For about a month now there have been protests on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights calling on a local retailer to stop selling Ahava brand Israeli cosmetics, because some of Ahava items are produced or packaged in a Kibbutz in the southeast corner of the West Bank on the shore of the Dead Sea. Local rabbis have drafted the following response (click on the letter and adjust the size):
The rabbis who signed the letter are neither right-wing nor pro-settlements. In fact one of them, Ellen Lippman, serves on the Executive Committee and board of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America. Does the fact that the production facility is in a part of the West Bank abutting the Israeli border which the Palestinians agreed to be administered by Israel in the short-run and further agreed in principle to eventually become part of Israel in exchange for land swaps in other areas as part of a future peace agreement render the "made in a West Bank settlement" objection a red herring? Perhaps. But it also highlights the urgency of actually reaching a peace agreement. Agreements in princlple are hypothetical. A signed and ratified peace agreement would deligitimize the deligitimizers.
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For more info: David Cooper
Comments
Beauty products made from "der mud" of the West Bank? ROFL!
Seriously though, you need to tell your readers that if they click on the rabbis' letter they can see a version large enough to be legible. Otherwise they can't make any judgement of the merit of the rabbis' arguments (altho I know many who never bother with evidence before making judgements).
:)
Good suggestion. Thanks, Hugh.
First, I wouldn't trust anything from "CodePink."
Second, the Tanakh spells out the claims of the Jewish people to the land involved.
Maybe you can't use words like "anti-Semitism." It is, therefore, left to a goy like me to tell my fellow goyim to lay off.
It seems that they will make anything out of everything these days. Good article and letter attachment.
If readers click on it and still have trouble reading the letter just hold down the ctrl key and roll the mouse either up or down ... the letter will increase and decrease to where it is most comfortable.
Thanks for sharing this, haven't heard anything on this subject before you article. Thanks for sharing.
Winona Home & Living Examiner
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