In their early years, when Ben & Jerry had just started their ice cream business in a used gasoline station in downtown Burlington, Vermont, I would hang out there not knowing the national and international reputation they would attain in the coming years. I also played basketball with Jerry in pickup games on North Street. Decades later, Ben would serve donated Ben & Jerry’s ice cream with our daughter Shirah at an event where the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies honored Sen. Patrick Leahy. Those connections have led friends in Israel to ask me what went into the mindset of Ben & Jerry’s recent decision to stop selling their ice cream in the “occupied territories” and east Jerusalem.
For many Jewish Americans, and Americans in general who want to see the occupation of the West Bank end, the question of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) is one option that is getting more and more support. There is a growing frustration that with each passing month, more Palestinian lands are taken and already established settlements are expanded. The question is: If ending the occupation is the goal, are boycotts the way to go?
While too many Israeli policies in the West Bank can be perceived as looking like apartheid, there is the very important difference between some policies that resemble apartheid and being an actual apartheid state, which Israel as a state is not. That nuance is lost in the woke culture in which we are now living. Related, the pro-Israeli camp is not able to see the nuance of the Ben & Jerry’s boycott focused on the occupied territories and not Israel in general. While the pro-Palestinian camp is unable to see that such boycotts, even if justified, by being focused on the occupied territories as a tactic, only hardens the Israeli position. Many Israelis feel Israel is singled out over and above any other country in the world (which it is), and that plays into the centuries-old trope that it is OK to pick on Jews and now also the Jewish state.
One of the challenges in all of this is that both Palestinians and Israelis carry traumatized narratives both individually and collectively. With those emotional and psychological underpinnings, Israelis and Palestinians are too quick to push off criticisms of their actions even when such criticisms are justified. That dynamic serves no one except naysayers on both sides of the conflict.
If anything, the Ben & Jerry’s boycott is a reminder in the United States that we are living in a period when important questions are being asked about issues of justice and the pursuit “of a more perfect union.” This COVID Era has shown serious cracks within US society. That combined with the #MeToo and Black Live Matters movements has put many issues under the microscope, including Israel, in large part because of the special relationship between the two countries and the amount of funding Israel gets from the US.
Finally, the support of Israel in the US shows a serious generational split depending on when someone was born: pre-2000 vs post-2000. Others would push that earlier. In this new reality, the ongoing occupation will, going forward, only galvanize, particularly younger Jews and younger non-Jews to support related activism in the United States as we saw last week with Ben & Jerry’s.