The left-wing ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s announced on Monday that it will stop selling its ice cream in the West Bank and East Jerusalem—or, as the company termed them, Occupied Palestinian Territory. In a move that perfectly captures how left-wing activism is increasingly bleeding into naked anti-Semitism, Ben & Jerry’s said that selling ice cream in the West Bank is “inconsistent with our values.”
Yikes.
We’re not clear how exactly removing Ben & Jerry’s ice cream from grocery stores in the West Bank will benefit the Palestinians. The move appears to be primarily an act of guerrilla theater and a demonstration of base prejudice.
The most common expression of anti-Semitism on the left is the application of double standards to Jews and the Jewish state.
Look no further than Ben & Jerry’s partnership with Unilever, which acquired the ice cream company in 2000. There is no comparison between Israeli policy in the West Bank and the practices of the world’s greatest human rights abusers. Unilever happily does business everywhere from occupied Northern Cyprus to occupied Tibet and Xinjiang, home to Uyghur concentration camps. We won’t hold our breath for the ice cream boycott of China or Russia. But hey, there are no Jews in Xinjiang.
This sort of casual anti-Semitism is not a one-off for Ben & Jerry’s or its left-wing allies. The company defended its partnership with the anti-Trump and anti-Semitic Women’s March as three of its leaders, including the execrable Linda Sarsour, were pushed out thanks to their anti-Semitic remarks.
First, the social justice warriors at Ben & Jerry’s assured us the Women’s March had been “unequivocal” in its denunciations of anti-Semitism—even as it praised Sarsour for her “undeniably important” work. Then the company issued a mealy-mouthed statement that said little about the Women’s March but declared, “Ben & Jerry’s is neither anti-Semitic nor do we support anti-Semitism in any form.”
Monday’s move gave the lie to that blather, and we urge friends of Israel and the Jewish people to vote with their spoons. Morton Williams co-president Avi Kaner is leading the way: He said late Monday that his board would meet to discuss ridding its supermarkets of Ben & Jerry’s.
As the new Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, told Israeli reporters, “There are many ice cream brands, but only one Jewish state.”