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Follow Us on TwitterCampaign and new law challenge chic Israeli company Ahava cosmetics, whose “Dead Sea Mud” illegally exploits Palestinians 20Jun12 June 20, 2012
by Anna Lekas Miller - AlterNet - 16 June 2012
Ahava means love in Hebrew. But the Israeli corporation bearing that name engages in practices that are far from loving.
The multinational corporation Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories—a cosmetics company specializing in products that evoke the Israeli natural landscape—is notorious for illegally exploiting Palestinian land and natural resources to make its products. With names like Natural Dead Sea Body Mud, these products are packaged as being “Made in Israel” and shipped to be sold in cosmetics stores around the world.
But these products are not made in Israel; they are made in the occupied West Bank in Palestine. Labeling these products as Israeli-made is not only misleading, it’s fraudulent and violates international trade regulations. In order to bring transparency to where Ahava and other companies make products, the governments of South Africa and Denmark have recently decided to implement new regulations requiring settlement-produced goods to be labeled as settlement-made, rather than made in Israel. The government decisions have been a boon to the movement to boycott Israeli settlements.
Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories will be one of the companies most affected by the change in labeling practices.
Ahava’s main factory, and its visitors’ center, is located in Miztpe Shalem, an Israeli settlement in the occupied part of the Jordan Valley in the West Bank, along the northern bank of the Dead Sea. Despite its vast territory and the richness and fertility of the land, only 2.6 percent of the Palestinian population currently lives in the Jordan Valley. Most of the Jordan Valley’s Palestinian residents were expelled by the Israeli army during the 1967 war. Since the war, which resulted in Israeli control of the West Bank, 37 Jewish-only settlements have been established in the Jordan Valley, creating a network of roads and checkpoints that connect and facilitate travel between settler communities while severely complicating life for the remaining Palestinians.
Though Ahava Dead Sea products are made with Palestinian resources on Palestinian land, neither the Palestinian economy nor the Palestinians profit from any of these sales. In fact, the Palestinian economy loses $144 million per year from Israel’s exploitation of the Dead Sea alone.
Exploiting the natural resources of an occupied territory is expressly prohibited under international law. Yet at the end of last year, the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled that Israeli companies had the right to exploit West Bank resources.
Israeli settlements are also illegal under international law.
Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories is not only located and operating in one of these settlements, but also co-owned by two settlements—Mitzpe Shalem, the settlement in which the factory is located, and Kalia, the settlement from which the mud is extracted. The profits from Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories sales subsidize these settlements, robbing Palestinians of natural resources that are rightfully theirs and supporting illegal practices of colonialism that are pushing them out of the land they have inhabited for centuries.
Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories products quite literally bottle the spirit of the occupation: claiming and mining Palestinian land and then repackaging it and marketing it to the world as Israeli.
But these deceptive practices have not gone unnoticed.
In 2009, the antiwar activist group CodePink launched the “Stolen Beauty” campaign, specifically targeting Ahava’s products as part of the larger boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign. The nonviolent BDS movement advocates boycotts of Israeli products, divestment from companies involved in Israel and sanctions against the state until it complies with international law in its relations with the Palestinians.
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