How the Boycott Backfired: Friends of Sabeel Helps AHAVA Sales Go Through the Roof!

Faith McDonnell
July 22, 2010

Sales spiked the day of the protest, leaving half-stocked shelves. (IRD/McDonnell)

Not that I am often in desperate need of another activity for a Saturday morning. There’s house cleaning, hanging out with my daughter, grocery shopping, and – oh yes – sleeping in. But on Friday afternoon last week I heard about the Friends of Sabeel – North America’s planned demonstration in front of the Ulta cosmetics store in Silver Spring, Maryland the next day. The group, which labels itself the “voice of the Palestinian Christians,” was urging a boycott of AHAVA, the Israeli bath and body products made with Dead Sea minerals.

“We’ll raise our placards and pass out flyers respectfully asking shoppers to join the international boycott of the AHAVA line of ‘stolen beauty’ products, illegally produced by Israeli settlers colonizing the West Bank on land stolen from Palestinian families in violation of International Law,” the email from Friends of Sabeel – North America declared. They expressed their impatience with Israel’s “intransigence” seen in “the election of right-wingers like Netanyahu,” “the brutal 08-09 assault on Gaza,” “the wanton killing of a thousand citizens,” “the unabated siege of Gaza,” “the refusal by Israel to stop building settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank,” and “the commando-style attack on a Gaza relief vessel, with nine unarmed humanitarians murdered.”

The email was forwarded by the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC). JCRC warned that the purpose of the “Stolen Beauty” campaign is not “to encourage education concerning, dialogue about or political transformation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Rather, it is part of “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions,” an international economic strategy devised by 171 Palestinian non-governmental organizations to “fundamentally delegitimize Israel’s existence.” They urged Jews and non-Jews alike to combat the boycott by purchasing AHAVA products at the Silver Spring store. Whether deliberately or not, Friends of Sabeel chose to have the demonstration on the Jewish Shabbat. Observant Jews had to shop Friday or Sunday. But I was not under such restrictions.

Protestors stand outside the store with placards reading “Boycott West Bank Settlement Products Like AHAVA!” and “AHAVA is not ‘LOVE.’” (IRD/McDonnell)

Pro-Israel counter demonstrators also gathered, including a young teenage boy visiting from Israel. They had hastily-written signs reading “AHAVA means love. Buy Ahava. Don’t surrender to hate.” (IRD/McDonnell)

When my friend Fran and I approached the Ulta store Saturday morning, we first saw the small group of protestors with placards reading “Boycott West Bank Settlement Products Like AHAVA!” and “AHAVA is not ‘LOVE’” (a play on ahava, which is Hebrew for “love”).  Although the protestors did not have much of a crowd around them, they were offering leaflets listing Israel’s sins to all passersby.

On the other side of the shop door we were surprised to find an even smaller band of people with signs. These were the pro-Israel counter demonstrators and included a young teenage boy visiting from Israel. They had hastily-written signs reading “AHAVA means love. Buy Ahava. Don’t surrender to hate.”

But inside Ulta, we were even more pleasantly surprised. The store was almost sold out of AHAVA. The remaining products, spaced throughout the shelves would barely have filled one shelf. The regional distributor, who was there from Richmond, said that the sales that day were the largest in a single day ever! In fact, he said, the sales that day were larger than the total sales in an average month. And it was not even noon yet.  

So it seems that this time the Friends of Sabeel boycott backfired. Perhaps if they showed some balance, talked about the value of Israel as the only democracy in the region, condemned without qualification the evil of suicide bombers and Hamas attacks lobbing thousands of Ketushah rockets into Sderot and elsewhere, and reported truthfully about the persecution of Palestinian Christians by Palestinian Islamists, they may not have agitated hundreds of folks in the Washington, DC area to trek over to Silver Spring to buy AHAVA. Now THAT was love!