An airplane with a banner attacking Ben & Jerry’s Israeli boycotts circled over the ice cream maker's factory and global headquarters on Friday in South Burlington, Vermont.
“Serve Ice Cream, Not Hate,” read the banner – which also included the hashtag #BDSisHATE, and the American and Israeli flags – as part of a campaign launched by The Israeli-American Council (IAC) calling on the ice cream maker to stop its boycott of part of the Israeli population, the American-Jewish organization said in a press release.
The fly-by set off a global advocacy effort that also features a social media campaign urging people to demand Ben & Jerry’s and its parent company Unilever not align with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, and to renew the Vermont-based ice cream producer’s license with its Israeli manufacturer.
BDS "promotes a culture of fear and violence and seeks to eliminate the Jewish homeland – the only democracy in the Middle East,” the IAC said. “Unilever should rid itself of this discriminatory and morally wrong act, stand by its corporate values and refocus its Ben & Jerry’s brand on serving ice cream and not hate. We urge Unilever to discard this shameful decision, end this boycott and invest instead in peace and prosperity through dialogue.”
Reactions on social media to the flyover were as divided as Chunky Monkey vs. Cherry Garcia.
"A quick Google search reveals that for the cost of renting a banner plane in Burlington, the IAC could have paid the Hebrew school tuition for a Vermont kindergartener for a whole year," a spectator tweeted on Monday.