Letter Exchange between Nancy
Kricorian, Stolen Beauty Ahava boycott campaign manager,
and Tara Darrow and Blake Nordstrom from Nordstrom,
September 2012
7 September 2012
Dear Blake Nordstrom,
I have just been on your company web site looking at
your social responsibility guidelines. I found this
section of Nordstrom Cares on your vendor partners to
be particularly interesting:
"Nordstrom
seeks vendor partners who share our commitment to producing
quality products through the use of ethical business
practices. Every company we work with receives a copy
of The Nordstrom Partnership: Standards and Business
Practice Guidelines, which outlines the requirements
we have for our vendor partners around employment practices,
workers' rights, environmental standards and work environments.
In cooperation with these Guidelines, we also work hard
to ensure that the goods we sell in our stores are made
in compliance with applicable laws. View our full Nordstrom
Partnership Guidelines below." In case you
have not seen the recent report by Al Haq, a leading
Palestinian human rights organization, I'm providing
a
link to it. Based on the relevant statues of international
law, Al Haq makes the claim that Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories
is guilty of plunder of mud from the occupied shores
of the Dead Sea. The fact that the Israeli government
has authorized this plunder does not make it any less
illegal. By continuing to sell Ahava mud products at
Nordstrom after you have been informed about this pillage--as
you have been informed on numerous occasions by our
campaign and by others--makes you party to a war crime.
I honestly don't understand how you can purport to have
the values you enumerate on your web site in Nordstrom
Cares and to knowingly support and subsidize these gross
violations of human rights and international law.
Sincerely,
Nancy Kricorian
7 September 2012
Hello Nancy-
Thanks for reaching out. Blake is traveling but he
and I were able to touch base about your email. He asked
me to respond on our behalf, as I've worked closely
with him and others on looking into this subject. We've
heard from you and the CodePink group for a few years
now and we've always listened and considered the issues
you bring up about Ahava products. Over those years
we've spent quite a bit of time reviewing this issue
because we want to be certain that we have a thorough
understanding of all the factors at play.
Because this is a sensitive issue that certainly has
two sides, and we don't think as a retailer it's appropriate
for us to take a position on either side, we have looked
toward the requirements we have of all our vendors as
our deciding factor for whether to continue offering
Ahava products. We require all products we offer to
be labeled with their accurate country of origin according
to U.S. requirements. To ensure that Ahava's products
are labeled appropriately, we asked Ahava, who worked
with an approved independent third party, to thoroughly
review and report on their product development, sourcing
and labeling. Based on that review, it is our understanding
that the Ahava products carried at Nordstrom are labeled
correctly according to U.S. requirements.
As you mention, we do ask that our vendor partners
also adhere to our Nordstrom Partnership Guidelines,
which cover many human rights subjects such as employment
practices, workers' rights, environmental standards
and work environments. As part of this review, an independent
third party has found no instance of human rights violations
by Ahava. If there were any found, we would immediately
address them.
As we've said before, our decision to continue offering
these products does not mean we are taking a position
on this issue. As a retailer, we are in the business
of providing our customers with merchandise they want.
At the same time we try to consider our customers' sensitivities
but we realize that we are bound to disappoint some
customers regardless of whether we offer certain products
or not. Were sorry to disappoint you. We appreciate
you taking the time to reach out and giving us the opportunity
to respond.
Sincerely,
Tara Darrow
Nordstrom Corporate Communications
9 September 2012
Dear Tara and Blake,
Thank you for your response and for Nordstroms
continued attention to the matter of Ahava's business
practices. Your clarification of Nordstrom's current
position on this matter is enlightening; you can rest
assured that as global condemnation of Ahava's participation
in the criminal pillage of Palestinian resources continues
to gather momentum, the overwhelming case for Ahava's
removal from Nordstrom's shelves will inevitably prevail.
In the meantime, your message raises to the forefront
important questions as to whether and how Nordstrom
will ethically and responsibly make this transition.
First, you set the bar for your decision to avoid confronting
the issue laughably low: Does Ahava's blatantly fraudulent
labeling of its products as "Made in Israel"
conform to "U.S. requirements"? And you then
proceed to lower the bar below floor level by asking
Ahava itself, with the assistance of the usual, omnipresent,
but always unnamed "independent third party,"
to make that determination itself. As you are well aware,
no one is asking you to conform to "U.S. requirements";
what is being asked is that Nordstrom acknowledge the
fact that the profits it derives from its partnership
with Ahava are ill gotten, derived as they are from
activities clearly illegal under international humanitarian
law.
Here's hoping that the day will soon arrive when the
"independent third party" you consult on this
matter will be your conscience. In the meantime, the
drumbeat for justice and fairness grows louder.
Sincerely,
Nancy Kricorian
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