Oxfam denies boycotting Israeli cosmetics firm

Allegations by a U.S.-based advocacy group that Oxfam International supports its boycott of the Israeli cosmetics company Ahava are untrue, says the head of the anti-poverty group’s Canadian branch.

Earlier this month, Oxfam International denied a report that it had cut ties with one of its Hollywood ambassadors because she endorses Ahava, an Israeli firm that operates in the West Bank.

Ahava manufactures its products – derived from minerals in the Dead Sea – in Mitzpe Shalem, a kibbutz near the famed inland body of water.

Reached by e-mail last week, Oxfam Canada’s executive director, Robert Fox, told The CJN that he was unaware of any Oxfam policy to boycott Israeli products.

“Oxfam has expressed no view on trade with Israel, just as we have expressed no view on trade from Canada or Brazil or Cameroon, nor to the best of my knowledge has Oxfam ever issued a statement on trade with Ahava Cosmetics, though we are opposed to trade from the occupied Palestinian territories,” he wrote.

Asked about statements by the U.S.-based, grassroots advocacy group CodePink, which supports an all-out boycott of Ahava called “Stolen Beauty” and claims that Oxfam supports the boycott, Fox responded: “With respect to CodePink, I have no knowledge of their actions beyond that which I read in the blogosphere and as such cannot comment.”

CodePink describes itself as “a women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement.”

It accuses Ahava of stealing “Palestinian natural resources in the occupied territory of the Palestinian West Bank” and producing its products “in the illegal settlement of Mitzpe Shalem.”

It invokes Oxfam’s name in much of its press material for its Stolen Beauty campaign, implying that the international charity supports CodePink.

Representatives for Ahava and CodePink could not be reached for comment by The CJN’s deadline.

An Aug. 6 story in The New York Post reported that actress Kristin Davis, one of the stars of popular film and TV show Sex and the City, was no longer working as an Oxfam spokesperson because she does ads and is a spokesperson for Ahava cosmetics.

Oxfam spokesperson Matt Grainger said, however, that Davis and Oxfam have not cut ties, but are figuring out how to handle an issue that could become a “distraction” from Oxfam’s work. The group, he said, has advocated against settlements in the past.

Davis was Ahava’s first international celebrity spokesperson, signing with the company in 2007.

Grainger added that controversial Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Mary Robinson, the honorary president of Oxfam who some Israel backers say has been an unfair critic of Israel, had nothing to do with the deliberations on the issue of Ahava and Davis.

With files from JTA