Interview on the UN Palmer report on Mavi Marmara raid

New York-based writer (among other vocations) J.A. Myerson interviewed me yesterday about the just-released United Nations Palmer report on the Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara.  Excerpts:

J.A. Myerson: The New York Times is reporting that it has obtained a copy of a United Nations review, which comes out tomorrow, regarding Israel’s raid on the Mavi Marmara, when Israel killed nine people, including an American. The primary findings of the review appear to be a) that Israel used excessive force when it boarded the flotilla but that some force was apparently justified, given the hostility that Israeli commandos encountered upon boarding, and b) That Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which the flotilla was trying to break, is justified and appropriate. Among opponents of the blockade of Gaza, of which you and I are two, it’s an accepted truism that one reason to oppose the blockade is its illegality. What is the argument that the blockade is illegal, if that is indeed what you believe, and what is your response to the UN review contesting that description?

Alex Kane: The full naval-land-air blockade that the Gaza Strip is under was instituted first following the 2006 elections in the Palestinian territories when Hamas won what were widely acknowledged to be democratic elections. One justification for the blockade that Israel cites is that Hamas is holding Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier, in captivity. Israel also contends that the blockade exists for security reasons.

But what’s clear under international law, under the Geneva Conventions, is that collective punishment is illegal, and the blockade of Gaza is illegal because it constitutes collective punishment. Israel is punishing every single person in the Gaza strip, roughly half of whom are under the age of 18, for having voted in democratic elections and for the political positions that Hamas espouses.

The blockade is also, as Yousef Munayyer of the Palestine Center pointed out last June, in violation of Part V Section II (102) of the San Remo Manual on International Law, which prohibits blockades a) that have the sole purpose of starving the civilian population or denying it other objects essential to its survival; or b) under which the damage to the civilian population is, or may be expected to be, excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the blockade.

Numerous UN reports and bodies have deemed the blockade illegal as collective punishment. The International Committee of the Red Cross has said so, Richard Goldstone in the Goldstone Report said so, the independent Human Rights Council report on the raid on the Mavi Marmara said so, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, has said so. So we can play a numbers game, in that there are far more instances of respected international bodies as well as respected human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International that have deemed the blockade illegal, and now we have this one panel saying that it is legal.

The other thing is that you have to look at the makeup of the panel tasked with this investigation of the Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara and the five other ships that were part of the first Freedom Flotilla. The big red flag that people should focus on is the fact that Álvaro Uribe of Colombia was one of the two supposedly independent observers on this committee. Uribe cannot plausibly be thought of as impartial on issues of human rights. He has himself been implicated in numerous human rights abuses as president of Colombia and he is also an outspoken supporter of the state of Israel. So that also calls into question the impartiality of this panel, which was the one panel of inquiry that the UN set up that Israel agreed to cooperate with.

JAM: If this panel is reputed by its commissioning body to have been impartial and the makeup of the body indicts is as being impartial, that suggests that it was commissioned in order not to be impartial, in other words that it was commissioned in order to deliver these results. How do you account for that?

AK: Yes. That’s an accurate assessment.

You have to go back to right after the flotilla incident in 2010. After this happened, when nine people ended up dead and dozens injured, Israel came under a huge amount of pressure in a variety of ways, both from states and from global civil society in the form of the BDS Movement. My reading is that, in order to deflect this pressure, and after some prodding by the Obama Administration, Israel finally agreed to cooperate with this panel. This is a first for Israel. Israel does not often cooperate with the UN, so you have to wonder what was going on behind closed doors and what was said to Israel to make it suddenly cooperate with the UN, especially about an issue as politically charged as its raid on the flotilla.

Another important thing to note is that the mandate of the panel coming out with this report did not give the panel much power. It did not call witnesses, it did not collect documents. It was called a fact finding mission. And it seems like the panel has collected the Israeli side and the Turkish side and kind of plopped it in this report. That’s what I gather the report was. The point of it was not to be an independent investigation that was designed to get to the bottom of who was at fault, who was wrong, what should happen.

Read the full interview here.

(UPDATED) Serious questions on Palestine UN bid raised in legal opinion

This article originally appeared on Mondoweiss.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has called the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) bid for United Nations recognition of a state of Palestine next month a diplomatic “tsunami.”  The United States has threatened to cut off aid to the PA if they proceed with the UN gambit.  But more importantly, a legal opinion submitted to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from the other side of the debate over the UN bid has raised serious and alarming questions about the PA’s plans.

The opinion, written by a law professor who was on the team that successfully challenged Israel’s separation barrier at the International Court of Justice, tackles the issues of Palestinian self-determination and the right of return.  Guy Goodwin Gill, the author of the opinion, recently told Al Jazeera English that he doubts that Palestinian refugees would “be enfranchised through the creation of a state.”  Senior PLO member Hanan Ashrawi has dismissed the concerns raised by Gill.

Excerpts from Goodwin Gill’s legal opinion read:

I am advised that one possibility being debated involves the replacement of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and its ‘substitution’, within the United Nations, by the State of Palestine as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. In my view, this raises, first, what I will call ‘constitutional’ problems (in that they engage the Palestinian National Charter and the organization and entities which make up the PLO); secondly, the question of the ‘capacity’ of the State of Palestine effectively to take on the role and responsibilities of the PLO in the UN; and thirdly, the question of popular representation…

Until such a time as a final settlement is agreed, the putative State of Palestine will have no territory over which it exercises effective sovereignty, its borders will be indeterminate or disputed, its population, actual and potential, undetermined and many of them continuing to live under occupation or in States of refuge. While it may be an observer State in the United Nations, it will fall short of meeting the internationally agreed criteria of statehood, with serious implications for Palestinians at large, particularly as concerns the popular representation of those not currently present in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.  The significant link between the Palestinian National Council and the diaspora has been noted above in paragraph 4. They constitute more than half of the people of Palestine, and if they are ‘disenfranchised’ and lose their representation in the UN, it will not only prejudice their entitlement to equal representation, contrary to the will of the General Assembly, but also their ability to vocalise their views, to participate in matters of national governance, including the formation and political identity of the State, and to exercise the right of return.
In my opinion, current moves to secure recognition of statehood do not appear to reflect fully the role of the Palestinian people as a principal party in the resolution of the situation in the Middle East.

The interests of the Palestinian people are at risk of prejudice and fragmentation, unless steps are taken to ensure and maintain their representation through the Palestinian Liberation Organization, until such time as there is in place a State competent and fully able to assume these responsibilities towards the people at large.

The legal concerns raised in the opinion further reflect the skepticism of many Palestinians about the UN bid, as a piece by Mohammed Rabah Suliman in the Electronic Intifada recently pointed out.

Ali Abunimah also recently enunciated these concerns:

The Western-backed Palestinian Authority’s (PA) effort to seek UN recognition of “statehood” unilaterally, without consulting the Palestinian people from which the PA has absolutely no mandate, has raised fears among Palestinians that the move could actually harm Palestinian rights.

If the UN votes to admit the “State of Palestine,” it is likely that the unelected representatives of the Palestinian Authority would be seated in the General Assembly instead of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which currently holds the Palestine observer seat at the UN..

This would be a severe blow to the potential for realizing Palestinian rights in the long run through international bodies: whereas the PLO ostensibly represents all Palestinians, the PA “state” would only represent its “citizens” – residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Of course in reality this “state” would not represent anyone since it would have absolutely no control of the territory on which it purports to exist and its “government” – what is now the Palestinian Authority – would remain subject to the blackmail and pressure of its financiers and external political sponsors.

As September approaches, these concerns become ever more pressing.

UPDATE:  It’s only fair to link to some expert legal opinion that doesn’t agree with Goodwin-Gill’s.  Francis Boyle, who advised the Palestinian leadership on their 1988 Declaration of Independence, says that Goodwin-Gill’s opinion is “based on many erroneous assumption.”  The full piece is at CounterPunch.

Meanwhile, Ma’an News Agency has published four other opinions on the PA’s UN bid.  Some of them agree with Goodwin-Gill, others oppose.  It’s worth reading.

Meet Eric Cantor: On Israel/Palestine, Contempt for International Law and Justice

With the Republican Party set to take the House of Representatives tomorrow, it’s worth taking a look at the new potential majority leader, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia and the only Jewish Republican in the House, and his positions on Israel/Palestine, an area that he is “particularly active on.” As Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy writes, “GOP lawmakers stand to play a huge role” in a variety of foreign policy areas, and their impact will be even greater if they are the majority party in the House.

Cantor’s positions on Israel are no different than most Democratic and Republican officials, but his actions and words could play a large role if he becomes the next majority leader.

I’ve done some research–by no means exhaustive–over the past day or so on Cantor’s positions and statements on Israel.  Here’s some of what I found:

-Cantor “supported Israel’s handling of the eviction of two Arab families from a house in east Jerusalem.”  The area in question here is the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, which has become a flash point in East Jerusalem and the site of weekly protests by Israeli leftists and Palestinians against the evictions.  The evictions of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah is but one manifestation of the ongoing attempts to kick Palestinians out of their homes to make way for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem.  Read more about the situation in Sheikh Jarrah here and here.

-In regards to Jerusalem as a whole, Cantor expressed anger when the White House condemned the announcement of the building of 1,600 housing units in occupied East Jerusalem last March.  He wrote, “Could the White House truly be this offended by an Israeli decision to build 1,600 homes years from now in a part of its capital city that everyone understands will remain a part of Israel in any future peace agreement with the Palestinians?”  Further underscoring his contempt for international law, Cantor said, in July 2009, that the “insistence that Israel return lands it has occupied since the 1967 Six-Day war and accept a ‘right of return’ of Palestinians who fled their homes in what is now Israel ‘is just like saying you don’t accept the historical right of Israel to exist.’”  International law is clear on the status of East Jerusalem, the occupied territories as a whole and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

-After the flotilla massacre on May 31, 2010, in which Israeli naval commandos rappelled onto the Turkish Mavi Marmara ship that was part of an effort to break the blockade of Gaza and killed nine people (including an American citizen), Cantor “pressured President Barack Obama to veto any ‘biased’ U.N. resolutions in response to an Israeli military attack on a flotilla.”  The naval raid was characterized by a U.N. fact-finding mission as resulting in a  “series of violations of international law, including international humanitarian and human rights law.”  Out of the 9 victims, 6 were found to be killed in what “can be characterized as extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions.”

-Cantor regularly paints Palestinian “culture” as being defined solely by violence.  In conservative publications like the National Review, Cantor opines that “Itamar Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch, last year best summed up the prevailing Palestinian culture by quoting from Hitler’s Mein Kampf: ‘If you want adults to be killers, teach the youth hate.’”

-Cantor and his House colleague Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) took to the pages of the Washington Times in January 2009 to defend the Israeli assault on Gaza, an attack that Amnesty International called “22 days of death and destruction.” The definitive United Nations report on the 2008-09 Gaza war, authored by respected South African jurist Richard Goldstone, found the assault to be “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population.”

 

Amnesty International Statement a Reminder of Human Cost of Settlements

Talk of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories is often centered on questions of legality, statehood and the “peace process.”  All of the settlements built on Palestinian land are illegal under international law, and they control about 42% of land in the West Bank–land that has been viewed for decades as part of a Palestinian state.

But just thinking about the settlements in those terms ignores the stark human cost the colonies incur on the human rights of Palestinians.  A statement released by Amnesty International on October 15 in response to the news that the Israeli government has approved the construction of over 200 settlement units in East Jerusalem puts the emphasis on the human cost of illegal settlements:

Israel’s land grab and dissection of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have had a devastating impact on the lives of Palestinians. In East Jerusalem, 35 per cent of the land has been expropriated for settlements in which 195,000 Israelis live.

Meanwhile, more than 250,000 Palestinians are designated only 13 per cent of East Jerusalem, which is already heavily built up.

In the rest of the West Bank, around 40 per cent of the land has now been classified by Israel as “state” land and often used for settlements. A further 21 per cent of the settlements’ built-up areas lie on private Palestinian land.

The confiscations, seizures and appropriations of land for settlements, bypass roads, the fence/wall and related infrastructure have resulted in the forced eviction of Palestinians.

According to the UN, in 2009 alone more than 600 Palestinians were displaced in East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, more than half of them children, after their homes were demolished under order from the Israeli authorities, often to make way for Israeli settlements.

Under Israeli military law, Palestinian families evicted from their homes are not entitled to alternative housing or compensation. The result is that many then face homelessness and destitution.

“Last year, Amnesty International reported on the extent to which Israel’s discriminatory water policies and practices are denying Palestinians their right to water, said Philip Luther.

“We have repeatedly documented the connection between settlements and the destruction of Palestinians’ homes, crops, agricultural lands, and livelihoods.”

Israel’s policy of settling its civilians on occupied land violates the Fourth Geneva Convention and is considered a war crime, according to the statute of the International Criminal Court.

In addition to the violations Amnesty International mentioned, there’s also the daily terror visited upon Palestinians by the residents of those settlements.

The Washington, D.C.-based Palestine Center recently released a report titled, “When Settlers Attack: Understanding Settler Violence against Palestine’s Civilians,” which documented settler attacks on Palestinian civilians between January 2009 to August 2010.

Here’s video of Yousef Munayyer, the executive director of the Palestine Center, presenting the findings of the report on settler violence at a September 15 Palestine Center event:

Ignoring International Law, Ethan Bronner Writes that East Jerusalem, Golan Heights ‘Count as Israeli territory’

Nestled in this all over the place article written by Ethan Bronner in today’s New York Times is this factually challenged nugget:

Both East Jerusalem and the Golan were officially annexed by Israel through parliamentary votes, so by Israeli law they count as Israeli territory. That is not true of the West Bank, which the Palestinians want as their future state and where Israel has settled more than 300,000 Jewish citizens.

That paragraph is in the middle of an article that, in part, is about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s support for a bill that would require a national referendum in Israel on giving up the occupied territories.

Bronner’s reporting gives readers no substantive understanding of why East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights are a huge part of the Israel/Palestine conflict.  Those territories, captured by Israel during the 1967 War, were indeed unilaterally annexed by the Israeli government.  So it’s true, as Bronner writes, that they “count as Israeli territory” under Israeli law.

But not under international law, which is really the relevant body of law to look at when discussing Israel/Palestine.  This is how the United Nations’ Goldstone report describes East Jerusalem:

After 1967, the two areas [referring to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip] were administered directly by military commanders until 1981 and since then through a “Civil Administration” established by the Israeli armed forces. “Military orders” were used to rule the civil affairs of the Palestinian population superimposing and often revoking pre-existing Jordanian laws in the West Bank and Egyptian laws in the Gaza Strip. East Jerusalem was annexed to the Israeli municipality of the city and in 1980 the Knesset passed a law which declared that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. With Security Council resolution 478 (1980), the United Nations declared this law “null and void”, condemning any attempt to “alter the character and status of Jerusalem”.  No member of the United Nations, apart from Israel, recognizes the annexation of East Jerusalem.

This is how UN Security Council Resolution 497, passed in the aftermath of Israel’s declaration of the Golan Heights in Syria as falling under the laws, jurisdiction and administration of the State of Israel, characterized the Syrian territory:

The Security Council,

Having considered the letter of 14 December 1981 from the Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic contained in document S/14791,

Reaffirming that the acquisition of territory by force is inadmissible, in accordance with the United Nations Charter, the principles of international law, and relevant Security Council resolutions,

1. Decides that the Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international legal effect;
2. Demands that Israel, the occupying Power, should rescind forthwith its decision;
3. Determines that all the provisions of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949 continue to apply to the Syrian territory occupied by Israel since June 1967;
4. Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Security Council on the implementation of this resolution within two weeks and decides that in the event of non-compliance by Israel, the Security Council would meet urgently, and not later than 5 January 1982, to consider taking appropriate measures in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.

The whole focus on whether Israelis will voluntarily give up illegally occupied territory is irrelevant.  International law is crystal clear, and it doesn’t bend to the popular will of Israeli citizens.

 

Barack Obama Cements U.S. Role as ‘Israel’s Lawyer’

One of the more famous lines about the U.S. role in the “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator for the U.S., saying that “for far too long, many American officials involved in Arab-Israeli peacemaking, myself included, have acted as Israel’s attorney, catering and coordinating with the Israelis at the expense of successful peace negotiations.”

President Barack Obama may have vowed to the world in June 2009 in Cairo that “America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own,” but the Obama administration has betrayed that promise and has instead continued to act as Israel’s lawyer.  The U.S. role in the current peace negotiations, and specifically the news of President Obama’s letter of guarantees to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, proves that the U.S. is not an honest broker.  (The “America as Israel’s lawyer” meme falls apart when we consider that the U.S. and Israel don’t follow the relevant laws during “peace talks”).

In an effort to save “direct peace talks” between Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, from collapsing over the expiration of the “settlement freeze,” Obama reportedly has offered “military hardware, support for a long-term Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley, help with enforcing a ban on the smuggling of weapons through a Palestinian state, a promise to veto Security Council resolutions critical of Israel during the talks and a pledge to forge a regional security agreement for the Middle East.”  Israel would merely have to agree to extend the so-called “settlement freeze” for two-months to obtain that generous package.

But ending settlement construction should not be seen as a concession the Israelis give to the Palestinians; rather, it should be a base requirement for Israel, as all settlements are illegal under international law.

What is Obama offering the Palestinians to cajole them to get back to table?  “An offer by the United States to formally endorse a Palestinian state based on the borders of Israel before the 1967 Middle East war, something for which the Palestinians have long pushed.”  The lopsided nature of the two offers is clear.  The U.S. is acting as Israel’s lawyer once again, disregarding legitimate Palestinian demands based on international law while guaranteeing Israel a whole slew of things it wants.

Writing in Al Jazeera, Lamis Andoni comments:

The equation is hugely unbalanced. In exchange for a partial two-month settlement freeze, Israel is offered US endorsement of all of its “security needs” – as defined, of course, by Israel.

Included within this are assurances aimed at stopping the infiltration of weapons into Palestinian territories and the positioning of Israeli troops in the Jordan Valley – all of which is consistent with the Israeli vision of a demilitarised Palestinian state. The letter effectively offers to consolidate the integration of Israeli security interests into US national strategy and pledges to engage Arab parties and Israel in discussions on a “regional security architecture”; a convoluted euphemism for an arrangement to address Israel’s need to confront Iran.

Furthermore, the letter promises that after the initial 60-day extension of the freeze, the US would not ask Israel for another – leaving the status of the settlements to be decided only as part of final status negotiations.

The terms are such that they would only serve Israel’s strategic goals and further strengthen the Israeli hand at already asymmetrical negotiations.

Under such conditions, the construction of colonies would continue unabated as soon as the extended freeze expired, leaving Palestinians unable even to raise the issue of Israel’s ongoing land grab. The letter offers Israel what it wants, while effectively setting the stage for the legitimisation of settlement building and the fulfillment of Israeli plans to annex the major settlements as part of a final deal.

Once again, the U.S. is acting “as Israel’s attorney, catering and coordinating with the Israelis at the expense of successful peace negotiations.”

 

Israeli Beauty Products Company Ahava Complicit in the Sins of Occupation

This article originally appeared in Alternet:

Walk into any Ricky’s store, a beauty shop chain in New York, and you will find a shelf filled with Ahava products. For $28, you can buy mineral toning cleanser; for $22, Dead Sea liquid salt; and for $9, purifying mud soap. The products made by Ahava (which means “love” in Hebrew) seem innocent enough, perfectly enticing for anyone fond of beauty products.

But looks can be deceiving. As activists from the peace group CodePink’s Stolen Beauty campaign are fond of chanting at protests, Ahava can’t hide its “dirty side.”

For nearly two years, an international campaign spearheaded by Palestine solidarity activists has targeted Ahava and the various stores that carry its products, including Ricky’s, calling for a boycott. The boycott campaign has heated up recently, eliciting push-back from Jewish organizations around the country and a response from the CEO of Ahava.

While Ahava labels its products “made in Israel,” they are actually manufactured in a settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in Palestine. According to the Stolen Beauty campaign, the company exploits Palestinian resources from the Dead Sea.

Under the Geneva Conventions, and various United Nations resolutions, all of Israel’s settlements–which house about 500,000 settlers–are illegal, as is excavating natural resources in an occupied area. Israel has occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip since the 1967 Six-Day War. The settlements are widely seen as an obstacle to the creation of a viable and contiguous Palestinian state.

“[The boycott] is about a just peace for Israelis and Palestinians,” said Nancy Kricorian, CodePink’s coordinator for the Stolen Beauty campaign. “The situation on the ground there is dehumanizing and demoralizing and terrible.”

Ahava, which rakes in profits of nearly $150 million a year, according to a Dec. 2009 CNN report, is owned by entities deeply involved in Israel’s settlement project in the occupied West Bank. According to Who Profits? 37 percent of the company is owned by Mitzpe Shalem, an illegal settlement located in the eastern West Bank; another 37 percent by the private investment fund Hamashibr Holdings, which also is a major shareholder in two companies that export produce made in settlements; 18.5 perent by the U.S.-based Shamrock Holding, owned by the Roy E. Disney family of Walt Disney fame, and which is a shareholder in a company that manufactures electronic detection systems that are used on the West Bank separation barrier; and 7.5 percent by the West Bank settlement of Kalia.

In an interview, Kricorian acknowledged that Ahava is a huge target, and likened the Stolen Beauty campaign to a “game of whack-a-mole,” as new places where Ahava products are sold pop up frequently. But Kricorian says it isn’t just about hurting the company’s sales.

“A boycott campaign is strategic, and it’s a long-term thing,” she said. “It’s not just about hurting the company’s sales. It’s also about educating the public about, in this particular case, the company’s illegal practices and sullying the company’s name and reputation.”

The campaign to boycott Ahava, in both the United States and around the world, has racked up some important victories. In August 2009, activists successfully pressured Oxfam International to drop Sex and the City star Kristin Davis as a spokeswoman because she was also working with Ahava. In November 2009, the Dutch Foreign Ministry agreed to investigate Ahava’s manufacturing and labeling practices. Costco, a large U.S. retailer, was pressured into halting the sale of Ahava products at its stores in January 2010. The Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, has included Ahava products in its boycott of settlement products campaign, confiscating and destroying products made in West Bank settlements. Recently, four activists in London were acquitted on charges of trespassing after direct actions in 2009 in which they locked themselves onto oil-filled drums inside an Ahava shop.

AHAVA did not respond to inquiries for comment.

The Stolen Beauty campaign, which began in the aftermath of the brutal Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip in 2008-’09, is part of the larger boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement that grew out of a 2005 call by a vast swathe of Palestinian civil society groups for BDS against Israel. Modeled on the anti-apartheid movement that targeted South Africa, the Palestinian-led BDS movement demands that Israel withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories, implement equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel and recognize the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees and their descendants who fled or were expelled from Palestine during the 1947-’49 Arab-Israeli war.

“The BDS campaign has become the most effective, morally consistent, nonviolent form of solidarity with the colonized Palestinians against Israel’s apartheid and colonial rule,” Omar Barghouti, a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, wrote in an e-mail. “The Stolen Beauty Campaign against Ahava, led by our partner CodePink, is a truly inspiring BDS campaign, as it is creative, focused, well-researched and very effective in conveying the message across to and, more crucially, in mobilizing BDS action in a wider, more mainstream audience.”

The Israeli government has taken notice of the growing BDS movement. The Israeli Knesset recently passed a preliminary reading of anti-boycott legislation that would impose fines on Israeli activists promoting boycotts of Israel. A February 2010 report by the Reut Institute, an Israeli think-tank with close ties to Israel’s government, identified the BDS movement as an threat to the state.

In the United States, the BDS movement, and the campaign against Ahava, has also generated controversy. After a Washington, D.C.-based group protested in July 2010 against Ahava products being sold in Ulta, a beauty store, the Jewish Community Relations Committee of Greater Washington urged supporters to buy Ahava products.

Brooklyn’s Ricky’s shop has also become the epicenter of a dispute over the Boycott Ahava movement. After a July 9 protest outside the store led by CodePink’s Stolen Beauty and Brooklyn for Peace, which signed onto the campaign in May, a group of rabbis in Brooklyn drafted a letter in response, urging people to buy Ahava products and denouncing the campaign. The rabbis’ letter claimed that “CodePink ignores the history and legal status of Mizpeh Shalom” because it is located in “‘Area C’, a huge section of the West Bank over which Israel, again by joint agreement, was granted full control, except over Palestinian civilians.” (The Area C designation comes out of the 1993-era Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Area C incorporates all West Bank settlements.)

“Local Jewish leaders find the idea of a boycott of Israel to be a misguided and one-sided approach to a complex and deeply troubling conflict,” said Rabbi Andy Bachman, a signatory to the letter and a member of the liberal group J Street’s Rabbinic Cabinet. “The problem with a boycott is there’s one side that’s all right and another side that’s all wrong. If that’s what the boycotters think, then there really is nothing to discuss. But if not, then why not boycott Palestinian business for years of rejecting peace accords?”

So far, Ricky’s has not budged, and continues to sell Ahava products. Dominick Costello, the president of the store, refused to comment.

The relentless targeting of Ahava hasn’t gone unnoticed by the company. A letter that has recently been circulated by Ahava to its business partners states that “our company and products have been the subject of unfortunate, ugly and clearly politically motivated smear attacks” that are being pushed by a “couple of small radical fringe organizations, which are part of a larger and more insidious campaign aimed against the State of Israel.”

The surge in attention to the boycott campaign is a sign that “we’ve gotten attention to issue of settlements like we never got before,” said Naomi Allen, an activist who sits on Brooklyn for Peace’s board and is involved in the group’s Israel/Palestine committee. Beginning this month, Brooklyn for Peace plans to hold protests outside the Ricky’s shop in Brooklyn on the last Tuesday of every month.

“This is not an argument that we’re going to lose, because [what's] right and international law are on our side,” Allen said. “The issue of Ahava is a clear-cut issue. There’s no excusing the fact that this is occupied territory which is being stolen from the rightful owners and exploited for profit that isn’t being shared with the rightful owners.”