Oxfam fires ‘Sex and the City’s’ Kristin Davis for ties with Ahava
By ANIFriday, August 7, 2009
JERUSALEM - American actress Kristin Davis has lost her ambassadorship for the humanitarian group Oxfam International, after she unknowingly waded into Middle East politics by joining Ahava.
Davis, 44, was suspended from any “publicity work” with Oxfam after she signed on in 2007 as a spokeswoman for Ahava cosmetics, which is produced beyond the Green Line.
According to Oxfam, Ahava creams, lotions and other goodies are manufactured in “disputed” territory, and the cosmetics company has a factory on Kibbutz Mitzpe Shalem, located beyond the Green Line on the Dead Sea coast.
“When Kristin signed the contract with Ahava she wasn’t aware of the controversy around settlement trade and Oxfam didn’t know she had signed with Ahava,” the Jerusalem Post quoted a manager for Oxfam’s ambassador program as saying in a letter, reported on August 6 in the New York Post.
“Oxfam remains opposed to settlement trade, in which Ahava is engaged,” the manager had stated.
But a spokesman for Oxfam has said that ties with Davis had not been permanently severed. He said Oxfam had no short-term projects in the pipeline for her.
“We just don’t want this to be a distraction,” he said.
Organizers of a grassroots women’s peace group, CODEPINK, speculated that the Israeli cosmetics company recruited Davis precisely because of her ties to Oxfam.
“Ahava, in hiring Kristin Davis, was hiring her for her fresh-faced look, her connection to ‘Sex and the City’, and the fact that she’s a do-gooder,” Nancy Kricorian, the coordinator of CODEPINK’s new “Stolen Beauty” campaign against Ahava, said.
“It’s a way of burnishing their image,” she stated.
She said CODEPINK attended a New York City publicity event with Davis in June, where they handed her a letter outlining their concerns about Ahava.
“Kristin is passionate about her relationship with Oxfam, and she intends to work with them and other humanitarian causes for years to come,” a spokeswoman for the actress told the New York Post. (ANI)
