On July 19, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream announced that it would not renew the license of the current manufacturer and distributor of its products in Israel. According to reports, the decision to support the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement (BDS) came from the top down, from Alan Jope, the Scottish-born CEO of Ben & Jerry’s parent company Unilever. Juliana Pilon, Senior Fellow, The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI), blasts this decision in an article published August 19 by the Jewish New Syndicate.
In “The True Tenets of Judaism Repudiate, Not Endorse, BDS,” Dr. Pilon indicts the Vermont-based ice-cream maker for appeasing a movement that is both anti-capitalist and anti-Semitic.
“Weaponizing ice-cream sounds like a Marx Brothers prank,” she writes, “but it isn’t funny. Anuradha Mittal, the left-wing member of Ben & Jerry’s board of directors, brought on board to advance its “social mission,” pronounced” the sale of Ben & Jerry’s products on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem “inconsistent” with the values of the company.
Dr. Pilon finds the pro-BDS posturing of a company founded by two Jewish entrepreneurs more than ironic. “[W]hen ice-cream magnates Cohen and Greenfeld invoke ‘core tenets of Judaism’ to justify policies manifestly dangerous to the survival of Israel and its people throughout the world, the insult they add to injuries the Hebrews have suffered for millennia is a dagger thrust into the people’s heart, including their own. Suicide, however, is no excuse for fratricide.”
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