Aerial message targets Waterbury Ben & Jerry’s factory
July 26, 2021 | By Lisa Scagliotti A digitally enhanced photo of the flyover above the Ben and Jerry’s Waterbury factory on Friday shows the message banner enlarged. Photo from the Israeli-American Council.
An airplane circling over Waterbury on Friday towing a message banner was targeting the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream plant at the behest of the Israeli-American Council. The flight was part of a publicity campaign to rally support for condemning the Vermont company’s decision to wade into Israeli-Palestinian politics last week.
A single-engine airplane flew circles above the ice cream plant and nearby neighborhoods around midday on Friday. The message on the banner pulled by the plane said: “Serve Ice Cream Not Hate #BDSISHATE.”
The message was referencing the nonprofit Israeli-American advocacy group’s opposition to a move that Ben & Jerry’s announced last week saying it would no longer sell ice cream in Israel-occupied West Bank communities sought by Palestinians.
The hashtag portion of the message used the acronym “BDS” referencing the shorthand term for a grassroots Palestinian-led movement that calls for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israeli companies and institutions as a way to move toward a resolution to the decades-long conflict over the contested territory and the rights of Palestinian residents there.
In a news release dated Monday, the Los Angeles-based Israeli-American Council said it “flew a banner over Ben & Jerry’s factory and global headquarters in South Burlington, VT … as part of a campaign the IAC launched today demanding Ben & Jerry’s stop their boycott of part of the Israeli population.”
The flyover actually was Friday in Waterbury, four days after Ben & Jerry’s announced its plans to halt future ice cream sales in Israel.
Although Ben & Jerry’s is now owned by the multinational corporation Unilever, it retains its original corporate mission of social responsibility that includes taking stands for progressive causes such as those with a focus on social, racial and environmental justice. Its decision to wade into Middle East politics is one of the company’s farthest-reaching and controversial stances, especially since it has been under Unilever’s ownership.
The ice cream maker said it had decided that doing business in the Israeli-occupied territory is “inconsistent with our values” and goes against “concerns shared with us by our fans and trusted partners.” It said it would remain in the larger Israeli market under a different arrangement.
The halt in sales would not come for some time, however. “We have a longstanding partnership with our licensee, who manufactures Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in Israel and distributes it in the region,” the Ben & Jerry’s announcement explains. “We have been working to change this, and so we have informed our licensee that we will not renew the license agreement when it expires at the end of next year.”
The company’s announcement sparked reaction in the U.S. and in Israel where the prime minister weighed in saying the government would take action to prevent Ben & Jerry’s from making this business decision that would affect Israeli consumers.
Joining those calls for Ben & Jerry’s to reverse its action was the IAC, an active American-Jewish organization that works to call out and condemn instances of antisemitism and anti-Zionism in the United States. It called the Ben & Jerry’s corporate decision to curtail future sales in the West Bank territories as “a disgraceful surrender to the BDS hate movement, which promotes a culture of fear and violence and seeks to eliminate the Jewish homeland – the only democracy in the Middle East.”
The IAC also called on Ben & Jerry’s parent company to override the ice cream maker’s decision. “Unilever should rid itself of this discriminatory and morally wrong act, stand by its corporate values and refocus its Ben & Jerry’s brand on serving ice cream and not hate. We urge Unilever to discard this shameful decision, end this boycott and invest instead in peace and prosperity through dialogue,” the organization said.
The IAC has publicized the Friday flyover in Waterbury on its social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter, aiming to rally public support to influence Ben and Jerry’s and its parent company to change course.
Reached Monday, Ben and Jerry’s corporate spokesman Sean Greenwood said he could not comment on the specifics of the IAC statement or action to target its plant with the aerial message. He referred an inquiry to the company’s July 19 statement published in its online newsletter.
A spokesman for the IAC responded Monday to a reporter’s inquiry regarding the flyover and the messaging on the banner. As it was difficult to read, some observers in Waterbury mistook the first several characters of the hashtag portion of the banner message to say “#802” -- a reference to the familiar shorthand for “Vermont” using the state’s telephone area code. Some questioned why activists using the aerial advertising might target Vermont.
As it turns out, the hashtag message in block lettering was “#BDSISHATE” referring to the “Boycott, Divest, Sanction” movement, IAC spokesman Dvir Assouline explained. “The banner's message was solely for Ben & Jerry's and definitely NOT the people of Vermont,” he said.