at a plant in the occupied West Bank, might be dismissed as a storm in a fizzy cup. It should not be.

The Lost in Translation star has accidentally turned a searchlight on an important issue – whether it is right or lawful to do business with companies that operate in illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land – as well as inadvertently sprinkling stardust on the campaign to boycott Israel until it withdraws from the occupied West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem – a separate issue, at least so far.

The status of the settlements is clear in international law even if Israel chooses to ignore this and expand its colonisation of Palestinian land, while ostensibly negotiating on the creation of a Palestinian state. Last year the EU adopted rules prohibiting grants to entities operating in illegal settlements. Yet the EU still let Israel into Horizon 2020 – the only non-member state in this €80bn research and development programme – making Israeli tech high flyers eligible for European public money provided it is not spent in the settlements.

That is not a boycott. It is the application of the law. Yet if Israel maintains its occupation, and spurns the peace terms being negotiated by US secretary of state John Kerry, such distinctions will erode. European pension funds are already starting to pull their investments in Israeli banks with branches in the settlements.

Israeli leaders, from former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert to Tzipi Livni and Yair Lapid, justice and finance ministers in the present rightwing government of Benjamin Netanyahu, have warned that Israel faces ostracism unless it makes a deal on Palestine. Now it is the settlements that are being targeted. But that could easily morph into a general boycott.

It is disingenuous to romanticise settlement enterprises. The occupation imprisons thousands of the Palestinians’ young men, gives their land and water to settlers, demolishes their houses and partitions the remaining territory with scores of checkpoints and segregated roads. There are almost no basic foundations for an economy. The way to create Palestinian jobs is to end the occupation and let Palestinians build those foundations – not to build “bridges to peace” on other people’s land without their permission.

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Scarlett Johansson loving the sweetness and light in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, dir.Woody Allen, Photo DBcom /Weinstein company.

Vicky Cristina Jerusalem

By M.S., Economist
January 31, 2014

THE joy of a Scarlett Johansson performance lies in watching her vacillate evasively in the face of grave alternatives, sensing all the while, with delicious dread, that she will ultimately make the wrong choice. In “Match Point” we see her alternately provoke and resist Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ adulterous craving for her, then helplessly give in. In “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” we watch her scattered quest for self-actualisation draw her step by step into a psychotic menage a trois with Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz. Ms Johansson projects a seductive combination of cleverness, empathy and poor appetite control; the characters who get involved with her already suspect they’re in for a wild, shamefully enjoyable, probably disastrous ride, at the end of which they will have learned things about themselves they wish they didn’t know. Her latest love triangle, pitting Oxfam, an international charity, against SodaStream, an Israeli home soda-machine company, has ended with Ms Johansson in the arms of the Israelis, and like Mr Rhys Meyers at the end of the second act in “Match Point”, they are probably now wondering what to do with her.

To recap the basics: Ms Johansson had been acting as a celebrity ambassador for Oxfam since 2007. She became SodaStream’s spokeswoman last year, and cut an advertisement the company had intended to air during next week’s Superbowl. (In a nice bit of foreshadowing, the ad begins with Ms Johansson proclaiming: “Like most actors, my main job is saving the world”—in this case apparently by encouraging people to make soda at home rather than buying Coke or Pepsi.) The problem is that SodaStream has a factory in an industrial park linked to the Israeli West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim, where it employs some 500 Palestinian workers and about as many Israelis. Oxfam says it “is opposed to all trade from Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law.” When Palestinian groups pointed out the conflict, Oxfam began pressing Ms Johansson to choose a side.

Ms Johansson, perfectly cast for the role, dithered and tried to have it both ways. SodaStream presents itself as a model employer for its Palestinian workers, committed to a two-state solution. Ms Johansson embraced that line in a statement in the Huffington Post, saying 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 argument cuts no ice with Palestinian groups, who say SodaStream pays Palestinians less than Israelis, or with Oxfam, which says that trading with Israeli companies operating in West Bank settlements legitimates the occupation regardless of how they treat their workers. Forced to choose, Ms Johansson picked the patron who hadn’t demanded she make a choice.

Presumably money was one factor in her decision, but there are a lot of others. The SodaStream controversy, even though it concerned only the company’s presence in the settlements, was inevitably caught up in the broader BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanctions) campaign, which calls on consumers and companies to cut off ties to all Israeli companies and institutions until the state reaches a peace agreement with the Palestinians. There would have been no way for Ms Johansson to drop SodaStream without appearing to lend support to the BDS movement, which even many liberal American Jews view as extremist and anti-Israel. That would be a very difficult move for a Jewish actress; even Peter Beinart, a liberal Zionist journalist and peace activist, has had trouble distinguishing his support for boycotting companies that do business in the territories from the more radical BDS movement.

In part, that’s because Israel has deliberately set about to erase the lines between its pre-1967 borders and the settlements, in both physical and economic terms. With the state subsidising housing and economic development in the settlements, Israeli financial institutions have no real way to extricate themselves from the settlement project. Earlier this year that led to the decision by PGGM, a major Dutch pension fund, to cut off its tens of millions of euros’ worth of investments in Israel’s top five banks: it could not reconcile them with its corporate code of ethics. Other large European financial institutions are considering doing the same. Israeli infrastructure companies are equally unable to separate themselves from activities in the territories, and European infrastructure firms have now begun cutting off joint ventures with Israeli counterparts. Like Ms Johansson, they are finally being forced to choose.

In another sense Ms Johansson’s waffling was typical of a Hollywood vision of liberal politics in which entrenched conflicts are simply misunderstandings that can be resolved through personal contact and (bogus) emotional catharsis. Film stars often have an extremely sophisticated understanding of how power works in Hollywood, and a hopelessly naive understanding of how power works in politics. (A deeper interpretation might be that personal contact and bogus emotional catharsis really are important elements of how power is deployed and negotiated in Hollywood, leading film stars, who are mostly pretty canny, to misinterpret how things work elsewhere.) It’s a convenient illusion that you are helping to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by “bringing people together”, even if everyone is being brought together on land confiscated from Palestinian territory and under economic arrangements that erase the borders between Israel proper and the West Bank.

But Ms Johansson isn’t the only one in this drama who has tried to have things both ways for as long as possible. Israel has watched with growing anxiety as Palestinian activists have succeeded in forcing Oxfam and Ms Johansson to make a choice. The divestment of European firms, the growing power of liberal Jewish organisations that oppose and denounce the occupation, the intense blitz of visits by John Kerry to force progress in the peace process, the widening cracks in Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition: all of this points to what Thomas Friedman characterised this week as a turning point in the relationship to the territories. The question of whether Israel has the intention and the willpower to ever pull out is finally going to have to be answered. Last week a top Israeli think tank laid out a new bottom line: if the peace talks with the Palestinians fail, Israel is simply going to have to unilaterally pull out of the 85% of the West Bank it hasn’t directly occupied. The indecision, the deferral, the fantasy of Greater Israel is going to have to end.

I remember driving past Ma’aleh Adumim as a child in the early 1980s, when the first buildings were going up. Even then, you could tell this was the start of an affair that was going to end badly. Israeli liberals said it too; once this is built, they said, we’ll never get out of the West Bank. The question, for Israel, was whether it really wanted to get out of the West Bank. The past 30 years have shown that while part of Israel, its intellect and superego, knows it needs to pull out, another part…well, let’s just say Israel has poor appetite control. An Israeli map that reaches straight to the Jordan is indeed seductive. All that ancient Jewish history, the jutting crags and deep oases; why not have all of it? Ah, but it was trouble from the start. Israel never should have gotten into it. If it’s lucky, it may still have one last chance to get out.

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Kirsten Dunst as the queen in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette

The sip heard around the world: Scarlett Johansson, Super Bowl and SodaStream

Overnight, the actress has become the Marie Antoinette of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, smiling regally and offering: ‘Let them sip soda.’

By Ilene Prusher, Haaretz
February 02, 2014

Once, she was a poster girl for quirky movies, good acting – and well, just being gorgeous. But when Scarlett Johansson made the move into being an actual poster girl, it was a game changer. No one complained or called her a bubble-headed capitalist when she did endorsements for Calvin Klein, L’Oréal and Louis Vuitton or Dolce & Gabbana. But when she signed on in December to be the poster girl for SodaStream, an Israeli maker of home-carbonation machines with a factory in a West Bank settlement, it apparently never occurred to her that it might be incompatible with an existing do-gooder gig: serving as spokeswoman for Oxfam for the past eight years.

The result has been a controversy that has yet to fizzle. To activists in the BDS movement – which supports the use of boycotts, divestment and sanctions as a way to pressure Israel to end the occupation, dismantle the wall/security fence, and accept the return of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes – it’s incredible that a star promoted as a human rights ambassador thought she could get away with simultaneously promoting a company operating in the settlements. Following an announcement on Thursday of Johansson’s resignation from Oxfam, which said it was “grateful for her many contributions” but added that her work for SodaStream was “incompatible with her role as an Oxfam Global Ambassador,” the BDS movement suddenly found itself with its own new poster child – or whipping girl, as it were. There has been an almost gleeful explosion of images of Johansson sultrily sipping her soda in front of caged Palestinians and thumbing her cute, upturned nose at those ho-hum human rights hacks.

Overnight, she has become the Marie Antoinette of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, smiling regally and offering: “Let them sip soda.” Her defense of her decision, that SodaStream promotes Israeli-Palestinian coexistence and creates employment opportunities, seems to have provided yet more ammunition for her adversaries.

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Neil Young’s 1989 album cover

Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters slams Scarlett Johansson, Neil Young for Israel ties

By JPost
February 02, 2014

Writing in personal letters and on his Facebook account, former Pink Floyd front-man and songwriter Roger Waters has accused both singer Neil Young and actress Scarlett Johansson of supporting Israel and neglecting human rights.

Neil Young is scheduled to appear in Israel this July while Johansson has recently signed on as Israeli company Soda Stream’s spokeswoman amid controversy over the company’s factory in Mishor Adumim, in the West Bank.

Waters wrote that he met Johansson over a year ago at a music event where he was impressed by her commitment to human rights and justice. However, he considers her recent resignation from Oxfam, an organization that fights poverty and injustice, “an about-face.”

Roger Waters goes on to cite several alleged human rights abuses by Israel, including political discrimination against Beduin communities in the South and citizens who are not Jewish.

On January 21, 2013, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences honoured Neil Young [above in 2012] “for his artistic creativity, philanthropic efforts and sonic integrity in a career that’s spanned more than four decades”. Should he wear a scarlet S for sell-out, as his concert in Tel Aviv is sure to be?

He also points out that many of the workers in Soda Stream’s Mishor Adumim factory are residents of the West Bank and as such they do not enjoy Israeli citizenship.

Rogers has been a long supporter of the campaign for boycott and divestment against Israel and has accused the country of being an “apartheid state.”

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Israeli settlement factory sparks Super Bowl-sized controversy

Scarlett Johansson stands by SodaStream

By Noah Browning/Reuters
January 29, 2014 

Appliance maker SodaStream International Ltd scored big in nabbing A-list actress Scarlett Johansson as its global brand ambassador in time for this year’s Super Bowl advertising bonanza.

But the limelight can be harsh. While the multi-million dollar deal may have increased brand awareness, it also strengthened calls for a boycott of the Israel-based company, whose main factory lies in a Jewish settlement deep in the occupied West Bank.

The row comes at a particularly delicate time, with Israel and Palestinians engaged in fractious peace talks and international pressure building on Israel to roll back its growing settlement network.

Johansson’s playful advertisement had already sparked controversy ahead of its planned debut at the American football championship on Sunday for an overt dig at competitors.

The company promptly agreed to edit out the offending line, but the issue of settlements cannot be so easily waved away.

Critics accuse SodaStream of benefiting from cheap land and tax breaks afforded to Israeli industries in the occupied West Bank – territory seized in the 1967 war which the Palestinians want for their eventual future state.

“Settlements and occupation will never lead to peace,” the head of the Palestinian Workers Union, Shaher Saad, told Reuters. “I support a boycott that will lead to these lands and means of economic growth returning to Palestinian ownership.”

Representatives of SodaStream, which is listed on Nasdaq in New York, say the Israeli and Palestinian workers at the plant receive equal wages and benefits that far exceed those offered in Palestinian-run areas.

SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum told Reuters his company helped put food on the table for hundreds of Palestinian families daily.

“We’re very proud to be here and contribute to the co-existence and hopefully the peace in this region,” he said.

Johansson released a statement to the Huffington Post on Friday praising SodaStream for “supporting neighbors working alongside each other, receiving equal pay, equal benefits and equal rights.”

SIDE-BY-SIDE

SodaStream has been around for more than a century, has 20 plants worldwide and an estimated revenue of $562 million for 2013. Its products are sold in 60,000 retail stores in 45 countries.

The West Bank factory, its largest, has been pumping out product for two decades and has been a persistent focus of boycott campaigns. It employs around 950 Palestinians from the West Bank and East Jerusalem alongside some 350 Israeli Jews.

Inside the plant, assembly lines buzz to the mixed voices in Hebrew and Arabic of its employees – a rare example of people from the two sides working and talking together.

“This factory is a dream for activists and politicians on both sides of this dilemma, because it’s a model for peace and is proving every day that there can and will be peace between our peoples,” said Birnbaum, jovially shaking workers’ hands.

One mid-level Palestinian employee who spoke to Reuters outside the plant, away from the bosses, painted a far less perfect picture, however.

“There’s a lot of racism here,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Most of the managers are Israeli, and West Bank employees feel they can’t ask for pay rises or more benefits because they can be fired and easily replaced.”

The settlements are a battleground not just for competing national claims but between the economies of a thriving Israel and a struggling Palestinian Authority, which governs several disparate pockets of land over which Israel keeps strict curbs.

Poverty and unemployment on the West Bank have been on the rise in recent years, with both hovering at about a quarter.

SodaStream’s is one of several hundred factories in some 20 Israeli-run industrial zones in the occupied territories that along with settlement farms employ some 53,000 Palestinians, about half without permits or proper contracts.

Israeli labor watchdog Kav LaOved says a lack of oversight over enforcement of minimum wages and worker rights in West Bank factories reflects Israel’s pro-settler policies.

“The government wants incentives for Israelis to come and build and expand there. The government has demonstrated very clearly that companies in the West Bank will be allowed to have cheap labor,” Kav LaOved head Hanna Zohar told Reuters.

ECONOMIC PRIZE

The settlement issue is central to the direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that resumed last July.

Home to more than 350,000 Jews, the West Bank settlements cover just four percent of the land, according to the European Union. But at present, some 60 percent of the territory remains under direct Israeli control, containing some of the territory’s best water, mineral and agricultural resources.

Israel says that in any future deal, large settlement blocs such as Maale Adumim would remain under Israeli control, with land swaps offered to the Palestinians in compensation.

The Palestinians are open to very limited land swaps involving some of the settlements, but fear too many adjustments will rip up the map of their future state.

Looking to pressure a hesitant Israel, the European Union last year banned any EU funds from going to organizations that operate in settlements, while a Dutch pension fund divested from Israeli banks because of their West Bank activities.

“Of course there are some (Palestinian) people who are gainfully employed by settlements,” said the European Union’s ambassador to Israel, Lars Faaborg-Andersen, when asked about the ethics of firms like SodaStream.

“But the alternative of being able to use more than the 40 percent of the territory which is now open for use for Palestinians could potentially give much, much, much more economic benefit to the people living in the area,” he said.

Pro-Palestinian activists have urged the charity Oxfam to dismiss Johansson from her role as one of its global ambassadors to make clear their own discontent.

Oxfam maintains that Israeli firms in the West Bank help perpetuate Palestinian poverty and has issued a statement saying it is in contact with Johansson over the issue.

Additional reporting by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall

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Notes and links

Blonde ambition: Scarlett Johansson set to make history as best paid female actor of all time with £13million deal for Avengers 2 Mail Online, July 2012

Luke Hodgkin makes an ingenious connection between Pete Seeger and Scarlett Johansson, “which allows us to segue into a relevant poem – on the daily routine of travel through the checkpoint to work in the settlement”…..

Empire: The 100 sexiest movie stars, female   No. 2, Scarlett Johansson

Scarlett Johansson Charity Work, Events and Causes

From Look to the stars, the World of Celebrity Giving

Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson has been wowing audiences for years with her roles in films such as ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ and ‘Lost in Translation’. Although she oozes glamour, Johansson has much higher priorities than her looks and profile.

She served as an Oxfam Ambassador for eight years, starting in 2007, and created a video journal of her visit to Kenya with the organization. In 2007 she skipped the Oscars in order to tour India and Sri Lanka as part of Oxfam projects. During her 10-day trip she visited an Oxfam-funded school in Uttar Pradesh, got involved in a few healthcare projects and one domestic violence project involving Indian women, and travelled to Sri Lanka to see how the charity was helping in reconstruction projects after the 2004 tsunami.

Johansson also spent time helping Hurricane Katrina victims by dishing out food from USA Harvest to the homeless at the Made Love Cafe in St. Benard Parish in New Orleans.

Scarlett finds charity work very rewarding, and told USA Today: “It was nice to feel part of the community. Certainly your vanity is the last thing on your mind when you’re travelling in a place like this.”

She added: “It’s amazing to come home when you see people living in poverty. On one hand you’re thinking, my celebrity life is so surreal, but it’s my work and it helps me bring awareness to Oxfam.”

Johansson visited Rwanda in September, 2008, to increase awareness of AIDS sufferers in African nations. She spent four days attending AIDS clinics alongside charity workers for (RED): “It was important for me to come here and see the issues we’re up against first hand. I came here with an open mind, wanting to listen, understand and learn; I leave with the overwhelming understanding that the small action of making a (RED) choice in your purchases… has an enormous impact on the lives of people in countries like Rwanda.”

On top of all this, Scarlett is an avid supporter of Soles4Souls, and has donated 2,000 pairs of new shoes in the past. She says, “If you can’t dig deep in your pockets, than dig in your closet! Americans can make a huge difference with Soles4Souls by donating shoes. Souls4Soles gives away a pair of shoes every 13 seconds in over 120 countries, with over 55 percent donated to fellow Americans.”

Miss Johansson is not just an exceptionally pretty face, she’s a talented actress but most of all she’s a role model to everyone.

Scarlett Johansson has supported the following charities:

American Humane Association, Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes, Blessings in a Backpack, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, Cancer Research UK, Clothes Off Our Back, Declare Yourself, Entertainment Industry Foundation, Feeding America, First Book, Hero in Heels, Hope North, Keep A Child Alive, Make Poverty History, Michael J. Fox Foundation, Music Rising, Neurofibromatosis, Inc., Not On Our Watch, Oxfam, Project HOME, (RED), Soles4Souls, Stand Up To Cancer, The Art of Elysium, USA Harvest, Wish Upon A Hero Foundation, World AIDS Day

Charities & foundations supported: 27

Causes supported

Abuse, Adoption, Fostering, Orphans, AIDS & HIV, Animals, Cancer, Children, Creative Arts, Disaster Relief, Education, Family/Parent Support, Health, Homelessness, Human Rights, Hunger, Miscellaneous, Philanthropy, Poverty, Refugees, Unemployment/Career Support, Voter Education, Women

Neil Young to rock Tel Aviv this summer

Rock icon Neil Young and Crazy Horse will perform in Tel Aviv’s Park Hayarkon on July 17, producer Shuki Weiss announced Wednesday. Young was last in Israel in August 1995, during his Mirror Ball tour with Pearl Jam. From Times of Israel, January 2014

Neil Young Charity Work, Events and Causes

From Look to the Stars

Young helped found Farm Aid, and, along with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp, spoke about the issues with elected officials in Washington, D.C. before the first concert.

Neil performed a cover version of John Lennon’s “Imagine” during the 9/11 telethon, America: A Tribute To Heroes. His single “Let’s Roll”, was a tribute to the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks, and the passengers and crew on Flight 93 in particular.

In 2005, Young performed at the close of the Live 8 concert in Barrie, Ontario.

Neil and his wife founded the Bridge School, which develops and uses advanced technologies to aid in the instruction of children with severe speech and physical disabilities.

Young was honoured as Person of the Year in 2010 by MusiCares.

Charities & foundations supported: 5

Neil Young has supported the following charities:

Bridge School, Farm Aid, Live 8, MusiCares, Sarah McLachlan School of Music

Causes supported

Adoption, Fostering, Orphans, AIDS & HIV, Children, Creative Arts, Economic/Business Support, Environment, Miscellaneous, Physical Challenges, Poverty, Unemployment/Career Support, Voter Education