Editor’s note: Mark Hage lives in Montpelier and is a member of the Steering Committee of Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel. This is a letter to Jostein Solheim, the CEO of Ben & Jerry’s.
Dear Mr. Solheim:
Two years ago this month, on behalf of Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel, I wrote to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the founders of Ben & Jerry’s, seeking information about the company’s sales and manufacturing operations in Israel and Occupied Palestine. Mr. Cohen did not respond; Mr. Greenfield did with a telephone message directing me to contact you at company headquarters in South Burlington.
Since then, through email, letters, telephone conversations and a face-to-face meeting in April 2012, VTJP has brought to the attention of the executive leadership and Board of Directors of Ben & Jerry’s commercial complicity in Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The ice cream your franchise manufactures in Israel is marketed and sold in illegal, Jewish-only settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory; it is also catered to Jewish residents in these settlements with party carts from the factory near Kiryat Malachi. These facts you do not dispute.
Confirmed by a lengthy investigation, including a visit to Israeli settlements by a VTJP activist, they are in stark contradiction to the company’s admirable social mission.
Regrettably, the cordial and frank dialogue between VTJP and the company that began in earnest on April 26 last year has reached a dead-end by virtue of your inaction. You cancelled a second meeting last July. Yet, afterwards, via email, you expressed a desire to meet again and assured us that your administrative assistant would be contacting me to set up another meeting. Rob Michalak, your global director of Social Mission, wrote in May 2012 to explain how the company was responding to our concerns:
“…[W]e have had deep and meaningful discussions at the Board level and the Senior Management level. Those discussions require our own internal follow up, which will take a little time. This is a complex matter and it requires thoughtful yet intentional steps on our part along the way. We do not have specific timing on each milestone in that journey, but it is a priority item on our agenda. Please understand that it will take us a few weeks to sort through our own process of learning and promulgating next steps. We will keep you informed as we proceed. If you would be open to an update nearer to the end of June on our progress to that point, we would be most grateful.”
Therefore, in the absence of meaningful engagement with us and progress toward ending the business transgressions we have identified, VTJP has no recourse but to launch a public campaign that focuses Vermont’s and the world’s attention on your complicity with Israel’s occupation and unlawful settlements on Palestinian lands.
VTJP appreciates our concerns being brought to your Board of Directors, their designation as a “priority item,” and the “deep and meaningful discussions” that ensued. But, nearly 10 months later, the promised second meeting has not been scheduled, and we have no idea what “intentional steps” or “milestones,” if any, you have considered or promulgated. We were heartened by your board President Jeff Furman’s trip to Occupied Palestine last fall, and grateful for a telephone conversation with him this January about that trip and his personal thoughts on Ben & Jerry’s commercial ties to Israeli settlements and to Israel itself. It was clear he was moved and disturbed by what he experienced in Palestine. Unfortunately, the company does not appear at this time to share his revulsion of the occupation.
Therefore, in the absence of meaningful engagement with us and progress toward ending the business transgressions we have identified, VTJP has no recourse but to launch a public campaign that focuses Vermont’s and the world’s attention on your complicity with Israel’s occupation and unlawful settlements on Palestinian lands. We can no longer defer taking this step. Two years have elapsed since we first contacted you and, to the best of our knowledge, nothing has changed regarding your business practices in Israel and Occupied Palestine.
I want to be clear that VTJP is not calling for a boycott of the company. We are calling instead on people of conscience everywhere to urge Ben & Jerry’s to take the following measures until Israel’s occupation and illegal settlement enterprise ends in conformance with international law:
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 for an end to Israel’s 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.
Finally, we ask again that you schedule a second meeting with us. VTJP wants to work with you, as we have stressed repeatedly, to achieve the objectives above. That can only be accomplished through dialogue. Please contact me to arrange a suitable date and time for a meeting.
You can read our report on your company’s investments and commerce in Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territory at http://www.vtjp.org/icecream/.
