#1072 8/8/21 – So Why Are We Mad at Ben & Jerry, But Not at John Kerry?

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Ben & Jerry’s founders wrote in an NYT op-ed this week that they’re “Jewish supporters of the State of Israel” and just “oppose some of its policies.”  But those “policies” are our homeland claim to historic Jerusalem (Temple Mount, Western Wall, City of David and all) and the Judea-Samaria hill country heartland, natural border and indispensable defensible depth. Ben & Jerry’s “support” is for a Jewishly meaningless, militarily indefensible ghetto.  We have to speak out against that, but not by self-disrespectfully using the Jewish homeland delegitimizing slurs religiously uttered by the media and those with contempt for us.      

So Why Are We Mad at Ben & Jerry, But Not at John Kerry?

Maybe you glanced at Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield’s op-ed this week, We’re Ben and Jerry, Men of Ice Cream, Men of Principle [Flourish of Trumpets], 7/28/21, in America’s Newspaper of Rectum.  “We’re Jewish supporters of the State of Israel,” they say.  We just “oppose some of its policies.”  Hence, “we unequivocally support the decision of the company [which we no longer control] to end business in the occupied territories.”

Sorry, but there are some contradictions too bitter to sugar-coat with ice cream, no matter how much you over-stuff it with sugar.  The mother of all these irreconcilable contradictions, Men of Ice Cream & Principle, is claiming you’re Jewish supporters of the State of Israel while at the same time calling “occupied territories” the Temple Mount, Western Wall, City of David and the rest of historic Jerusalem, spiritual heart of the Jewish homeland to the Jewish people everywhere for millennia, and its Judea-Samaria hill country heartland, the defensible core of the country along its longest border, nine miles wide in the lowland middle without it.   Even Diaspora Jews willing to sacrifice all these in a “two-state solution along the 1967 [i.e., 1949] lines with mutually agreed land swaps” cannot as Jews of Principle meekly concede that these are “occupied territories,” that the Jewish people has no historic homeland claim to them.

So how is it that we’re mad at Ben and Jerry for labeling, without expressly naming them, historic Jerusalem, with all it contains, and Judea-Samaria, for all it protects, as “occupied territories,” the very slur – “occupied Palestinian territories” – enshrined in UNSC 2334 by John Kerry on the Obama administration’s way-out-the-door, without being mad at the party of Obama and Kerry as well?

Because we see a distinction between the threats to us, American Jews, of the actions of the Ben & Jerry Ice Cream Company and that of the UNSC.  Unlike 2334, the direct target of which is a country, Israel, Ben & Jerry’s express target is Jews – We won’t sell our ice cream brand to YOU, residents of “East” Jerusalem and “the West Bank.”  It uncomfortably reminds us of times in America when fellow Americans – owners of hotels, restaurants, country clubs, resorts, etc. – didn’t want us even as paying customers.

But it’s a distinction without a difference.  Israel is uniquely singled out by the world, including Vermonters for Justice in Palestine [if Not Anywhere Else], for contempt and delegitimization,  BLM says deserving “dismantling,” not because it’s a uniquely evil country, which by far it is not, but because it’s the homeland of Jews.  And contempt for Jews did not start with Israel and Zionism.  For almost two millennia Jews were homeland-less outsiders in Christian and Muslim lands.  Every device of ethnic cleansing – Pale of Settlement, ghetto, Holocaust, Inquisition, pogrom – was devised over the centuries in good old Christian Europe, heartland of Christendom, expressly for us.  We lived as dhimmis (Jim Crow on Steroids) in Muslim lands.  Our devoutly prayed for, desperately needed homeland, where a minority of us lived, was out there, but its gates were locked by exclusively foreign empire rulers, starting with the Romans and ending with the British, the entire time between ancient Judaea and Israel today as the land’s next native state.   We have to have Israel, and it has to be meaningfully Jewish and defensibly strong, and we do have the longest and strongest claim to it.  UNSC 2334 tramples not only on UNSC 242 but the San Remo and the Palestine Mandate with its Jewish national home, and homeland Jewish physical presence throughout the ages.  We owe it to all the Jews who ever died in Europe and Muslim lands just for being Jews not to join in calling historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria, none of which “The Palestinians” have ever ruled ever, “occupied territories.”

But if you think Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield a wee bit arrogant in labeling themselves “Men of Ice Cream, Men of Principle,” get a whiff of this – one Mark Hage, of Montpelier, Vermont, “long-term activist with Vermonters for Justice in Palestine,” wrote a less-than-modest piece in The Guardian this week, bragging We Got Ben & Jerry’s To Stop Selling in Israeli Settlements.  Here’s How We Did It, 8/5/21.  Mazel tov.

Here, in order of appearance, are some of the words long-term activist Mark Hage with Vermonters for Justice in Palestine wrote in that Ben & Jerry ice cream-sweet Guardian article:  “Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem … occupied Palestinian territory … Israel’s settlements …settlers … settlers … Palestinians … the settlements … segregated settlements… Israel’s settlements … oppressed Palestinians … Palestinian freedom … settlements … settlements in occupied Palestinian territory … settlements … Israel’s settlements … the settlements … illegally occupied land … the settlements … Palestinians … Israel’s settlements … Israel’s settlements … Israel’s settlements … its settlements.  Not bad for just 14 paragraphs.  Not much doubt here who belongs there and who doesn’t, “there” being Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem, capital of three native states in the past 3,000 years, all of them Jewish, with renewed Jewish majority since pre-Zionist 1800’s Ottoman Turkish rule, none of which “the Palestinians” have ever ruled ever.

It’s not enough for us grassroots American Jews to stop eating Ben & Jerry’s brand ice cream, and cheer on American states’ enforcement of their anti-BDS laws.  We grassroots American Jews have to break out, altogether, from the loaded lexicon of anti-Jewish homeland poisoned pejoratives with which the media and those with contempt for us beat up us and our homeland.

And let us make clear to all Men of Principle (if not of Ice Cream) that claiming to support our Jewish homeland of Israel while demanding the ripping from it of Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem, as “occupied territory” to which Jews have no homeland claim, are mutually exclusive positions, contradictory in the extreme.