Fight the Hate, Show Ahava Some Love : Miami IMC

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.
http://www.ahava.com

The Dead Sea has always been part of the Jewish kingdom- so why would they want to protest Dead sea products?
There are caves by the Dead Sea where they found scrolls thousands of years old- written in Hebrew. How can anyone claim this isn't Jewish land?