Ben & Jerry’s announced that it would stop selling ice cream in illegal Israeli settlements over a week ago but hysterical reactions to the news show no signs of stopping.
This week Axios reported that Israel had formed a special task force designed to pressure Ben & Jerry’s, and its parent company Unilever, into backing down. A classified Foreign Ministry cable seen by Axios declared, “We need to make use of the 18 months that are left until the decision comes into force and try to change it. We want to create long-term pressure on Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s by consumers, politicians, and in the press and social media in order to lead to a dialogue with the companies.”
Among other actions the memo reportedly tells Israeli diplomats “to encourage Jewish organizations, pro-Israel advocacy groups and evangelical communities to organize demonstrations in front of Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever offices” in an effort to pressure the corporations and their investors.
The Axios report also asserts that the Israeli Embassy in Washington and the Israeli Consulates pushed for states to implement their anti-BDS laws if possible and help pressure the company politically. On Twitter J Street Vice President Dylan Williams pointed out that such a call might have “possible Foreign Agents Registration Act implications if any of the US groups acted on the request.”
It’s unclear whether any United States lawmakers have directly responded to call but many have certainly acted. This includes Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who sent a letter to the State Board of Administration asking them to put Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever on Florida’s official list of entities that boycott Israel.
“As a matter of law and principle, the State of Florida does not tolerate discrimination against the State of Israel or the Israeli people, including boycotts and divestments targeting Israel,” said DeSantis.
In Texas a spokesperson for Governor Greg Abbott called Ben & Jerry’s decision “disgraceful and an insult to America’s closest ally in the Middle East.” The state’s Comptroller Glenn Hegar vowed to see if the state could take “specific action” against the company.
The rhetoric has been even more extreme among Israeli lawmakers. Shortly after the move Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said it was “a shameful surrender to antisemitism, to BDS and to all that is wrong with the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish discourse.” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called it a “moral mistake” and promised that Israel “will fight it with all our might.” Israeli Economics Minister Orna Barbivay shared a video of her throwing Ben & Jerry’s ice cream into the trash. 90 Knesset members (out of 120) also signed a letter calling on Ben & Jerry’s to reverse their decision.
A number of pro-Israel organizations have also gotten in on the action. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said the organization had been in “deep dialogue” with Unilever for over a week. Greenblatt also shared a letter from the parent company where they assure the ADL that they don’t support the BDS movement.
Unilever sent the same letter to William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
The Israeli-American Council flew a massive banner over Ben & Jerry’s factory in Vermont that declared, “Serve Ice Cream, Not Hate.”
The most comical move might have come from the Shurat HaDin Law Center in Tel Aviv. They have applied to distribute ice cream in the West Bank under the name “Judea and Samaria’s Ben & Jerry’s,” claiming that the company relinquished its trademark rights when it pulled out of the settlements. The group’s president Nitsana Darshan-Leitner sent a letter to Unilever which claims, “We will now become the lawful owners of the Ben & Jerry’s name in Judea and Samaria.”
Mairav Zonszein has a great editorial in today’s New York Times but it’s not available online to non-subscribers – get hold of it if you can. A brief quote –
“Israel Wants Spyware and Its Ice Cream”
The Israeli government portrayed itself as the victim of a hostile and unethical move on the part of the ice cream company. As if Israel itself did not partake in any immoral behavior on its own; as if home demolitions, institutionalized discrimination, land expropriation, administrative detention and shooting at unarmed Palestinian protesters were not problematic; as if an Israeli company selling highly controversial technology to authoritarian regimes were not more questionable than an ice cream company denying its pints to customers who live in certain areas.
Here’s the absurdity of what the Israeli government is trying do and spin…
They are claiming that Ben & Jerry’s is anti-Semitic for boycotting the illegal Israeli Settlements. Okay.
Even if the Jewish co-founders were being anti-Semitic, which is ridiculous of course, but even if they were being anti-Semitic surely it would be Israel, its pro-Israel proxies in the US, and American Jews that would be boycotting Ben & Jerry’s and not the other way around.
Yet, instead of launching a campaign to boycott Ben & Jerry’s for their “obvious” “anti-semitism”, they’re actually trying to get good ol’ “terrorist and anti-Semitic” Ben & Jerry’s to keep doing their dirty anti-Semitic business in the Jewish Settlements?
It’s completely nonsensical. Which is why they are losing this argument, because this clearly isn’t about anti-semtism. If it were, they’d be launching a global anti-semitism campaign to boycott the self-hating Jew-hating Jewish Ben & Jerry’s and rightly so, if this was in fact the case, but it’s obviously not.
This about Israel not wanting to accept a single ounce of responsibility or face any kind of repercussion for its policies, actions, endless illegal occupation, and Apartheid.
They want global and beloved businesses like Ben & Jerry’s operating inside the Occupied Territories because it gives the illegitimate Settlements the sense of legitimacy, the illegality the appearance of legality, and their racist Apartheid crimes the feeling of innocence.
This is what they are fighting so desperately for right now. Not some bullshit claim of “anti-semitism” or “economic terrorism”.
If the zionists ended the occupation and land grabs, they would not have to pour millions of shekels for their Hasbara brigades, to fight BDS, and consistently fight the fires they started.
Time for B & J to do the right thing and leave Israel altogether, they are getting attacked, called terrorists, and insulted by the sore losers.
And…. just like that I’m buying anything Ben and Jerry’s. Yum!
Men lies about that
Some of ’em dies about that
Some of ’em cries about that
But everything fight about a spoonful
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fjviTLYqoc
Eventually Israel will have turned almost everyone against them.
Then they will ask , “why does everyone hate us”.