Campaign to educate consumers about the role of Ahava Cosmetics Company in the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and resouces
Despite international law’s prohibition on exploiting the natural resources of occupied territory, for decades Israel has allowed Israeli private entrepreneurs to profit from the resources at two main sites in the Jordan Valley in the Occupied Palestinian Territory of the West Bank.
Ahava, the Dead Sea Cosmetics brand name and business, is located within the Mizpe Shalem settlement. The business is the best known Israeli enterprise that uses the plentiful black mud on the shores of the Dead Sea to manufacture a variety of products. The mud has a rare high concentration of minerals – magnesium, calcium, sodium, and potash - which soak up water and maintain a liquid state, becoming a natural moisturizer. Throughout history, this natural mud has been thought to contain almost mystic therapeutic qualities, especially for persons with skin and joint ailments. The enterprise praises itself, on its website, as “the only cosmetics firm in its natural environment,” and, therefore, it protects the environment, “only taking what it requires, and enabling Nature to effortlessly replenish itself.”
The company was founded in 1988. It is owned by the Mizpe Shalem and Qalya settlements and by Israeli firms controlled by Gaon Holdings. The company does not provide figures on its sales turnover, the number of employees, or exports, but a press report valued the company in 2008 at $72 million. The report stated the company had 200 employees and operated a chain of shops marketing the Ahava brand in 29 countries. Tourists on their way to tourist sites in the area stop by to visit the company’s visitors center.
[Source: B'Tselem report Dispossession and Exploitation: Israel's Policy in the Jordan Valley and Northern Dead Sea, p.41]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Stolen Beauty Campaign Resources
The US-driven Stolen Beauty Campaign has been the most successful campaign in educating and alerting consumers to the “ugly secrets” of Ahava beauty products. Their website has a number of resources which have been used to successfully challenge Ahava stockists around the world; you can start by looking here:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Occupation profiteer Ahava soaks up EU science grants
- David Cronin, 5 August 2011, Electronic Intifada
Not for the first time, the European Union is in denial about how it is subsidizing Israel’s crimes. Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the EU’s commissioner for scientific research, recently acknowledged that the cosmetics-maker Ahava was allocated more than €1 million worth of innovation grants from the Union over a period stretching from 1998 to 2013. Giving even one cent to Ahava involves facilitating breaches of international law because of the firm’s unlawful activities in the West Bank.
Read the complete article here…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
