An exclusive report in Reuters revealed last week that Ben & Jerry’s had been unable to reach an agreement with its parent company Unilever following a dispute that arose over the latter’s arrangement to sell the ice cream maker’s Israeli business to a local licensee.
Last month, British conglomerate Unilever announced the sale of Ben & Jerry’s in Israel to businessman Avi Zinger after months of wrangling with its Vermont-based subsidiary over its decision to stop selling its ice cream beyond Israel’s pre-1967 boundaries.
However, just days later, Ben & Jerry’s said it would sue Unilever to block the sale, arguing in a lawsuit filed in a New York federal court that the decision had been without the approval of its independent board, which under the terms of its original sale to Unilever in 2000 had reserved the “primary responsibility for safeguarding the integrity” of the brand that is “synonymous with social activism.”
Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever agreed to a July 28 deadline to try and reach an out-of-court deal regarding the sale, but a source who was reportedly present during the mediation told Reuters that no such agreement was forthcoming because Ben & Jerry’s did not want to “cave” on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
Unilever CEO Alan Jope is said to have argued that “there is plenty for Ben & Jerry’s to get their teeth into in their social justice mission without straying into geopolitics.”
Apparently, Ben & Jerry’s does not agree with Jope’s assessment.
The ice creamery’s position is revealing: the board’s refusal to back down over the Israel boycott speaks volumes, particularly when the company could have still claimed it as a moral victory. As HonestReporting pointed out, the company could still be comfortable in the knowledge that it is not profiting from the sales of its products in what it views as “occupied land.”
But Ben & Jerry’s refusal to back down is indicative of how its board views Israel as utterly unique.
While the famously “progressive” company has campaigned on numerous other issues — both foreign and domestic — such activism has never resulted in the company suspending sales in a particular territory.
In 2020, for example, the account of Ben & Jerry’s UK tweeted at the government’s Home Secretary Priti Patel over what it perceived as a “lack of humanity for people fleeing war, climate change and torture” after Patel vowed to stop migrants illegally entering the country on inflatable dinghies sailed across the English Channel from France.
Arguing that migrants “wouldn’t make dangerous journeys if they had any other choice,” the company hit out at the UK for not resettling “refugees.”
Yet, the UK government’s “lack of humanity” was apparently not a grave enough offense in Ben & Jerry’s eyes to warrant the halting of sales in the United Kingdom until a migrant settling scheme that it agreed with was enshrined in law.
When the UK revealed earlier this year that it would deport migrants who entered the country illegally to Rwanda, a statement on Ben & Jerry’s UK website called the proposal “abhorrent” and accused leaders of “choosing to put people’s lives are [sic] risk.”
Again, no announcement about ending sales in the UK was forthcoming.
In a political intervention a little closer to home, the company last year criticized lawmakers in Texas following a bill that restricted the ability of women to receive abortions in the state.
Suggesting the law was racist, Ben & Jerry’s claimed the law “criminalizes people — particularly black women — who have been robbed of resources and opportunity, damaging their health, restricting their autonomy, and pushing them further into poverty.”
Yet again, any plan for the end of ice cream sales in Texas never materialized.
In an interview with Axios earlier this year, the company’s founders, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, were asked about this glaring disparity: why single out Israel for boycott action but not, for example, Texas?
Cohen tellingly admitted that “by that reasoning, we should not sell ice cream anywhere,” adding that he has issues with things being done in almost every nation and American state.
And therein the problem lies: Ben & Jerry’s takes issue with lots of things — restricting abortions, perceived lack of rights for migrants, climate change inaction — but only Israel’s supposed misdeeds warrant boycott action.
It is a view that may well fall foul of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, specifically by singling out the Jewish state and holding it to a standard not expected of other democratic nations.
Israel is not unique, yet the row over Ben & Jerry’s refusal to allow the Unilever sale reveals a tendency for its critics to treat it as such.
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