Ice cream company Ben & Jerry's recently announced that it would stop selling its products in "Occupied Palestinian Territory" in protest of Israel's recent displacement of Palestinians from east Jerusalem.
The company announced that it was working with its distributers to discontinue supplying its products to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and contested east Jerusalem, AP News reported.
"We believe it is inconsistent with our values for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)," Ben & Jerry's wrote in their announcement. "We have a longstanding partnership with our licensee, who manufactures Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in Israel and distributes it in the region. 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. Although Ben & Jerry’s will no longer be sold in the OPT, we will stay in Israel through a different arrangement."
The company is no stranger to corporate activism, according to Harvard Business Review. On June 2, the company tweeted an image that read “WE MUST DISMANTLE WHITE SUPREMACY” following George Floyd's death and posted that "Silence Is NOT An Option," in a statement on their web site. On Jan. 7, following the U.S. Capitol insurrection, the company led the way in denouncing the incident and called it "a riot to uphold white supremacy."
Ben & Jerry's views sometime conflict with those of its parent company, Unilever. The London, England-based consumer goods conglomerate was quick to reaffirm its commitment to business in Israel following the statements of its subsidiary company, Reuters reported.
"I think if there's one message I want to underscore … it's that Unilever remains fully committed to our business in Israel," Unilever CEO Alan Jope told investors during an earnings call, according to Reuters.
Unilever owns over 400 brands and sells its products in over 190 countries. In 2000, Unilever bought Ben & Jerry's in a deal that allowed the ice cream company to create its own independent board of directors, enabling it to retain more of its autonomy than Unilever's other subsidiaries, Matthew McCarthy, Ben & Jerry's CEO, told Harvard Business Review in an interview.
Ben & Jerry's decision to discontinue sales in Israeli settlements has reportedly caused a schism between its independent board and its parent company.
“It’s been a longstanding issue for Ben & Jerry’s,” Jope said, according to AP News. “We were aware of this decision by the brand and its independent board, but it’s certainly not our intention that every quarter will have one quite as fiery as this one.”
Ben & Jerry's was founded by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield in 1978. The two co-founders no longer hold any board or management position and are not involved in daily operations, according to its Wikipedia page.