Published: 27 July 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
DAN COLEMAN: The campaign, which makes a key but overlooked distinction, reflects shifting views on the occupation among US progressives and Jews
LAST WEEK, BEN & JERRY’S, global purveyor of Chunky Monkey and other beloved ice cream flavours, announced it would no longer sell its products in settlements in the occupied West Bank. For much of the Jewish world, the headline in Foreign Policy rang true: Israel Goes to War Again, This Time Against Ben & Jerry’s.
Personal disclosure: my own struggle with Ben & Jerry’s began in 1985 when they introduced the flavour New York Super Fudge Chunk, answering the question “how many different kinds of chunks can you fit in one pint?” With the addition of Coffee Heath Bar Crunch a year later, I was a goner.
In the decades since, my waistline has been a battleground like the French town of Fleury which changed hands between the French and Germans more than a dozen times during the First World War.
For progressive Americans, Ben & Jerry’s, founded in the 1970s by Jerry Greenfield and Ben Cohen, has long been a beacon within corporate America. They were hippie to the core, with a motto of “peace, love, and ice cream”. Their t-shirts were tie-dyed. They named flavours Wavy Gravy (for the MC of Woodstock), Cherry Garcia (for the Grateful Dead guitarist), and Imagine Whirled Peace (for John Lennon).
Ben & Jerry’s has been on the leading edge in numerous “values” policy areas. For many years, they capped salaries at five times the starting wage. An early entry in the opposition to GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and bovine growth hormone, Ben and Jerry’s pioneered the use of sustainably sourced ingredients and environmental packaging.
They were outspoken proponents of same sex marriage and, in 2020, Ben Cohen served as national co-chair for the presidential campaign of fellow-Vermonter Bernie Sanders.
Over the decades, the company has excelled in what I would call “flactivism”, activism conducted through the naming of ice cream flavours. Flactivism was launched in 1989 with Rainforest Crunch, which used fair trade ingredients and highlighted the assault on the world’s tropical rainforests.
