Dear Nordstrom,
It has come to my attention that your subsidiary, HauteLook, lists “Palestine Territory, Occupied,” under the list of “countries” it serves. I find it distasteful that you are using your website to disseminate a political view that deviates from international law and spreads false propaganda. I was greatly offended to be confronted with this type of political pandering while shopping online.
Please note that Britain was the administrator for these territories under a League of Nations Mandate created after World War I. According to the League of Nations, the territories in question were to be divided between the Jews, who called their state “Israel,” and a new country called Trans-Jordan, today Jordan which was designated to serve as an Palestinian Arab state.
Later on, the UN Partition Plan carved up the land, much of it formerly intended for the Jewish homeland, even further so that a second Palestinian Arab state would be created in addition to Jordan. But the Arabs did not accept the UN Partition Plan and attacked the new Jewish State. With the war’s end in 1948, Jordan assumed the role as administrator of Judea and Samaria.
The Jordanians tried to strip the territories of their Jewish and biblical history by referring to them as the West Bank (of Jordan), rather than as Judea and Samaria, as they were known until that time.
In 1967, the Arabs once again went to war against Israel and Israel regained these territories. The international community never recognized Jordan’s sovereignty over Judea and Samaria and considered Jordan an illegal occupier of this territory between 1948 and 1967. This being the case, according to international law, Israel took back its rightful ownership of these lands after regaining them in 1967 during the Six-Day War. International law therefore does NOT recognize these lands as occupied.
Furthermore, there is no such nation as Palestine and if there were such a state it certainly would not be in Israel, but in Jordan, which was created to become a state for the Palestinian Arabs according to the League of Nations. A recent Palestinian bid for statehood on Israeli land was rejected by the UN Security Council after it became clear that there could be no majority vote in favor of such a plan. The United States, where your offices are based, was strongly against the idea of the UN vote for Palestinian statehood.
Listing Palestine as a country or as occupied territory therefore flies in the face of international law and is a fabricated falsehood. Furthermore, this designation is an insult to the only democracy in the Middle East and America’s staunch ally, the State of Israel.
Israel has done much for the sake of peace, including throwing 8000 of its own Jewish citizens out of their homes in Gaza and ceding this land to its Arab population to be administered by the Palestinian Authority. This huge gesture was offered up as an olive leaf, even though Jordan was created for the purpose of serving as a Palestinian state and has a population that is 80% Palestinian. Israel’s reward for extending its hand in peace has been 8000 missile attacks originating from now Arab Gaza on the Jewish civilian population of Southern Israel.
I would like to point out that these explanations should not be necessary. Clothing outlets should not be disseminating political propaganda, period. Clothing outlets are meant to sell clothes, not political views, distorted or otherwise.
Sincerely,
Varda Meyers Epstein
Efrat, Israel
