In 2011, Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel began a discussion with Ben & Jerry’s in South Burlington, Vermont, concerning their long-standing contractual relationship with an Israeli franchise that manufactures ice cream in Israel proper and sells it in Israel settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
These settlements – fortified colonies for Jews only – contravene international law. Ben & Jerry’s knows this. It knows, too, that the company’s Social Mission and history of supporting progressive causes cannot be reconciled with its franchise’s commercial ties to the settlements.
Despite what it knows and the values that define its corporate identity, Ben & Jerry’s refuses to stop the Israeli franchise from making money in Israeli settlements.
The decision to call for a boycott
VTJP’s thinking on the necessity for a boycott reached a tipping point during Israel’s military assault against Gaza in the summer of 2014. 2,200 Palestinians were killed and more than 11,000 wounded. The casualties were overwhelmingly civilians.
Because Gaza’s morgues could not handle the horrific carnage, bodies of dead children and babies had to be stacked temporarily in ice cream freezers prior to burial.
While this massacre of innocents was being carried out, Ben & Jerry’s “peace & love” ice cream was passing through Israeli checkpoints, being transported on Jewish-only roads, and being sold to supermarkets and for catered events in Jewish-only settlements.
A company can’t call itself progressive and remain silent on Palestine
It’s now clear that appealing to Ben & Jerry’s socially responsible “conscience” alone will not achieve our objectives.
Since 2013, the year our campaign went public, thousands of individuals and 239 organizations in 20 countries, including Israel, and from the District of Columbia and the occupied Palestinian territory, have called on Ben & Jerry’s to put an end to its franchise’s business in Israeli settlements.
Jeff Furman, chairperson of Ben & Jerry’s Board of Directors, traveled to Occupied Palestine in 2012 with a group of American civil rights’ leaders. He described what he saw there as “apartheid.”
A Ben & Jerry’s delegation traveled to Israel/Palestine in 2014, as VTJP had urged. Participants met with anti-occupation activists, and some toured the West Bank. They learned from credible sources and saw with their own eyes the brutal realities of life under military occupation.
VTJP also informed the company in 2014 that its franchise may be purchasing equipment from an illegal Israeli enterprise in the occupied [Syrian] Golan Heights.
In spite of all this, the company has refused not only to stop its practices, but to even issue a statement calling for an end to Israel’s occupation and settlements.
Therefore, a boycott.
Moving forward
The company and its U.S. shop owners received a letter shortly before VTJP’s third-annual, Free Cone Day protests on April 14 informing them of our boycott action.
VTJP also announced its boycott call with an original “cantastoria” and video called “No Justice, No Sweets.” The Apartheid Adventures media collective, on its own initiative, produced a brilliant satirical video called “Licking Apartheid.”
Our boycott call is being disseminated through social and traditional media and the organizational networks of Palestine solidarity and peace groups around the world.
Ben & Jerry’s has responded with a brief posting on its website. It’s a classic example of “redirection through misdirection,” as we pointed out in a rebuttal.
Much organizing work remains to be done, of course. VTJP calls on people of conscience around the world to endorse and join this boycott.
well done!!!
How hard is it not to do business with the settlements? They should keep the heat on.
Super- duper action! Brilliant videos. Thank you VTJP~ I am completely on board and in solidarity with all of you.
I have neither bought nor eaten and Ben and Jerry’s brand since I found out about their complicity in the Occupation and apartheid. It simply blows my mind that this otherwise progressive company is PEP and blind. I thought I was doing the “progessive” and pricey thing by supporting B&J. It’s come at a slight personal cost to me since I used to love their wonderful product~ especially their Pistachio Pistachio.
I’ll just wait until I can buy some Iranian pistachios and then sprinkle those liberally all over my own homemade vanilla!
Thank you, Mark!
I have enough trouble biting into cold ice cream but add to that the taste of apartheid and no amount of flavour can get me to suffer that.
I have not bought B&J ice cream for 7 or eight years.I also go out of my way to convince fellow ice cream lovers to leave B& J products to rot on the shelf.
Ben and Jerry “We have no economic interest in the occupied territories”. Sure, they only sell it in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and source the machinery to make it from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. Boycott! Boycott! Boycott!