Editor’s note: Mark Hage is an activist with Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel. He lives in Montpelier.
The international campaign to end Ben & Jerry’s complicity in Israel’s occupation and illegal settlement regime continues to gain momentum. On Sept. 9, Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel (VTJP) released a letter to CEO Jostein Solheim signed by 151 civil society organizations. It calls on Ben & Jerry’s “to stand by its Social Mission and to ensure that its products are not sold, catered and distributed in Israeli settlements.”
The letter’s signatories share a commitment to international law and human rights, and believe that a company’s social mission should be more than words on paper. This is especially true in the case of Ben & Jerry’s, whose iconic social mission, as the letter makes clear, “articulates a commitment to the welfare, security and dignity of all communities, local, national and international.” That social mission cannot be reconciled with an Israeli settlement project in Palestine that is, the letter asserts, “predicated on systematic repression, racial segregation, land dispossession, the unlawful expropriation of water, and pervasive violence against Palestinians.”
… we call on you to take all necessary contractual and legal measures to bring your franchise’s settlement business to an end in a verifiable way, and to release a public statement of your company’s commitment to end its business ties to Israel’s occupation and settlement enterprise.”
VTJP’s letter has garnered support from across the world — from the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia to BDS South Africa in Johannesburg; from Jewish Voice for Peace in Oakland, Calif., to the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Dublin; from Lutherans for Justice in the Holy Land in Portland, Ore., to Kia Ora Gaza in Auckland, New Zealand. Several faith-based and student organizations signed on.
Groups in 28 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, plus those in eight countries, including Israel, and the West Bank, sent an unequivocal message to Ben & Jerry’s: “… consistent with international law and Ben & Jerry’s Social Mission, we call on you to take all necessary contractual and legal measures to bring your franchise’s settlement business to an end in a verifiable way, and to release a public statement of your company’s commitment to end its business ties to Israel’s occupation and settlement enterprise.”
The company has acknowledged receipt of the letter. VTJP’s dialogue with its management team and board president is now in its third year, and while political pressure is mounting, nothing has changed yet in the company’s business dealings with Israeli settlement venues. Ben & Jerry’s in Israel remains a corporate beneficiary of its country’s military and economic domination of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Those who oversee its operations from Vermont have yet to sever the franchise’s links to Jewish-only settlements, or even to issue a statement in opposition to them.
Our campaign will not end until it does.
Mark Hage can be reached at mhage56@yahoo.com. Organizations that wish to sign the Sept. 9 international letter to Ben & Jerry’s can do so at http://www.vtjp.org/icecream/internatletter_signatory.php.
