The grassroots organization End Jew Hatred will be holding a march to protest Ben & Jerry’s decision to stop conducting business in the “Occupied Palestinian Territory” on August 12 in New York City.
The protest—titled “No Ice Cream for Jew!”—will take place in front of the New York City Public Library, where attendees will be given “free ice cream and educational materials about the dangerous” Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, according to the End Jew Hatred website. Attendees “will then march to Ben & Jerry’s and receive free ice-cream from its competitors who don’t engage in Jew-hatred and discrimination.”
“Ben & Jerry’s illegal boycott is the biggest act of corporate antisemitism since Airbnb—which ended up settling multiple lawsuits and reversing its discriminatory policy,” the organization’s website states. “Ben & Jerry’s act creates an atmosphere where Jew-hatred is legitimized, and emboldens violence against Jews. Just this past weekend, mobs demanding global violence against Jews took to the streets of Brooklyn. This is a consequence of normalizing Jew-hatred, which is what Ben & Jerry’s is doing.”
Among those attending are New York State Democratic Assemblymembers Simcha Eichenstein and Daniel Rosenthal, New York City Councilmember Kalman Yeger, and various Jewish organizations including StandWithUs, The Lawfare Project and Club Z.
The protest comes after 30 Ben & Jerry’s franchisees in the United States urged the company to rescind their decision in a letter. “It has imposed and will to continue to impose, substantial financial costs on all of us,” the letter stated, adding that their respective families and communities “have shamed us personally for doing business not just with a company that draws controversy, but with one that continues to consider the calculated negative affect on its franchisees as acceptable collateral damage.”
