In a guest essay in The New York Times at the end of July, the founders of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, proclaimed themselves to be “proud Jews” and “supporters of the State of Israel” and then expressed their unequivocal support for and pride “in the decision of the company to end business in the occupied territories.”
Describing the decision “as one of the most important decisions the company has made in its 43-year history,” they depicted it “as advancing the concept of justice and human rights, core tenets of Judaism.” They embraced the decision as being “pro-peace” and claimed the company’s board had distinguished between “the democratic territory of Israel and territories Israel occupies.” Despite Ben & Jerry’s board adopting an objective of the BDS movement, they claimed they did not endorse BDS .
In a self-serving, bizarre, public relations webinar on August 16, Cohen and Anuradha Mittal, the chairperson of Ben & Jerry’s board, were enthusiastically “interviewed” by well-known supporters and asked no hard questions. Cohen doubled down on his essay’s narrative. Much of what he said was carefully adopted by Mittal.
I do not question Ben and Jerry’s sincerity in asserting they are supporters of Israel. For 35 years Ben & Jerry’s ice cream has been manufactured and sold in Israel and sold in territories Israel acquired from Egypt, Jordan and Syria in its defensive Six Day War in 1967. I also do not question the sincerity of their wish for peace and concern about human rights which I share.
What I do question is their assertions that the Ben & Jerry's board distinguished between Israel and territories acquired in 1967, that Israel “perpetuates an illegal occupation” and that the decision made by the board is “especially brave”. The decision applauded did not make the distinction they or Mittal now claim, the board itself expressly denied that it did so nor is it brave. It was simply a cowardly surrender to almost ten years of pressure from a small group of obsessively anti-Israel-BDS campaigners, Vermonters for Justice in Palestine (VTJP), who at the time of this writing, have in total 334 followers on Twitter.
Assuming the “illegal occupation” expressly referenced by Ben & Jerry themselves excludes pre-1967 Israel, like those who advocate BDS, the ice cream creators, together with Mittal, both studiously ignore the complexity of the conflict and the many outstanding issues that need to be addressed. These include Palestinian division and internecine warfare, Palestinian conduct that perpetuates conflict by promoting violence, hate and martyrdom, rockets and other missiles indiscriminately fired at Israeli civilians from Gaza and the objective of Hamas and other terrorist groups to eliminate the Israeli state. They fail to acknowledge that Israel alone is not to blame for the recent political paralysis nor for the cyclical outbreaks of violence.
There is also no validity to their claim that the decision of Ben & Jerry’s board advances “the core tenets of Judaism” and is “pro-peace.” Theirs is a delusional false narrative that denies the centrality and core importance of Jerusalem in Judaism, Israel’s and the Jewish people's connection to east Jerusalem and over 3,000 years of Jewish history. While there are a variety of political structures and mechanisms that a negotiated peace process could utilize to properly accommodate competing claims over east Jerusalem by both Israelis and Palestinians, they make no mention of them.
Mittal, in her profile on the company’s website, explains her board membership as “an opportunity to give voice” to her “ideological fantasies.” As chairperson, it seems, she fulfilled one of her fantasies when communicating her board's “decision” to Unilever, its parent company. The decision is entirely consistent with her long standing public history of one sided anti-Israel activism and support for BDS. This includes inciting violence by retweeting false allegations of Israeli settlers “planning to storm” Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque and calls for Israeli actress Gal Gadot to be canceled by National Geographic.
THE BDS movement does not campaign for peace and promote reconciliation. It does not support or advocate a two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It totally opposes normalizing social, economic, cultural and sporting engagements between Israelis and Palestinians. It is opposed to all the forms of positive engagement used in Ireland to construct the foundations required for ending 30 years of conflict and an enduring peace on our island. It is intent on Israel’s demonization, delegitimization and advocates Israel’s replacement by a Palestinian state “from the River to the Sea.” It does not advocate for an end to the conflict. It advocates for Israel’s end.
To the BDS movement all of Israel is “occupied territory,” not just that part of the land Israel acquired in 1967. As expressly advocating Israel’s elimination might be a public relations own goal, constructive ambiguity was deployed in Ben & Jerry’s July decision to stop selling ice cream “in Occupied Palestinian Territory,” a phrase Mittal has since repetitively revisited. To those in the BDS know, it meant Ben & Jerry’s board intended to boycott all “territory,” including Israel within its 1967 borders. It also facilitated those not in the know, who didn’t want to know or who might require plausible deniability to adopt the pretext that the decision only applied to east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. The “plausible deniability option” enabled Mittal during the recent webinar to falsely claim her board's original decision excludes Israel.
As it is now increasingly understood, the term “Occupied Palestinian Territory” is a glib, semantically inexact, legally dubious, single transferable phrase that incorporates a multiplicity of meanings from which you can select the one to suit the moment and the audience you are addressing. It also means different things to different individuals and audiences who can choose the meaning with which they are most comfortable.
I do not believe Ben and Jerry, as proud Jews, favor Israel’s elimination and replacement by a Palestinian state. They are astute, successful businessmen, who did business in Israel for many years. But I do not believe they failed to notice that Unilever, the Anglo Dutch company that acquired Ben & Jerry’s in 2000, moderated the original statement of Ben & Jerry’s board by including an assurance of the ice cream's continuing availability in Israel to partially mitigate the taint of BDS. I also do not believe that Ben and Jerry failed to notice the board’s well-reported protest statement tweeted by Mittal, not mentioned during the webinar, that Unilever wrongly changed their original statement which contained no such assurance.
What I do not understand is why they adopted, embraced and celebrated a pretense that the Ben & Jerry’s board distinguished between “the democratic territory of Israel and territories Israel occupies” when it clearly did not do so and protested Unilever’s edit of their original statement. Maybe they were duped by the constructive ambiguity of the phraseology used or did they simply choose to adopt a comforting false narrative about the intent of the Board? Mittal embraced the same narrative in the webinar but then contradicted it by admitting she knew nothing about any plans for the future sale of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in Israel or in "Occupied Palestinian Territory” when the licence of its current Israeli manufacturer ends in December 2022.
In their essay Ben and Jerry wrote “We believe companies have a responsibility to use their power and influence to advance the wider common good.” Ben Cohen revisited this narrative in the August webinar. Looking in from the outside, it just might be that they overestimate the power and influence of an ice cream company and the credibility given to its political pronouncements. When a member for many years of the Irish Parliament's Foreign Affairs, Justice and Defense committees and when later Ireland’s minister for Justice, Equality and Defense, it never occurred to me that an ice cream company or its board might be experts in conflict resolution or possess the secret ingredient required to bring about peace, reconciliation and end violence in conflict zones.
However, if Ben and Jerry truly want to contribute to peace and advance the common good perhaps they could use their wealth, influence and ice cream to encourage dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, invest in the creation of Palestinian jobs, promote more business cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians, encourage warring Palestinian factions to end their internecine conflict, advocate for an end to violent attacks on Israeli civilians and the use of Palestinian civilians, including children, as human shields and for Hamas to end its repression in Gaza and Fatah to do so on the West Bank.
They should also call on Ben & Jerry’s board to rescind their ill-considered deeply flawed decision. Now that would advance the concept of justice and human rights and positively contribute to peace. It would be a truly progressive alternative to the regressive nihilism of BDS activists and their Twitteratti supporters that exacerbates division promotes hate and achieves nothing of real value for Palestinians.
The writer is a former Irish minister for Justice, Equality & Defense. and a former chairman of the Irish Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee and its Ireland/Israel Parliamentary Friendship Committee. He is a frequent commentator on the Middle East.