Jew World Order

Two-Scoop Solution

I have a favor to ask.

The campaign to get Ben & Jerry’s to leave Israel began in 2013, and – as you can see – we were covering it back then. If you can make a donation now, I promise not just that we’ll turn it into more fearless coverage of the movement for justice in Palestine. I promise that, whether next week or next year, it will help those campaigns win.

– Phil Weiss, founder & senior editor

DOUBLE YOUR DONATION TODAY >

The Vermont-based ice cream manufacturer Ben & Jerry’s has been linked to progressive causes since it was established in 1978 but the company’s commitment to social justice hasn’t extended to Palestine.

For over a decade there has been a campaign aimed at getting Ben & Jerry’s to stop selling ice cream in Israel’s illegal settlements and to publicly oppose the occupation the same way it’s opposed other injustices. That effort has been led by Vermonters for Justice in Palestine (VTJP). VTJP has been bringing three demands to the company for years:

1. End the marketing, catering and sales of Ben & Jerry’s products in Israel and Jewish-only  settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank. 

2. Stop manufacturing ice cream in Israel. 

3. Issue a statement (a) calling on Israel to end its occupation and settlement enterprise and  (b) appealing directly to other socially responsible companies to do likewise and to cease  business operations in Israel and its illegal settlements.

Attention around this campaign seemed to increase after Israel’s most recent attack on Gaza and, after disappearing from social media for two months, Ben & Jerry’s finally emerge with some big news:

We believe it is inconsistent with our values for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). We also hear and recognize the concerns shared with us by our fans and trusted partners. 

We have a longstanding partnership with our licensee, who manufactures Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in Israel and distributes it in the region. We have been working to change this, and so we have informed our licensee that we will not renew the license agreement when it expires at the end of next year.

Although Ben & Jerry’s will no longer be sold in the OPT, we will stay in Israel through a different arrangement. We will share an update on this as soon as we’re ready.

More on their statement and what it means in a moment, but let’s turn to the reaction first.

The Only Democracy in the Middle East™ (and a number of its supporters) responded to the announcement by going ballistic. Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid called the decision “a shameful surrender to antisemitism, to BDS and to all that is wrong with the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish discourse.” He also said he would ask every state that passed BDS legislation to target the company. “They will not treat the State of Israel like this without a response,” he warned.

I thought this guy was supposed to be the Good Cop!

“This is a moral mistake and I believe it will turn out to be a business mistake as well,” said Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. “The boycott against Israel… reflects that they have totally lost their way. The boycott doesn’t work and won’t work and we will fight it with all our might.”

Israeli-American lobbyist (and convicted tax fraudster) Adam Milstein said the company had caved to “non-stop harassments and intimidation” and joined “the most antisemitic campaign of the 21st century.”

Israeli Economics Minister Orna Barbivay shared a video of her throwing a pint of partially eaten Ben & Jerry’s ice cream into the trash. I’m not sure what kind of impact that’s supposed to have as she had already bought it.

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby (the former winner of a journalism award handed out by the Zionist Organization of America every year) compared the move to Nazis boycotting Jewish businesses. The founders of Ben & Jerry’s are both Jewish by the way.

Act.IL, the anti-BDS app partially funded by the Israeli government, is instructing users to complain to the company.

A number of lawmakers also sounded off on Twitter. Here’s Oklahoma Senator James Lankford: “Ben & Jerry’s has now decided they know more about Jerusalem than the Israelis. If Ben & Jerry’s wants to have a meltdown & boycott Israel, OK is ready to respond. Oklahoma has an anti-boycott of Israel law in place.”

Let’s leave aside the implications of a Senator attacking a United States company for its policies towards a foreign country and actually consider this for a moment. I cover this stuff for a living and have never encountered one BDS law that could plausibly be wielded against Ben & Jerry’s without inviting an immediate lawsuit. Every time one of these state laws ends up in a courtroom it’s almost immediately laughed out. There has not been a single case where the merits of these laws have been upheld.

These facts didn’t stop Israeli ambassador Gilad Erdan from sending a letter to the 35 states with anti-BDS laws on the books, calling for sanctions. It seems highly unlikely that anything like this would work, but Israel might be thinking in different terms.

It’s important to remember the case of Airbnb. Back in 2018 the company said it would stop renting property in Israeli settlements. The move prompted a similar reaction from Israel and its defenders. Owners of settlements even sued the company. Ultimately they backed down and it never really felt like they knew what they were getting themselves into. How much stamina will Ben & Jerry’s have in the face of all this nonsense?

“The Shift” Part

What does VTJP think about Ben & Jerry’s move? They put out a statement referring to it as a “small victory” in a much wider struggle and stressed that more work needed to be done. They also reiterated their three demands, one of which is to stop selling ice cream in Israel altogether. That’s where things begin to get interesting.

Let’s revisit the last part of Ben & Jerry’s statement: “Although Ben & Jerry’s will no longer be sold in the OPT, we will stay in Israel through a different arrangement.”

It’s unclear what this means at the moment but shortly after the news dropped, the company’s Independent Board of Directors put out their own statement of their own. Here’s the gist of it: they never approved the part about continuing to do business in Israel. Ben & Jerry’s parent company Unilever and its CEO Matthew McCarthy seemingly tried to sidestep them.

“The statement released by Ben & Jerry’s regarding its operation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (the OPT) does not reflect the position of the Independent Board, nor was it approved by the Independent Board,” reads a press release put out by board chair Anuradha Mittal. “By taking a position and publishing a statement without the approval of the Independent Board on an issue directly related to Ben & Jerry’s social mission and brand integrity, Unilever and its CEO at Ben & Jerry’s are in violation of the spirit and the letter of the Acquisition Agreement.”

Mittal even told NBC News that Unilever is “trying to destroy the soul of the company.” This part of the story sounds like it’s far from over and we will surely be covering it in the coming weeks.

It’s hard to believe Ben & Jerry’s decision will have a huge impact on the ground in Palestine, but it’s a huge story when we talk about how Israel impacts U.S. domestic policy.

For starters, Israel’s reaction (and the reaction its supporters) reveals something that we effectively already knew. None of these people really make a distinction between the illegal settlements and any other part of Israel, regardless of how the international community views the situation. If you oppose a company for refusing to do business in the settlements, you’re pro-settlement.

It also shows how this issue has permeated mainstream liberal discourse. Ben & Jerry’s might be a company that espouses progressive values, but it’s still a company. On some level they had to believe this move wouldn’t ruin their business or their brand.

I thought Alex Kane nailed this part of the equation on Twitter: “Ben and Jerry’s discontinuing sales of products in Israeli settlements has more implications for the US debate than actual material implications in Israel-Palestine: It shows amongst liberals, there’s increasingly no appetite for complicity in the occupation. Ben and Jerry’s withstood pressure for eight years. The atrocities of May 2021 made that untenable. The result of a ton of different forces converging. Not to overstate the significance of it, but it’s one symbol of liberal views changing, driven by a Palestinian-led movement.”

In the last newsletter I covered a recent poll that shows Jewish voters in the United States are becoming more and more critical of Israel. For instance, 38% of Jews under 40 think Israel’s an apartheid state.

There was a lot to glean from that data but one of the big takeaways was that the continued attempts to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism haven’t just failed, they’ve backfired. Now Israel is telling the world that settlers being denied Chunky Monkey is akin to terrorism and they’re expecting everyone to take these claims seriously. I don’t think this is going to go the way they expect.

Odds & Ends

🇮🇱 The New York Times ran an article about the Democratic Establishment mobilizing to stop Nina Turner from becoming a congresswoman in Ohio, but it doesn’t mention Democratic Majority for Israel’s role at all. The lobbying group’s PAC has spent over $600,000 on the race.

💰 More DMFI…at The Intercept Matthew Cunningham-Cook reports that fossil fuel heir Stacy Schusterman gave the organization $1.55 million. The article quotes Public Citizen’s Craig Holman on the group’s connection to the Ohio race: “Nina Turner had been enjoying a comfortable lead for Congress in this Ohio district, reflecting her constituents’ support for progressive policies such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. But that lead has been fading as the Democratic Majority for Israel super PAC has raised huge amounts of special interest money from outside the district and is spending much of that money late in the election cycle targeting Turner.”

Here’s Phil Weiss on about Schusterman’s involvement: “I believe that Schusterman is in this race because of Israel, and oil and gas has nothing to do with it. In the latest federal filing, the Schusterman Family Foundation, which Stacy Schusterman chairs, gave $1.5 million to the AIPAC arm that sends congresspeople and other politicians to Israel, including Shontel Brown; $2 million to Birthright, which sends young Jews to Israel on a free trip; $250,000 to the rightwing Israel advocacy group the David Project; $250,000 to Honeymoon Israel, which is all about paying for newlywed’s trips you know where– so long as there’s one Jewish partner; $500,000 to Onward Israel; $150,000 to Renewal of Israeli Democracy; and $62,500 to Engaging Millennials on Israel.”

🇺🇸 Abdul Latif Nasser has finally been released from the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp even though he was cleared for release over 5 years ago. He’s the first prisoner to be released under the Biden administration. Nasser had been held for 19 years but never charged with a crime. There’s still 39 men left in the infamous prison and only 11 of them have ever been charged with one.

“Abdul Latif Nasser’s release is hugely encouraging, but he’s only one man among many who have suffered the same grave injustice of years of detention without trial, even after long since being cleared for release,” said Reprieve deputy director Katie Taylor in a statement. “There are 10 other men cleared for transfer who should be sent home without any further delay or resettled in countries where they can safely begin to rebuild their lives.”

There’s been a lot of talk about human rights in Cuba recently but this analysis almost always omits the abuses being carried out at the infamous facility Noam Chomsky recently referred to as a “horror chamber.”

🇨🇺 Speaking of Cuba, Biden still hasn’t reinstated Cuban remittances. Here’s William LeoGrande on the subject in Responsible Statecraft:

In short, the Cuban government is not gaining windfall profits from remittances. There is no way to prevent the Cuban government from receiving those dollars when Cuban recipients spend them, so if that’s the condition the Biden administration envisions, then nothing will change. But if the goal is simply to assure that the government is not extracting value in excess of normal business expenses, then that condition is already being met. 

President Biden says he “stands with the Cuban people.” Immediately reopening the channel for Cuban Americans to send remittances to their families is the single most important thing he can do to prove it. 

Biden also just announced a new round of sanctions on Cuban officials. The Nation’s Aída Chávez on Twitter: “The ‘most progressive president since FDR’ won’t end a genocidal blockade. He won’t even keep his campaign promise to undo Trump’s Cuba policies and return to the Obama administration’s approach.”

📰 The mainstream press implements all kinds of weaselly euphemisms when covering the foreign policy of the United States or the human rights records of its client states, but here’s a new one from the Associated Press. This week they tweeted, “Ben & Jerry’s says it will no longer sell its ice cream in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. It’s seen as one of the highest-profile rebukes by a well-known company of Israel’s policy of settling its citizens on war-won lands sought by Palestinians.”

War-won lands sought by Palestinians. Incredible. The news agency’s offices were literally bombed by Israel and they still tweet like this.

🗑️ For some reason Rep. Ro Khanna tweeted, “Bill Kristol is one of the most thoughtful voices in defending liberalism and democratic institutions in our country. Learned a lot in our conversation about shaping also an inclusive narrative around American patriotism.”

Who says liberals aren’t funny?

🇺🇸 Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Mike Lee (R-UT) have introduced the National Security Powers Act, which aims to reel in the President’s power to start wars and implement sanctions. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) has introduced companion legislation in the House.

📱 The NSO Group, an Israeli spyware company, is back in the news as a result of its controversial Pegasus hacking technology. The investigation of a recent data leak revealed that governments targeted journalists and activists using the company’s tools. Those targeted include the family of slain Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The mainstream media has largely missed the Israel component of this story. Here’s Ali Abunimah at Electronic Intifada:

The Israeli government’s role in licensing NSO Group’s sales does not appear to be merely a passive process of issuing approvals. Rather, Israel sees these firms as extensions of its reach as it fosters ties with governments across the region.

Citing an Israeli official and company sources, The New York Times, reported this week that the Israeli government “encouraged NSO and two other companies to continue working with Saudi Arabia, and issued a new license for a fourth to do similar work, overriding any concerns about human rights abuses.”

Imagine the reaction to this story if NSO was connected to, say, China? Actually you don’t have to. As Abunimah points out:

Contrast the relative silence about the Israeli government’s direct and undisputed role in the nefarious activities of NSO Group with Western governments’ latest campaign against China.

On Monday, the Biden administration accused China’s government of hacking Microsoft email systems used by corporations and government entities around the world.

✝️ The United Church of Christ passed a resolution at their General Synod condemning Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and they used the A-word. It’s the first major U.S. denomination to tag Israel as an apartheid state.

🏫 There’s a piece at Inside Higher Ed detailing the fallout from a recently-passed resolution on Israel at CUNY.

🍦 Mayor Bill de Blasio says he will boycott Ben & Jerry’s which probably means sales will spike in New York City.

Stay safe out there,

Michael

Source