Bret Stephens: The Cheap & Easy Sanctimony of Ben & Jerry
The decision also called attention to the fact, unmentioned by Cohen and Greenfield, that the supposedly independent Ben & Jerry’s board that exists to handle its social mission was in no hurry to bless Unilever’s pledge to keep doing business in Israel.Daniel Gordis: The Bearable Heaviness of Being (Alone)
On the contrary: the Ben & Jerry’s board chair, Anuradha Mittal, is publicly furious with Unilever. NBC News reported that her board tried to put out a different statement “that made no reference to continued sales in Israel,” but that “Unilever released the statement against the wishes of the board.”
As for Unilever, it will be hard-pressed to honor its promise to stay in Israel while keeping out of the West Bank, since Israeli law forbids companies from operating that way. It will also have to seek approval from the ticked-off Ben & Jerry’s board for a new Israeli licensee once the current contract expires next year.
So much for Cohen and Greenfield bravely honoring the principle to distinguish between the West Bank and Israel. What we really have is a feckless political gesture, a corporate fiasco, a de facto boycott of the Jewish state, an enraged Israeli government, and a handful of customers who won’t get their Chunky Monkey cravings satisfied. Just how any of this translates into peace or justice, much less ending “the occupation,” is anyone’s guess.
In his book, Ramaswamy asks, “How did we come to this farcical point where your politics chooses your sandwiches”— or ice cream? “I’m tempted to say that nothing is sacred anymore, but America’s problem is actually the opposite: Nothing is allowed to be ordinary anymore.”
To have to write a whole column about the Ben & Jerry’s founders’ personal political views shouldn’t be necessary. Too bad their sanctimonious, inept, and dishonest attempt at foreign policy makes it so.
Ice cream boycotts themselves aren’t very high stakes. We can live without Chubby Hubby. Yet ice cream boycotts are a potential harbinger of much worse, still to come. If boycotting Israel gets to be in vogue, this could spread. What if it comes to include airlines? Tech companies? Those Israelis and others applauding the boycott because it applies “only” to the “Occupied Palestinian Territories” ought to ask themselves—given that there’s no obvious policy alternative at the moment (though there is much that Israel can and should do to make Palestinian life easier and better)—whether that’s fire they really want to play with.Former Ben and Jerry’s Employee Says Anti-Israel Activist Spoke to Board Ahead of Boycott Decision
The boycott has gotten all the attention in Israel that it has because it’s a reminder of the fundamental loneliness that often lies at the heart of Israeliness. It’s a reminder that a thriving economy, insanely successful tech sector, world class health care, superb universities, Tel Aviv being one of the most LGBT-friendly cities in the world, Jewish cultural creativity exploding in ways that are hard to fathom, Jews in Israel being physically safer than ever before and much more all notwithstanding, it weighs on you, this knowledge that you live in the only country in the world about which there has been—even before it declared independence—a consensus that the world might be better off if you didn’t exist.
As was noted this week in Tokyo, it took 49 years for the Olympics to formally honor the dead Israeli athletes murdered at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Is there any other country that would have had to wait half a century?
Obviously not.
Only one country.
A former longtime Ben & Jerry's employee said the company's decision to boycott Israel was based on advice from a BDS activist who was expelled from Israel for spearheading economic pressure campaigns against the Jewish state.
Susannah Levin, who spent 21 years as a freelance graphic designer for Ben & Jerry's before resigning last month over the company's decision to halt its sales in the West Bank, said the company's board consulted with Human Rights Watch's Israel-Palestine director Omar Shakir, an advocate of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement who accused the Jewish state of "crimes against humanity."
"Omar Shakir spoke directly to the board," said Levin in an interview with Israel's Channel 2 radio on Tuesday. "He wrote the Human Rights Watch report, [which] is what they were basing their information on. It's a report that accuses Israel of apartheid."
"They believed him to be a valid source of information about Israel," she added.
Ben & Jerry's has come under scrutiny for its involvement with anti-Israel activists. The company recently hosted a conference call with anti-Zionist writer Peter Beinart, who has said he supports the destruction of the Jewish state, to address concerns about the boycott from its franchise owners, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Ben & Jerry's declined to comment on Shakir's alleged involvement with its board. Human Rights Watch did not respond to a request for comment.
Shakir was deported from Israel in 2019 due to his attempts to pressure various companies and international organizations, including FIFA, to join boycotts against homes and businesses in contested parts of Israel. He took credit for Airbnb's decision to bar Israelis in the West Bank from renting their homes on the site in 2018. The rental service later backtracked in the face of legal challenges.