Ben & Jerry’s Becomes One of the First Major Companies to Call for Gaza Ceasefire
“Millions are marching around the world but the corporate world has been silent,” the company’s board chair said.
The board of ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s is calling for a “permanent and immediate” ceasefire in Gaza, potentially becoming the largest multinational corporation to do so as the Palestinian death toll amid Israel’s assault nears 25,000.
“Peace is a core value of Ben & Jerry’s,” Ben & Jerry’s board chair Anuradha Mittal told the Financial Times in an article published this week. “From Iraq to Ukraine [the company] has consistently stood up for these principles. Today is no different as we call for peace and a permanent and immediate ceasefire.”
Mittal went on to say that international business leaders’ failure to speak out on the issue is glaring. “It is stunning that millions are marching around the world but the corporate world has been silent,” Mittal said.
Ben & Jerry’s has a long history of advocacy concerning progressive issues, and in 2021 announced that it was ending sales in the occupied Palestinian territories of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem — a move that the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement said was one of their largest victories. The move created swift backlash from Zionists and Israeli leaders, who criticized Ben & Jerry’s and accused the company of being antisemitic, in spite of the fact that both the company and advocates for Palestine made it clear that it is dangerous to conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
The company also faced pressure from pro-Palestine groups who said that Ben & Jerry’s should go further and stop selling its products in Israel as well. However, at the same time, Ben & Jerry’s parent company Unilever swiftly moved to force the company to continue to do business with the Israeli occupation, selling its Israeli operation to a local businessman.
read more: https://truthout.org/articles/ben-jerrys-calls-for-permanent-and-immediate-ceasefire-in-gaza/
https://truthout.org/articles/ben-jerrys-calls-for-permanent-and-immediate-ceasefire-in-gaza/Open linkView original on lemmy.zip
Irrespective of what anyone thinks of Ben & Jerry’s position, pro peace is not antisemitic, particularly when consistently applied to a range of entities and mirrored in actions, rather than just words.
Who is claiming that this is antisemitic? That sounds a lot like a strawman.
Tell me you didn't even read the summary without telling me
Bruh. People have literally lost their jobs recently just saying BOTH SIDES should stop killing civilians.
Welcome to the culture war.
I like how MSM is showing exactly what's going on in Gaza now pretty much constantly, albeit with the unofficial undertone of being "pro-Israel", and the huge corpos are still promoting the lie that Israel is merely defending itself, but other than the absolute head-in-the-sand idiots who can't be bothered to follow current events, there's never been a bigger divide ideologically between the people and the corpos.
But will they pull their ice cream in protest?
They basically did.
Unilever is a supporter of genocide. Even Ukraine agrees.
Doesn't that just hurt the people who are being occupied?
I mean it does prevent them from accessing the product, but on the other hand even products sold in the occupied territories help the Israeli economy.
Considering you can’t get a bag of rice in Gaza right now…
...So they need ice cream?
I’m guessing if they can’t get rice they can’t get ice cream, whether B&J condone it or not.
“However”
They sold out to the man. :(
Yeah that's Unilever's fault, and a reason to boycott their products, but not Ben and Jerry's. They were prevented from doing it by an outside force.
But BJ is Unilever now.
*is OWNED BY Unilever
This is all the same thing to me. Unilever can just replace anyone there.
Don’t get me wrong, good for B&J, but that protest ended pretty quickly.
They already have, "ending sales in the occupied Palestinian territories of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem".
So you can get it Israel.
As far as Gaza… are there even supermarkets left in Gaza?
Probably there are but they should all be empty and/or closed by now.
But I assume this means the US company “Ben & Jerrys” doesn’t benefit from these sales any more. Unilever still benefits, but Ben & Jerrys as it stands does not. It’s just the name being used in Israel occupied territory.
Their ice cream is so good, but man it seems to be $1 more expensive every time I see it at the store. Shit is like $9+ for a pint these days.
I'm in Ireland and I swear the products are smaller now than they were before Covid. I'd like to think that they are forced into doing that shit by their parent company, but I'm probably wrong.
I mean the smaller size isn't the worst thing, I wasn't able to finish it before. But what does suck is that even over here, it's been getting stupidly expensive. It's just not worth it anymore.
They gave Israel the cold shoulder
Mmmm, ❤️ Cherry Garcia.
I could be wrong, but hasn't this happened before too?
It feels like deja vu and I swear I remember seeing an spinoff onion article based on the same situation.
Boycott Israel
Israel can actually try to stop killing innocent Palestinians. They do not. If they actually tried to reduce the amount of innocent civilians being killed, there wouldn't be as much support for a cease-fire, and the freeing of palestinians.