We at Dr. Bronner’s have friends, family, and business partners in Israel and Palestine. We source our olive oil primarily from Palestinian farmers in the West Bank through Canaan Fair Trade, as well as from the Palestinian-Israeli Sindyanna project, and the Strauss family farm in Israel. Combining olive oil in our soaps from Muslim, Jewish and Christian farmers in the Holy Land honors our founder Emanuel Bronner’s vision of a peaceful world united across different ethnicities and faiths.
Our hearts broke in the wake of the gruesome Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas where 1,200 people were murdered and 240 were taken hostage. While we support Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism, we have also watched with increasing horror the indiscriminate bombing and loss of civilian life in Gaza. We believe it is a moral imperative that we join the growing chorus for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.
More than 22,000 people have been killed and more than 50,000 have been injured to-date in Gaza alone. Using 2,000 pound unguided bombs in heavily populated areas, preventing humanitarian aid, and cutting off crucial resources to hundreds of thousands of people, all amounts to an egregious and disproportionate form of collective punishment and retaliation inflicted on innocent civilians.
We understand recent events in the context of the already combustible situation of Israel’s ongoing occupation and annexation of Palestinian land — that has inflamed the region and led to the predictable result of continuous conflict and war. We condemn the right-wing government coalition that is leading Israel, which has undermined Palestinian aspirations for statehood through state-sanctioned violence and support for a settler movement that seeks to occupy and annex the Palestinian West Bank to Israel.
The U.S. must end military aid for this war and work for the release of all hostages and an end to the siege on Gaza. Further, we call on our government to condition all future aid to the state of Israel on the creation of a viable Palestinian state and removal of all settlements in the West Bank.
Ceasefire now!
For additional context, please see our blog from May, 2023: Israel is Building an Apartheid State on Palestinian Land: What We Must Understand and What We Can Do to Stop It.