Ellen DeGeneres Stands by SodaStream, Buys Israeli Pilot

It’s no secret that Ellen DeGeneres recently made a generous gift of eco-friendly SodaStreams to an entire studio audience, as part of her Earth Day show.  Given SodaStream has eliminated the need for plastic soda bottles with a product that uses no electricity, makes drinking soda more healthy, and provides Palestinian Arabs with quality jobs that pay the same wages as those received by Israelis, it’s not hard to see why Ellen chose SodaStream as a perfect fit for both Earth Day and the values she maintains.  As she shared with her Facebook audience when singled out by boycott activists who were attempting to have her fired as a spokesperson for J.C. Penney due to her sexual preference in February 2012:

“I usually don’t talk about stuff like this on my show, but I really want to thank everyone who is supporting me. Here are the values I stand for: I stand for honesty, equality, kindness, compassion, treating people the way you’d want to be treated and helping those in need. To me, those are traditional values. That’s what I stand for.” – Ellen DeGeneres

After the highly publicized pressure that advocates of a cultural boycott of Israel recently placed upon Scarlett Johannson for maintaining her role as spokeswoman for SodaStream, one might have anticipated more than just a few back-and-forths on DeGeneres’ Twitter page by a campaign trying to convince the world of its growing “movement.”  Instead, their fast-to-fizzle efforts were not enough to warrant a response from the principled comedienne  unless one may consider it a response that her production company just bought the rights to Israeli Artza Productions and Channel 10’s “The Gran Plan,” which only just aired in Israel. DeGeneres is expected to produce a pilot based on the format.

Let’s thank Scarlett Johannson and Ellen Degeneres for having the courage of their convictions and maintaining the kind of integrity that represents, as Degeneres so eloquently said, “traditional values” of honesty, equality, kindness and compassion are worth standing for.