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The Scroll

NYC Beauty Chain Targeted by Boycott

Code Pink continues anti-Ahava crusade

By Marc Tracy|July 20, 2010 1:09 PM|14comments
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Ask New Yorkers: They love their Ricky’s. (Well, except this New Yorker, who will never forgive it for supplanting Morningside Heights’s movie-rental emporium.) But now an Israeli settlement-related boycott threatens to sever city residents’ link to their favorite beauty-store chain. The boycott targets Ahava, which produces skin moisturizers with materials from the Dead Sea and which women’s antiwar group Code Pink made a target, as Tablet Magazine’s Liel Leibovitz reported last year, because it is headquartered in a West Bank kibbutz. (“I knew there was a plastic bottle of Ahava Eucalyptus Mineral Bath Salts sitting on the windowsill next to the tub in my bathroom,” one activist memorably told Liel.)

The Israeli government notes that the kibbutz in question was settled on uninhabited land in 1970—that is, before the settlement project got underway—and that Ahava itself employs Palestinian workers. (The kibbutz is in one of the settlements abutting the Green Line, not in an illegal outpost, which may or may not be meaningful to you.)

Anyway, the boycott has now come home: Specifically, to Brooklyn’s Montague Street, where there is music in the cafes at night, revolution in the air, and protests the Ricky’s store. If you want to tell Ricky’s CEO Dom Costello to keep selling Ahava products, go here.

Mud-Slinging on Montague! [Brooklyn Paper]
Related: Pink Panthers [Tablet Magazine]
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  • fw

    Code Pink are the murder-abetting clowns who met with Ahmadinejad, long after his thuggish tendencies with respect to his own people, let alone Israel, were manifest.

  • eddie

    Code Pink, those commies? Ricky’s had better keep selling Israeli products or they will be the losers. They should have some guts and they should side with Israel or get out of NYC permanently.

  • http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10925.shtml anne

    Ahava manufactures its cosmetics in a factory in the illegal Mitzpe Shalem settlement in the occupied West Bank. However, Ahava labels its skin care products as originating from “The Dead Sea, Israel.”
    The settlements Mitzpe Shalem and Kalia, located within the Israeli-occupied West Bank, own 44 percent of the shares of Ahava.Before the June 1967 war, Palestinians lived on some of the lands that are now part of the two settlements; there were Palestinian communities in Nabi Musa where Kalia is now located and in Arab al-Taamira next to Mitzpe Shalem. According to the Israeli group Who Profits From the Occupation? (www.whoprofits.org), the mud used in Ahava products is taken from a site on the shores of the Dead Sea inside the occupied territory, next to Kalia. Ahava uses Palestinian natural resources without the permission of or compensation to the Palestinians. Meanwhile, Israel denies Palestinians access to the shores of the Dead Sea and its resources, although one-third of the western shore of the Dead Sea lies in the occupied West Bank.
    The Israeli peace group Gush Shalom sent an open letter on 17 November 2009 to Ahava’s management, urging the company to move its operations out of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Gush Shalom stated: “Your decision to locate in Occupied Territory and make use of natural resources which do not belong to Israel was a mistaken gamble which already harmed your interests and might harm them even much further. Sooner or later you will have to get out of this damaging and illegal location — and the sooner, the better.”

  • The Truth

    Anne; You are an anti-semitic ignoramus. There is no such thing as the “Occupied West Bank.” It’s all Israel. The Arab Fakestinians from Arabia, “Palestinians” don’t exist, have no claim to the Jewish homeland. Besides being allies with the Arab terrorists this group is pretty dumb because the ugly women at Code Pink need all the beauty products they can get!

  • sascha

    The truth, you wouldn’t know the truth if it hit you in the face! And you, like so many like you, can’t take any criticism against Israel, so you just call anybody that says anything about that murdering, lying country as anti-Semitic, even if they’re Jewish themselves. How can a practising Jew be anti-Semitic, your a flaming bigot.

  • Asher

    Hey Annie,

    Code Pink seems to be made up of a bunch of Anti-American, Anti-Semetic, narcissitic, left-wing yahoos. Now that “The Chosen One” is our President, Code Pink needs somebody else to wreak their righteous indignation against. Why not stick it to Israel? Where is Code Pink when Sderot is bombarded with missiles? Oh Code Pink, how holy thou art.

  • Ed null Greene

    Interesting argument. Here is a 40 year old enterprise within the green line employing Palestinians. Wouldn’t you think everyone would see the advantage of this enterprise? If the owners were Palestinian Israelis would we have ever heard of this.

    Now let’s suppose Saudis landed in the area and wanted to employ people and rule by Shira law, would that be a problem?

  • Paul Leber

    ‘sascha says’ asserts that ‘the truth’ is a ‘flaming bigot’ Sounds like projection to me. If there’s a bigot here, it’s sascha who describes Israel as a “murdering, lying country.” Compared to what?–Iran, Hamastan, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Jordan, China? Sorry, Sacha, your bias and ignorance is showning! Moreover, where is it written that Jews can’t be anti-Semities. They’re plenty who are or behave as if they were. Norman Finkelstein, Tony Jundt, Noam Chomsky are examples, but there are countless others. Indeed, anti-Semites who are Jews or are from Jewish backgrounds abound both in the media and in academe. Many of these folk find it uncomfortable to be a traditional Jew in the politically correct, leftist, anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli, environment in which they work. At best they go along to get along,’ at worst, they sell out their own to gain acceptance in a hostile environment. In my opinion, if you chat with a Jew who complains about Israel, you’re likely to find an individual who’s not comfortable in his/her own skin.

  • Robert

    I helped settle Kalia and Mitzpe Shalem in 1977.
    I can tell you without any doubt that no Arabs lived anywhere
    in the vacinity of either kibbutz. Nebi samuel, Is about
    15 kilometers away…
    But it sounds alot better Anne’s way…evicting
    innocent natives.
    It just isn’t true.
    For those that don’t know, israeli kibbutzim are
    majority “left wing” peaceniks. They will leave
    tommorrow if peace settlement requires it.
    Currently these are desert Eco-settlements of
    fifty families trying to exist at Israels borders.
    For those who want israel to disaapear…go ahead and
    boycott our produce. I don’t want you to buy it!
    For those who support us…don’t take nonsense
    misreprentations as “the truth”.
    Israel was here …in this exact region two thousand years ago
    we were almost wiped out and exiled twice.
    We’re back. We’re strong. We aren’t disappearing
    for anyone. A peace agreement could be settled in three months
    if someone with Hussein or Sadat came along to represent the palestinians.
    We’re waiting.

  • Jimmy

    I am going online right now to purchase some of these
    Ahava products, which I had heard of but was unfamiliar with. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the Code Pink boycott backfired and all of the attention to Ahava boosted sales? Code Pink, Anne and Sascha….get a life!

  • Rachel

    Why would Americans, wanting so passionately to hold onto to our freedoms that we send young men and women to horrid, hot war, want the commerce and industry of a threatened democracy be targeted for hate and destruction. Israelis doing business with Arabs is the key to the future. The Arabs working and living in Israel before all this new drek eructation of hatred NEVER wanted to be uprooted and forced to live a scared, impoverished life. There was, was peaceful and productive interdependence. The Palestinian and Hamas leaders foment hatred, not even coexistence. So much hatred.
    And that’s why Obama can’t get out from under, poor guy!
    Those damn confederates want to detroy him, all because of hatred for the darkie. We, and the Middle East, could be GREAT again, with more cooperation.

  • Jerry

    Now that Code Pink has taken on human rights issues such as freedom of the press, women’s rights, and freedom of religion, they can demonstrate about and boycott goods like the oil from Saudi Arabia, nuts from Iran, clothing and I Pod products from China, gas and oil from Venezuela, cotton from Egypt, and fabrics from Jordan. Nah let’s only pick on Israel, it’s the only country with Jews.

  • anne

    “In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.”
    Albert Einstein

  • me be

    its made in an illegal settlement. how can anyone support it.

    to the dude who says..they are peaceful jews living outside of Israels border. BS. Why is it so hard for ISRAELIS to live within their own borders. Why? Every other country can do it but Israelis just have to keep crossing the border and building settlements.

    I have no sympathy for Israel. its clear to me who the trouble maker is.

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NYC Beauty Chain Targeted by Boycott

Code Pink continues anti-Ahava crusade

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