Ben & Jerry’s Loses Case to Prevent Selling Ice Cream in Judea & Samaria

A Manhattan judge rejected the ice cream maker’s claim that the products sold by local Israeli operations would confuse customers.

By:  WIN Staff & TJVNews.com

Ben & Jerry’s has lost a bid to prevent its ice cream from being sold in Judea and Samaria, Reuters reported Monday evening.

A year ago, in July 2021, the ice cream company announced that it would no longer sell its products in Judea and Samaria.

“We believe it is inconsistent with our values for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” read a statement from the company.

In a New York Times guest essay following the announcement, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the American Jewish businessmen who founded Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Holdings in 1978, gloated, “We’re Ben and Jerry. Men of ice cream, men of principle.”

A federal court in New York on Monday did not agree with the ice cream maker’s assessment that the sale by its parent company, Unilever, of its Israeli operations to local franchisee, Avi Zinger, would harm its brand.

In his ruling on Monday, District Judge Andrew Carter rejected the idea that customers would be confused if Zinger offered products that carry a message that might conflict with Ben & Jerry’s own, saying it was “too speculative.”

“Ben & Jerry’s has offered no evidence of such confusion or the impact of the alleged confusion,” Carter wrote, according to Reuters.

Ben & Jerry’s original announcement that it would no longer offer its products “in occupied Palestinian territory” was hailed as a victory for the BDS movement.

But the blowback was massive, and prompted Unilever’s stock prices to plunge, with losses estimated at around $26 billion. Several U.S. states divested their pension funds from Unilever in line with anti-BDS laws — totaling an additional $1 billion.

Unilever’s sale to Zinger, announced in June, angered Ben & Jerry‘s board members, who said that it violated the terms of the takeover deal struck with it. Board members of the woke ice cream company revealed that Unilever had failed to pay their salaries, which they said was a “pressure tactic” to drop the case against it.

Under the terms of Unilever’s acquisition agreement of Ben & Jerry’s in 2000, Ben & Jerry’s and its independent Board were granted rights to take decisions about its social mission, but Unilever reserved primary responsibility for financial and operational decisions and therefore has the right to enter this arrangement, as was reported by INN, several weeks ago.

The report also indicated that the new business arrangement follows a Unilever review of Ben & Jerry’s in Israel after the brand and its independent Board announced last year its decision to discontinue sales of its ice cream in Judea and Samaria as well as East Jerusalem.

“Unilever has used the opportunity of the past year to listen to perspectives on this complex and sensitive matter and believes this is the best outcome for Ben & Jerry’s in Israel”, the company explained. “The review included extensive consultation over several months, including with the Israeli Government”.

“We commend Unilever for finally doing the right thing and putting an end to the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and anti-peace boycott by extremists on Ben and Jerry’s Board,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.

“We want to personally thank Nelson Peltz, SWC Chairman of the Board of Governors, for his ongoing personal efforts to bring about today’s announcement.”

(WorldIsraelNews.com & TJVNews.com)