Learning the wrong lesson from the Ben and Jerry's incident

One emerging meme from the Ben and Jerry's decision is that Israel's reaction proves that Israelis don't distinguish between both sides of the Green Line (also, that there is some link to the NSO spyware.)

A (VERY biased) NYT op-ed:

The uniformity of official reaction in Israel to the Ben & Jerry’s decision reflects an Israeli political consensus — unlike that of the international community — that does not distinguish between Israeli territory within its internationally recognized 1948 borders and the territories it occupied in 1967.

A similarly biased Washington Post column:

 The whole episode reveals a fundamental tension in Israel’s posture about its role in the Palestinian territories. On one hand, Israeli officials vehemently reject the charge that their government is perpetuating the crime of apartheid in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — where Palestinians are subordinate to Israeli security imperatives and denied the same political rights as their neighbors — by drawing a line between Israeli policies in the occupied territories and in Israel proper. Palestinians there are under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, a weak and unpopular institution that the Israelis claim is accountable for Palestinian grievances.

Yet when Ben & Jerry’s makes a business decision based on conditions specifically beyond the Green Line, it is read as an “anti-Israel” move writ large and even deemed antisemitic. This, some analysts argue, is untenable, and also illustrates the extent to which the Israeli establishment resists being held to account on the world stage.

“Ben & Jerry’s just did the same thing that Israel itself does, and even employed the exact same argument that Israel wields to fend off charges of apartheid — that there is a distinction between official Israeli territory inside the Green Line and disputed Israeli territory beyond the Green Line, and thus treating the territory and the people who live on it in different ways makes sense as a matter of policy,” wrote Michael Koplow of the Israel Policy Forum. “It is not credible to argue that the Green Line should exist when it is convenient and that it should be erased when it is convenient, and that it is outrageously anti-Israel, antisemitic, or even a form of terrorism to maintain the same distinction that Israel itself makes in all manner of ways.”

Mehdi Hasan on his show makes a similar point:

The arguments are flawed to begin with, because the head of Ben and Jerry's board said that the ice cream company never said they wanted to continue to sell in Israel. Unilever - without consulting them - added the section in their press release saying that the ban is only against the territories. NBC News reported a week ago:

The Ben & Jerry's board had been pushing to withdraw ice cream sales from the occupied territories for years, said the board's chair, Anuradha Mittal. However, it wanted to release a different statement, reviewed by NBC News, that made no reference to continued sales in Israel — a decision that Mittal said would require board approval — and highlighted the company's commitment to social justice.

Unilever released the statement against the wishes of the board and in violation of a legal agreement made when it bought Ben & Jerry's in 2000, Mittal said.

So anyone who says that Ben and Jerry's only wanted to block sales to the territories and continue to sell in Israel is lying or misinformed.

But there is a larger point.

Many Israelis who are proudly Zionist are ambivalent about or against the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria. Yet even they are upset at Ben and Jerry's even without knowing the machinations of the B&J board mentioned above.

The reason is that most Israelis instinctively know that even if they are against building in the territories, that is no reason why Jews who choose to live there should be discriminated against. They are Israeli citizens, and they deserve to live their lives normally without the world dictating the terms of what they are allowed to do in their everyday lives.

Saying that which products allowed in stores in Efrat or Ramat Shlomo should be dictated by the international community is thoroughly offensive to nearly all Israelis. 

If Palestinian leaders accept a real peace with Israel as a permanent Jewish state, then some settlements would probably be dismantled. Most would stay. Perhaps some would become Palestinian villages with Jewish citizens. But the people who live there today are upstanding citizens - they are passionate Zionists who believe that they are doing the right thing, and they shouldn't be treated like criminals.

And treating them as criminals is exactly what the editorialists and pundits - and Palestinians - demand.

This is not politics anymore - this is an attempt to punish human beings because of their beliefs and their decisions. It is treating 650,000 Israelis as not deserving of the same rights as others. 

Moreover, it is a decision that says that all Israelis, even within the Green Line, do not have the right to do business with their fellow Israelis depending on where they live. It is saying that the world will punish Israeli businesses for selling to other Jews, but not for selling to Arabs who live in the next town. It is world-approved antisemitism.

The issue isn't ice cream, but an assault on Israelis and their rights. The reaction might seem over the top over a mediocre dessert, but buckling under to that is giving up Israelis' own freedom to make their own choices. Any proud citizen of any country would be rightly offended at this.

The lesson is not what these anti-Israel idiots claim, that all Israelis are somehow racist. The lesson is that there is an entire huge community of Israel haters who want to control the lives of every Israeli Jew, limit their choices, label them as guilty of apartheid and racism and every social crime there is, punish them according to arbitrary criteria, put limits on their lives that no other citizens of any country in the world are subject to, and demonize them as criminals. 

Only the Jews, though.

It is not an assault on Israel but on Israelis. The people who pretend to care so much about human rights, about collective punishment, about equal rights, about being against racism and bigotry, are singling out Israeli Jews for particular public punishment. They want to divide Israel, and Jews worldwide, into "good Jews" and "bad Jews," and turn each against the other. It is all part of a campaign that will not end until the Jewish state is eradicated and Jews have no national protection. And the supporters of this boycott admit this themselves when they speak candidly.

Yes, the anger over an ice cream seems over the top. But all Israelis - including most of the leftists - understand that this is not only about ice cream. 

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