Ben and Jerry’s will not stop the occupation of Palestinian lands, but one fact revealed it

Global Ice Cream Giant Decision Ben and Jerry To stop sales in Israeli settlement stores in West Bank It’s not a summer storm in the ice cream tub. The new head of state Isaac Herzog Determined Vermont’s decision ‘An anti-Semitic act’. With his usual diplomacy, the new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett He called it “Nazi ice cream”. Words that weigh and distort the problem. According to this reasoning, he refused to sell their products in the settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territories Which the whole world considers illegitimate is not just an attack on Israel, but in fact constitutes an anti-Semitic attack on the entire Jewish people.

The target accused of anti-Semitism this time has “broad shoulders”. Ben & Jerry’s is a company founded in 1978 in Burlington – Vermont, USA – by two young music-loving dreamers Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, titles that leave no doubtThe Jewish origin of the families. The founders sold their company to the multinational Unilever, but retained a binding right to company policies that were always attentive to social phenomena and often supported various causes of social justice.

“It is against our moral values ​​that Ben and Jerry’s ice cream be sold in the occupied Palestinian territories,” the founders declared in a press release. “Although Ben and Jerry’s products will not be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, We will stay in Israel anywayThe company said.

The United Nations and much of the international community have considered the West Bank occupied Palestinian territory for more than 60 years and illegal Israeli settlements have been established there where more than 500,000 Israelis now live.

The almost hysterical response in Israel to the company’s announcement drew attention to a key issue that even the Bennett Lapid government hoped to refrain from interfering with: Palestinians. Vermont ice cream makers won’t end the occupation—it’s not their job—but on a hot summer’s day, they uncovered some truths that Israelis don’t want to see.