The Israeli cosmetics firm
Ahava (Hebrew for "love") is the latest target of the anti-Israel
BDS --"boycott, divestment, sanctions"-- movement. This is
the same group that attempted not only a boycott, but also encouraged
and carried out vandalism against the Trader Joe's chain for carrying
Israeli products. Of course, that effort has simply resulted in a national
mobilization of Israel supporters to buy large amounts of Dorot frozen
herbs , Gates of Eden feta cheese, and Osem couscous. The success of
that counter-effort has led to doubts being privately expressed (at
least they thought it was privately) in anti-Israel circles about a
strategy that results in increased sales of Israeli products. Nonetheless,
the movement has decided to follow the same strategy. So, of course,
it's up to us to make sure that it has the same result.
This time, the boycotters are
ostensibly targeting Ahava because it has a production facility in the
West Bank settlement of Mitzpe Shalem (located in a desert area by the
Dead Sea with no nearby Arab villages). But forget about the pretense
that this is even about the West Bank, or about settlements, or about
peace between a Palestinian Arab state and a Jewish state of Israel.
Code Pink, which appears to be the lead group in this particular effort,
announces proudly on the website for this campaign that they have signed
on to the official "Palestinian Unified Call for Boycott, Divestment
& Sanctions." That document states that one of its demands
upon Israel is "Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights
of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated
in UN Resolution 194."
Let's briefly review a few
points that should be common knowledge for anyone who wants to engage
in coherent conversation about "Palestinian refugees":
1. Resolution 194 is a resolution
of the General Assembly of the UN and is, as such, a statement of opinion
that is advisory and not binding on member states.
2. Nowhere in the text of the
resolution is there any reference to "rights"; rather, there
is the suggestion that refugees be "permitted" to return--if
they wished to live in peace with their neighbors.
3. All of the Arab member states
of the UN voted against Resolution 194 at the time it was adopted, because
they refused to accept the concept of living in peace with Israel.
4. Resolution 194 makes no
ethnic specification for refugees; the 900,000 Jewish refugees who fled
or were expelled from Arab lands in the wake of the creation of Israel
were clearly included within the scope of the resolution. This suggests
that the Jewish refugees have as valid a claim to compensation for their
losses as to the Arab refugees, and that the situation of both refugee
populations need to be considered simultaneously.
5. In no other conflict in
the world are 2nd, 3rd, or 4th generation descendants of refugees considered
to have acquired the "rights" of the actual refugees themselves--
not in India/Pakistan, with a 20 million exchange of population in the
late 1940's; not in any of the multiple ethnic conflicts in Africa and
Asia. Only the descendants of Palestinian refugees are somehow entitled
to remain on the international dole and prevented, by their fellow Arabs,
from leaving the camps to integrate into the lives of the countries
in which they now live (Jordan being the sole exception to this).
The reference to, and deliberate
misuse of, Resolution 194 reveals the true intent of the BDS movement.
To paraphrase James Carville in Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, "It's
the Jewish state, stupid." The promoters of the BDS movement follow
in the footsteps of those who launched a war against the Jewish community
of Palestine in the wake of the UN's adoption of the 1947 partition
plan. They will fail, as their predecessors did; and in the process
of failing they will continue to put off any possibility of Palestinian
national self-determination. But of course a Palestinian state living
in peace next to a Jewish state was never really the goal, was it?
In the US, Ahava products can
be purchased online here. Every bottle helps undermine the BDS movement.
Original content is Copyright by the author 2009. Posted at www.bluetruth.net
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