Dear SERRV Ethical Gift Guide

 

Sent by mail to SERRV International Administrative Office,  Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Dear SERRV,

 

I applaud you for carrying marvelous handmade objects from the West Bank, handcrafts made by Palestinians.   I have happily ordered several lovely hand made things last month from your catalogue in hopes of beautifying my own home as well as supporting persecuted and impoverished Palestinians.

 

Your most recent Holiday 2020 catalogue arrived yesterday and I was so excited!!!  I was eager to find gifts in it, and spend all my Christmas budget as you are a fair trade company advertising an Ethical Gift Guide. 

 

I saw some charming bread baskets with a bread warmer from Bangladesh which I  was about to buy until BOOM … I saw that you are calling the Arab treat and word “Za’atar” as being from Israel.

 

That was a punch in the stomach.  I gasped for air, and tears filled my eyes:  My husband’s beloved father was born in Palestine, before Israel came to be, and so we are very much aware of how Israel has spent decades ethnically cleansing the native non-Jewish population of the Holy Land from their ancestral homes and lands. 

 

Imagine being denied full freedom and rights in the land where you were born because the powers that be have deemed you the “wrong” religion.  

 

We read international newspapers in this house, and so are well aware of the constant day in and day out atrocities large and small wrought by Israeli soldiers and religious fanatics who want the land but not the native non-Jewish people of that land.

 

You are a fair trade company with an Ethical Gift Guide. If you want to advertise Palestinian Arab Za’atar then do so, but please do not hand Israel credit for producing it. Israel has taken Palestinian land and homes, don’t let them also usurp the culture and food of the native non-Jewish Palestinians.

 

If Israel agrees to be one state, with full freedoms and rights and respect for the indigenous non-Jewish population,  including full respect for the Palestinian refugees inalienable right to return, then you can call it made in Israel. Until then please don’t. Just don’t.

 

Sincerely,

 

Anne Selden Annab