Press
Contact: Nancy Kricorian, Stolen Beauty
Campaign Manager
New York City - GILT, a luxury online retailer, has dropped Ahava
goods from its roster of products. The move comes following a letter exchange
between the campaign manager of the Stolen Beauty Ahava
boycott and GILT Co-Founder and Chairman Kevin P. Ryan,
who also serves on the board of Human Rights Watch, which has repeatedly
emphasized its
disapproval of illegal Israeli settlements and occupation profiteering. Ahava, an Israeli cosmetics firm with its factory and
visitors center in an illegal West Bank settlement, is a privately held
corporation. Approximately 37% is held by the West Bank settlement of Mitzpe
Shalem, 37% by Hamashbir Holdings, and 7.5% by Kalia, another illegal West Bank
settlement. The Roy Disney family fund Shamrock Holdings owns about 18.5% of
the company.
Since 2009, Ahava has been the subject of an
international boycott campaign
because of the company’s illegal practices, including fraudulent labeling and
pillage of occupied natural resources. Ahava’s brand has
been tarnished by bad publicity and a series of international setbacks. In
August 2009, Oxfam
suspended Kristin Davis from publicity work as a Goodwill Ambassador for
the duration of her contract as Ahava’s spokesmodel. In
January 2012, a group of prominent U.K. academics and intellectuals denounced Ahava’s collaboration in an E.U.-funded research project. In
February 2012, the company lost its
Japanese distributor because of controversy surrounding Ahava’s
illegal practices. In April 2012, Norway’s Vita chain announced
it would no longer stock Ahava products. In May 2012, the
United
Methodist Church voted to boycott Israeli settlement products and in July
of the same year the Presbyterian
Church (USA) followed suit, specifically naming Ahava
in its settlement boycott resolution. Around the same time, South Africa’s
Minister of Trade and Industry announced new
labeling rules for Israeli settlement goods. Ahava
was mentioned by name as a company whose goods were fraudulently labeled as
“Product of Israel” when their place of origin is the Occupied Palestinian
Territories. In August 2012, Abigail Disney, whose family’s fund Shamrock
Holdings owns 18.5% of the company, renounced her
share of the corpus and interest on the investment. In September 2014,
another major Norwegian retailer stopped
stocking Ahava products.
Nancy Kricorian, campaign manager for the Stolen Beauty Ahava
boycott, said, “We are thrilled that GILT is no longer
selling Ahava products. The only way we can help end
Israel’s brutal and seemingly permanent occupation of the West Bank, East
Jerusalem and Gaza is to take the profit out of that occupation. Boycotting
illegal settlement goods such as Ahava is a nonviolent
gesture towards dignity, equality and justice at a time when Israel is
violently colonizing occupied Palestinian territory in total disregard of
international law and official US government policy.” |