Whopping majority of Israeli parliament condemn Ben & Jerry’s for boycotting ‘towns and cities in Israel’

Yesterday, a letter was sent by a whopping majority of Israeli lawmakers, to Unilever, the parent company of Ben & Jerry’s, urging it to “rethink the decision” of the Ben & Jerry’s independent board, to stop doing business in illegal settlements.

The letter was signed by 90 Knesset members out of the 120, claiming that the Ben & Jerry’s decision meant boycotting “towns and cities in Israel”, although the whole point of Ben & Jerry’s partial boycott is that the illegal settlements are not considered a legal part of Israel and are flagrant violations of international law.

The letter is thus a flagrantly annexationist one. It was initiated by Merav Ben Ari of the centrist Yesh Atid party, which is led by Foreign Minister Yair Lapid. This further demonstrates the ironclad Israeli political support for settlements, as this site has been reporting.

Israel is now in the midst of a protracted and concerted campaign against Ben & Jerry’s, in an attempt to coerce it to reverse its decision. As the Ben & Jerry’s decision only goes into effect in 1-1/2 years (through non-renewal of local contracts), the Israeli government is set on using this time for constant pressure through the highest diplomatic levels, and has reportedly set up a task force for the creation of political, consumer, and media pressure on Ben & Jerry’s.

Here is the main wording of the letter:

“We, the undersigned, constitute nearly all the Members of Knesset, the Israeli House of representatives, and hail from across the political spectrum from left to right, opposition and coalition members standing together against the shameful actions made last week by Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Holdings, to boycott products in Judea and Samaria. The decision to boycott towns and cities in Israel, as well as the company’s month-long attempt to force this boycott practice immediately on the Israeli manufacturer manager Avi Zinger, is an immoral and regrettable decision that harms all residents of Judea and Samaria as well as harms hundreds of Israeli workers, Jews and Arabs alike. Most of all, this decision, not only excludes large sections of the public that the management of Ben & Jerry’s seemingly seeks to support but also violates the laws of the State of Israel: The Prohibition of Discrimination in Products Law and the prohibition of boycotting various areas of the country. We urge you to rethink this decision and to amend this injustice act.”

The letter refers to two laws/amendments from 2011, one of which is known as the Anti-Boycott Law, which prohibits the public promotion of academic, economic or cultural boycott by Israeli citizens and organizations against Israeli institutions or illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The cocktail of this one together with the anti-discrimination law is meant to paint Ben & Jerry’s as engaged in illegal and morally decadent, “shameful” behavior.

But this is in the Israeli universe, where international law is absent and Apartheid discrimination against Palestinians is a city in Norway. Israel seems bent on convincing the world that its occupation doesn’t really exist and that all of historical Palestine is just “Israel”.

Hours after the letter was published, there were signs of unease from the left signatories. While the letter was signed by lawmakers across the Zionist political spectrum, from Meretz to Religious Zionism, lawmakers on the left said that they had not been shown a final version of it in advance. Six of them walked it back: the one signatory from Meretz (the furthest left of signatories) Yair Golan, and the five signatories from Labor. Golan, who is the highest in party rank in parliament (Meretz’s number 1 and 2, Nitzan Horowitz and Tamar Zandberg, are not in parliament despite the fact they are government ministers, under the “Norwegian law”), tweeted that he later “understood that the letter does not represent [his] position,” since the West Bank settlements are not “towns and cities in Israel”. Emilie Moatti of Labor, spoke for the other party member signatories as well as Meretz, tweeting that

“Labor and Meretz have a clear policy, the core of which is a separation from the Palestinians and a two-state solution… The final version of the letter (which was not presented to me) does not represent my diplomatic position.”

It would appear, that they agreed to sign up for an idea, which got published before the final version was shown to them. But what was this idea? Labor’s Naama Lazimi suggested in a tweet that her intent was simply to “find a solution for the 160 employees of the Ben & Jerry’s factory in Be’er Tuviya”, referring to one of the four local Ben & Jerry’s factories, however noting that “we remain a steady voice against expanding settlements and in favor of peace and a two-state solution.”

Ben & Jerry’s decision is a partial boycott, which should fall well within the domain of acceptability for any Zionist who opposes settlements. It does not boycott Israel. Even that sort of action has a political price. If the signatories from the left of the Zionist spectrum weren’t meaning to press Ben & Jerry’s into accepting the Israeli settlement consensus, they should have steered clear of the letter to begin with. The four Members of Knesset from Ra’am (the United Arab List) as well as the six MK’s from the Joint List representing most Palestinian Israeli citizens, could sniff what that letter was about from a mile. But nearly half of the Jewish left in Parliament (six out of 13 from Meretz and Labor) signed up to the idea.

Then when the idea was actually expressed with expansionist bravura, unapologetically calling settlements a part of “Israel”, the signers felt it went too far. Notice how Lazimi opposes expanding settlements, rather than settlements, period. This is a consistent Labor hypocrisy. When former Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barak was chided from the left for breaking records in settlement building tempo during his 1999-2001 term, he countered that he wasn’t building new ones, he was just expanding old ones. The hypocrisy is not much better in Meretz. Recently, Meretz leader Nitzan Horowitz said in an interview that he is against the boycott, and that “sometimes” he ends up “buying products that are made in settlements”. These people want to have their ice cream and eat it, too.

The letter has become a bit of a PR problem for that feeble Zionist left. It stated all too clearly what they were trying to hide. It exposed the reality wherein settlements are widely considered an integral part of Israel, and that any attempt to take Israel to account for it will be met with a ferocious attack by the state, which constantly seeks to legalize its crimes and penalize those who oppose them.    

h/t Ofer Neiman.