victory for bds campaign and thank you to the bay!

The Bay, a major Canadian retailer, acknowledged yesterday its unannounced decision to no longer carry cosmetics produced by the Israeli company Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories. Although parent company HBC says this was purely a business decision, and was not in response to any organized boycott, it is nonetheless a victory for the Boycott Divest Sanction movement.

HBC is under pressure to reverse this decision, so those of us who support Palestinian autonomy and human rights should thank them. You can thank The Bay for dropping Ahava products by clicking here.

Ahava has been the subject of an international boycott campaign since June 2009, because the company manufactures its products in an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank. (All Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.) Ahava is partly owned by two settlements, so the company's profits subsidizing the illegal colonies.

Although its goods are manufactured in the West Bank, Ahava labels them as "products of Israel," a practice that is illegal under European Union law and is currently being investigated in the UK and Holland.

Read more at Code Pink's Stolen Beauty Campaign.

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