Activism

Settlement guidelines nix Ahava participation in EU-funded research project

ahava oct7 2010 007
Ahava factory and visitor’s center in the Mitzpe Shalem settlement, October 2010
(Photo: CODEPINK via Who Profits)

European Union (EU) guidelines on Israeli settlements have nixed the cosmetics company Ahava’s participation in a research project. The profitable Israeli firm will no longer receive EU funding because its main factory is located in an settlement near the Dead Sea.

Ahava won’t obtain $8.25 million in EU cash it was expecting for a skin care project because of new rules on settlements scheduled to go into effect in 2014, according to a report by Bloomberg’s Jonathan Ferziger & David Wainer. The SuperFlex project was meant to create skin care products for the elderly, and two-thirds of the funding for the project came from the EU. It was set to begin next month.

In July 2013, the European Union announced that “grants, prizes or financial instruments” will not be given to Israeli entities in the West Bank. The guidelines are only binding on the EU, though, and not on member states. While the economic impact of the rules are limited, and occupation critics point out that the whole Israeli economy is tied to the settlements, Ahava is one company that will feel the heat from the EU policy.

In a statement to Bloomberg, though, Ahava said that “the EU’s decision does not concern Ahava.”

The move to cut Ahava off from EU money comes despite the the company having executives and researchers within Israel proper. According to Eness Elias, a member of the Who Profits? project, Ahava opened a lab in Ein Gedi, Israel in 2009 and expanded it in 2012. The company’s headquarters are also located within the Green Line, in Holon. But its main factory is located in the settlement of Mitzpe Shalem, which owns 37 percent of the company, and other shareholders in the company are also deeply implicated in Israel’s settlement project.

“We had feared that Ahava’s ploy of relocating its executives and research staff out of the West Bank while its manufacturing facility remained at the illegal settlement of Mitzpe Shalem would allow the company to continue feeding at the EU trough,” Nancy Kricorian, the coordinator for Code Pink’s anti-Ahava Stolen Beauty campaign, told me in an e-mail. “We are heartened by this [Bloomberg] report that the EU settlement exclusion clause and concomitant sanctions will be applied to Ahava and its settlement profiteering.” Ahava has been the target of an international boycott campaign due to its settlement links.

While Ahava’s participation in the SuperFlex project will get the ax, another EU-funded project with Ahava will continue to get funding. David Kriss, the spokesman for the EU in Israel, said in an e-mail that “existing projects” are “going ahead.” The EU is currently funding the SmartNano project, an effort to “develop an innovative, cost-effective technology platform” for research into nanoparticles and their effect on consumer products. Ahava is one of seven participants in the project, which started in June 2012 and will end in 2016.

The company, which made $160 million last year, has long benefited from EU-funded projects. But the EU’s new settlement guidelines could mean an end to Ahava’s close relationship with the union.

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Last month Dutch media reported:

Dutch media reports 2 of country’s largest retail chains announce they will not sell more products originating beyond Green Line

Following the European Union announcement regarding official guidelines prohibiting the funding of Israeli bodies and actions beyond the Green Line, it was reported Monday in the Netherlands that at least two large retail chains in the country have stopped selling goods produced in Israeli settlements. A third chain assured its customers that the sources of its products are unrelated to the settlements.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry responded: “This boycott is tainted with hypocrisy and prejudice, and is only worsening the problem it purports to solve.”

According to Dutch news website Trouw, the two chains that announced they will not be selling products originating in settlements are Aldi and Hoogvlit. The chains are particularly popular in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht. The third chain that makes a distinction between Israeli products is Jambo.

– See more at: http://www.bdsmovement.net/2013/netherlands-retailers-ban-goods-settlements-11226#sthash.U1o7Ty7c.dpuf

The Real News: Interview with Max Blumenthal about Israel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLfqy1a83U8

This is good news, but I have to ask: why would the EU provide funding for research to a profit making company outside the EU, to begin with? I honestly don’t get it. They’ve got that much money to throw around?

It hits Israel where it hurts, in the pocketbook. It’s about time.

Ahava won’t obtain $8.25 million in EU cash it was expecting for a skin care project because of new rules on settlements scheduled to go into effect in 2014, according to a report by Bloomberg’s Jonathan Ferziger & David Wainer.

Well, the Europeans can’t even afford to pay their existing sovereign debt obligations to public bondholders and pensioners in several countries. Why the hell are they making grants of financial resources, that they supposedly can’t afford to spare, to a profitable private company in the first place?