The Mount of Olives cemetery in Jerusalem is the oldest and largest Jewish cemetery in the world. Existing east of the Green Line (EGL) in eastern Jerusalem, it is considered “Arab land” by the New York Times, illegal by the United Nations, and against the desires of the acting President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, who craves a country with eastern Jerusalem as his capital, devoid of any Jews.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews visit graves at the cemetery on the Mount of Olives facing the Old City of Jerusalem. (Photo: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
There are somewhere between 70,000 and 150,000 Jewish graves on the Mount of Olives and include famous people such as Rabbi Obadiah of Bertinoro (Bartenura 1445-1515), Rabbi Yehuda Hehasid (1660-1700), Holy Land scholar Rabbi Yehosef Schwartz (1804-1865), leading Zionist Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai (1798-1878), the champion of revitalizing the Hebrew language Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858-1922), Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), and poet SY Agnon (1887-1970). The vast majority of the graves date from the 15th and 16th century, when the Ottoman Turks rebuilt the city walls of Jerusalem. While some older graves dating back 3,000 years are also found there, many of the older tombs are found east and west of the City of David which stretches south of today’s Old City walls, in and around Siloam/Silwan. Thousands of years ago, Jews placed their dead in the chalky caves in the area, and gathered the bones a year later to place them in ossuaries.
View of Mount of Olives cemetery from the Old City including ancient tombs; archeologist Gabriel Barkay before ancient burial caves around Jerusalem (photos: First One Through)
When the Jordanian army invaded Israel in 1948 and seized the eastern portion of Jerusalem the following year and illegally annexed it in 1950, they desecrated and damaged the cemetery. Some tombstones were used to construct the Arab Legion camp as far away as Jericho.
The cemetery is frequently vandalized. In 1990, Arabs broke over ten tombstones, including that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s grandfather. In 2015, during the Palestinian Arab stabbing rampages, vandals smashed numerous tombstones at the site.
The caretaker of the Afghan section of the Mount of Olives Cemetery inspecting vandalism. (photo: Marc Israel Sellem/ The Jerusalem Post)
The Palestinian Authority has not clearly articulated whether its demands for “East Jerusalem” requires uprooting over 70,000 dead Jews on the Mount of Olives, but it is likely that Hamas does not mind coexisting with dead Jews, as the political-terrorist group continues to hold the bodies of two Israeli soldiers killed over seven years ago in Gaza.
Anti-Semitism wears many masks, the most prominent these days is anti-Zionism. The malicious malady has related hats, including denying Jewish history, distorting Judaism and opposing the rights of Jews to live in certain places.
The British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, has locked arms with alt-left Jews in some of these sinister proclamations, especially concerning Jews living over the 1949 Armistice Lines struck between Jordan and Israel. That “Green Line” was specifically defined as never to be regarded as a border, and the 1950 Jordanian annexation of the “West Bank” was deemed illegal by the international community, marking that invisible line as a footnote in history penned in disappearing ink. No matter, anti-Semites have a long history of dictating where Jews can and cannot live, whether the Pale of Settlement in Russia or ghettoes throughout Europe.
The BBC using a map produced by B’Tselem, a group which markets itself as an “information center for human rights in the occupied territories.”
The dotted lines (at least they are dotted!) represent the 1949 Armistice Lines between Israel and Jordan, which disappeared in 1967 when Jordan attacked Israel again and lost the entirety of eastern Jerusalem and the “West Bank.” Note that the map’s legend refers to the dotted line as “pre-1967 ceasefire line,” which implies that there was a ceasefire between Israel and Palestine, as Jordan is not mentioned (this is deliberately misleading). The map’s purple areas are marked as “Israeli settlements.” Are they?
In the lower portion of the map is the Old City of Jerusalem. Marked in purple is the Jewish Quarter, a place with over 750 years of continuous Jewish presence except for the window of Arab rule when the Jordanians ethnically-cleansed all of the Jews from 1949 to 1967. According to this map, any JEW – not Israeli – living east of the Green Line (EGL) is a “settler.”
There are thousands of Israeli Arabs living in EGL including the eastern part of Jerusalem. Israel gave all the Arabs in the city permanent resident status in 1967 and has afforded them the right to apply for Israeli citizenship. Thousands have already taken such citizenship and thousands more have applied. Yet the B’Tselem/ BBC map doesn’t mark the homes of Israeli Arabs in purple but only the locations where Israeli Jews live.
Jewish men, women and children living in the Jewish Quarter of their holiest city are marked with the term “settler”
Adolf Hitler accused the Jews of being sly manipulators who steal, as he roused Germany to rout the Jews. He painted their stores with the word “Jude” and made them wear yellow Jewish stars with the word in the center, so they could be easily identifiable for insult and attack by passers-by, and interrogated and ultimately expelled for annihilation by government officials.
So it is today with the term “settler,” even in the Jewish people’s holiest city.
On August 24, 1929, Palestinian Arabs incited a riot throughout the Jewish holy land with rumors that Jews were attempting to seize and destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. In Hebron, sixty-nine Jews were brutally slaughtered and hundreds were maimed and injured. The catastrophe was so horrific, that the British who were ruling the land under international mandate, felt compelled to evacuate all of the Jews from the city as they did not feel it would be safe for any Jew to remain among the majority Arab population, ethnically-cleansing the Jewish victims from their holy city.
On the 92nd anniversary of the Arab massacre of Jews, The New York Times wrote an article about Jews praying on the Temple Mount. It characterized the Jews as having a history of aggressively pushing onto a Muslim holy site inciting riots.
New York Times article on page A4 of August 24, 2021 edition, about how quiet Jewish prayer provokes angry Muslim reaction and death.
The article began with stating that Israel forbids Jews from praying on the Temple Mount, which is true, but it did not state that Israel was maintaining the anti-Semitic policy instituted by Jordan of banning Jewish prayer when it illegally ruled the city. The omission was minor in comparison to the paper’s recap of history.
The paper noted that Israel is in charge of security and the Jordanian waqf is responsible for administrative matters on the Temple Mount, but “when the balance of power has teetered,” bad events happen. The Times listed the visit of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2000 setting off the “Second Intifada“; Israel installing metal detectors in 2017 that led to riots; and Israeli police “raid[ing] the compound several times last spring” provoking an 11-day war with Hamas. In each situation, Israeli actions were attributed as the provocation which led to deaths and destruction.
Misleading its readership, the Times did not write that the “Second Intifada” which began in 2000 was the result of Yasser Arafat, the head of the Palestinian Authority, rejecting the Israeli peace offer capping the Oslo Accords, which would have given Palestinians roughly 98% of their demands, and instead opting for a multi-year war. The Times did not describe Arabs shooting police officers on the Temple Mount in 2017 which led to the decision to install metal detectors. The paper omitted the Arab riots over the evictions of squatters in homes in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood next to the Old City and the Palestinian Authority cancelling elections which made HAMAS launch hundreds of missiles at Israeli towns.
The Times inverted every story, and recast the Arab attackers as victims.
Obviously, the paper left out the massacre of 69 Jews in Hebron as it revealed that Arabs murder Jews for perceived threats, not actual force.
The New York Times is attempting to rewrite history that Jews are responsible for war, a smear promoted in the infamous forgery ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ and in the HAMAS Charter. It is a vile tactic which anti-Semites have used for a long time. That the Times would specifically do it on the anniversary of the 1929 Hebron Massacre marks its editors as cruel sadists as well.
The Palestinian Liberation Organization declared an independent State of Palestine in 1988. Only Arab and Muslim countries recognized it, while about a decade ago, countries in Latin America also chose to recognize it. The United States and much of the western world has refused to recognize such entity, in the hopes that the contours of such state will be negotiated between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
But The New York Times is not waiting for the U.S. government, and has now recognized the entity as a state throughout the paper.
On August 23, 2021, Will Shortz, long-time editor of the crossword puzzle, added a clue which specifically called Palestine an actual country.
August 23, 2021 New York Times crossword puzzle claiming there is a “Palestinian State.”
This is part of an ongoing initiative of the paper. On April 24, 2021, the Times wrote about “Palestinian East Jerusalem,” which compounded multiple layers of fiction: there hasn’t been an entity called “East Jerusalem” since 1967 and it certainly isn’t part of a State of Palestine.
The New York Times deliberately does not call HAMAS, a U.S. designated foreign terrorist organization, with such designation as it tries to sanitize the genocidal anti-Semitism of the group. The paper is now further breaking with official U.S. foreign policy in recognizing a Palestinian State as it attempts to mainstream the Palestinian narrative to its far-left readership.
The United Nations has many subcommittees. Most are designed to handle global or regional issues. Some are unique and deal with a specific issue, such as UNRWA, which is a UN agency dedicated for descendants of Palestinian refugees from wars in 1948 and 1967 who remain stateless, while every other refugee in the world has one under-staffed agency called UNHCR.
One of the organizations/people specifically tasked (theoretically) with helping to solve a regional issue is UNSCO, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process. One would imagine that such individual was there to actually help and facilitate “the Middle East Peace Process” as the title conveys.
A review of the comments made in 2018 by the special coordinator, Nickolay Mladenov, reveals a different story.
The UNSCO website lists 29 statements made by Mladenov over 2018. Most of them were addresses to the UN Security Council, in which he provided an update of the situation on the ground. Sometimes there were recommended actions to be taken to advance the Peace Process.
Oftentimes, there was finger-pointing.
Consider the statement made on January 25, 2018. Mladenov said that there was a clear and unambiguous end result for the peace process: two states. “We must also reaffirm the international consensus that the two-State solution remains the only viable option for a just and sustainable end to the conflict. We must be unwavering in this position.” Absent such solution, the Palestinians would suffer a “worsening reality of occupation and humiliation.” Little concern was noted for Israeli security. No mention that Hamas is a terrorist organization and that its existence and governance undermines the basic principles of a Peace Process. Instead, he offered an appeal for UNRWA to subsidize Palestinians and declared that Jewish houses living in Area C in Judea and Samaria are threats to peace. The message was clear: terrorism is not a threat to the Peace Process; Jewish homes are the obstacle.
A few weeks later, on February 20, 2018, Mladenov made the following comment:
“For a decade two million people have lived under the full control of Hamas with crippling Israeli closures and movement and access restrictions. Throughout this period the international community has provided aid and humanitarian assistance to alleviate the suffering and to rebuild what was destroyed in three devastating conflicts.
“It is time to break this cycle. It is time to return Gaza back to the control of the legitimate Palestinian Authority, for there can be no Palestinian state without Palestinian unity.
“Those who stand in the way of reconciliation hurt the Palestinian national cause and the price will be paid by generations of ordinary people.”
Mladenov could not have been clearer: he wants to have the terrorist group Hamas to be part of the ruling Palestinian Authority and chastised anyone opposed. The coordinator for a peaceful settlement between the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (“SAPs“) with the Jewish State called for a vehemently noxious anti-Semitic organization to be part of a governing coalition which would somehow make peace with its Jewish neighbor. That’s akin to a judge recommending that a couple conclude a divorce on peaceful terms by having the gun-toting spousal abuser live next door to his ex.
The comments on March 26 to the UN Security Council finally had more balance and called out Palestinian incitement to terror, including:
“Fatah’s official social media pages continued to feature posts glorifying perpetrators of past violence against Israeli civilians, including terror attacks that killed civilians and children. In addition, Palestinian officials continued to make statements denying the historical and religious connection of Jews to Jerusalem and its holy sites. One senior religious leader falsely claimed Jews had lived in historical Jerusalem for only 70 or 80 years. Others continue to describe Israel as “a colonial project.”
“I urge the Palestinian leadership to continue to speak against violence in general, and to condemn specific attacks against civilians.”
Regrettably, Mladenov once again failed to call out Hamas explicitly. Instead, he called for reconciliation between the two parties and demanded that Hamas civil servants start getting their salaries paid by the PA.
The following month, on April 26, Mladenov spoke to the Security Council again. His primary focus continued to be on Gaza, while speaking gently about Hamas:
“People should not be destined to spend their lives surrounded by borders they are forbidden to cross, or waters they are forbidden to navigate. They should not be destined to live under the control of Hamas, which invests in military activities at the expense of the population.”
Somehow, Mladenov ignored every Palestinian poll in which the Palestinians PREFER Hamas over the more moderate Fatah party. Almost no Palestinian places the blame for the dire situation in Gaza on Hamas itself.
A few days later on April 30, Mladenov was back to celebrating the efforts at Palestinian unity:
“Unity is essential to furthering the Palestinian national aspirations for statehood and sovereignty. That is why the Government of National Consensus should be enabled to take up its responsibilities in Gaza and bring immediate relief and change to the population. No one should stand in their way.”
It would seem that Mladenov finally understood the meaning of Palestinian unity a few days later: Hamas and Fatah would agree on anti-Semitism as Abbas leaned in to his hatred. Mladenov chastised Abbas on May 2nd after the PA president launched a long anti-Semitic tirade:
“Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas chose to use his speech at the opening of the Palestinian National Council to repeat some of the most contemptuous anti-Semitic slurs, including the suggestion that the social behavior of Jews was the cause for the Holocaust.
Such statements are unacceptable, deeply disturbing and do not serve the interests of the Palestinian people or peace in the Middle East.
Denying the historic and religious connection of the Jewish people to the land and their holy sites in Jerusalem stands in contrast to reality.
The Holocaust did not occur in a vacuum, it was the result of thousands of years of persecution. This is why attempts to rewrite, downplay or deny it are dangerous.
Leaders have an obligation to confront anti-Semitism everywhere and always, not perpetuate the conspiracy theories that fuel it.”
Mladenov was right to chastise Abbas for his anti-Semitic speech but it must have caught Abbas off guard as he never heard Mladenov lambast Hamas for their anti-Semitic genocidal charter. Further, Abbas sees a world community beginning to embrace his call for a boycott of Israel, referring to Israel by his preferred terms of a “colonial settler project” that engages in “apartheid.” Abbas thinks he’s winning the “Zionism is Racism” branding campaign and considers it only a matter of time when countries stop criticizing him for paying salaries to the murderers of Israeli Jews.
It is true that Israel must have a single negotiating party who has control of all Palestinian territories that can deliver upon a peace agreement. But Arab unity is being forged on the basis of Jew-hatred, which will never be able to accept the Jewish State. So the UN is pivoting to a different peace model as advocated by Palestinian Arabs: a purely Arab anti-Semitic Palestinian State and a bi-national Israel, as it is the only model which can meet the parameters of Muslim “dignity” and unify the Palestinian factions.
Hamas is a very popular political-terrorist group among Palestinian Arabs. According to recent polls, Palestinians support attacking Jewish civilians inside of Israel and were thrilled by Hamas’s rocket attacks against Israel a couple of months ago. Should Palestinian elections ever be held again, Hamas is expected to win both the presidency and the majority of parliament.
But beyond the blood lust desire to kill Jews and destroy Israel, what drives Hamas to abuse the dead?
On August 1, 2014, Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, officers in the Israeli Defense Forces, were abducted and killed during a US-sponsored ceasefire between Hamasand Israel. Seven years later, Hamas continues to hold their bodies and refuses to return them to their families in Israel. It is a flagrant violation of human rights and decency and the United Nations does nothing.
Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin
Hamas’s mutilation of dead bodies is also a crime. They kill suspected collaborators and drag their bodies through the streets in an effort to intimidate the public, much like ISIS burning people alive.
Members of Hamas drag man through the streets of Gaza in November, 2012
This kind of barbarism is not confined to Hamas in Gaza. At the beginning of the Second Intifada, a mob broke into a police station and dragged two Israeli soldiers into a room where they killed them and then threw the bodies to the street where the Palestinian mob trampled them beyond recognition.
Lynching of Israeli soldiers in Ramallah at start of Second Intifada
Today, people celebrate these atrocities and barbarians. In Amsterdam people chant “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the Gas,” while in the streets of Brooklyn marchers call for the destruction of Israel.
And in the halls of Congress, Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) says that the people of Gaza “just want to live” and have “dignity,” to shield their vile actions and intentions.
If Tlaib wants to put a pretty face on Hamas, the minimum she should do is to get the political-terrorist group to release the bodies of the two Jewish men who have been withheld from their families for last seven years.
Haters of Israel have a growing list of terms which they throw about frequently in attempts to demonize the Jewish State. The ugly list bears no resemblance to the truth but this kind of hatred is morbidly stupid, not just blind and deaf.
Here’s a review of some of the choice expressions with some basic facts about the slander.
“Genocide”
This is a particularly disgusting one, as it goes to the core of anti-Semitic hatred against Israel. Jews just went through a genocide of one-third of its population in Nazi Germany less than 100 years ago in a crime in which Palestinians were complicit (meeting repeatedly with Hitler and other Nazi leaders as well as convincing the British to not comply with the mission of the Mandate to limit the entry of Jews fleeing the Holocaust). Stating that Israel is committing genocide is a vicious attempt to belittle the Holocaust and argue that Jews are worthy of the anti-Semitism hurled at them.
The application of the term itself is insane, as the Arab population growth in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank has surpassed the growth rates of Arabs in all the surrounding countries.
“Ethnic Cleansing”
Like “genocide,” this is an attempt to invert the charge from the Arab and Muslim nations that ethnically-cleansed around one million Jews from their lands since the founding of Israel. As noted above, the population in the area under the 1922 Palestine Mandate has skyrocketed. Even in Jerusalem, the population growth rate of Arabs surpasses that of Jews since Israel reunified the city.
“Apartheid”
Israel gave citizenship to every non-Jew when the state was founded. It has non-Jewish supreme court judges, members of parliament and generals in the army. It allows Muslims to pray at Judaism’s holiest site of the Jewish Temple Mount and to build mosques and minarets around the country, as well as to wear hijabs and eat halal meat. The term makes absolutely no sense in the most liberal country in the region for one thousand miles.
“Colonialist”
Jews lived in Israel for over 3,000 years. Judaism is the only religion that is tied to a specific land, the land of Israel. It is not possible to colonize a place which ancestors lived in for centuries and which is the center of daily religious focus.
Further, when international law split the Ottoman Empire into different French and British mandates including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, they did not send their own French and British citizens to live in the land. The Jews who moved to Palestine from the 1922 mandate until the founding of the country in 1948 came from dozens of countries, with the Jews of England and France making up a paltry sum. Today, the majority of the Jews in Israel came from the Muslim countries which expelled their Jews including Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Syria and Iraq, alongside a sizable group from Russia and Ukraine.
“Europeans”
This is a code to say that Jews are “White” and part of the oppressor class in today’s woke terminology. Most of the Jews in Israel are actually Black and Brown from Africa as listed above, including over 100,000 Ethiopian Jews.
“Occupied Palestinian Territory”
Many anti-Zionists consider the entirety of the State of Israel to be “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” The more moderate part of the Israel-haters consider the West Bank and Gaza to be “OPT.”
Perhaps there will one day be an independent State of Palestine like there is currently a Jewish State of Israel. But that day is not today, as the Palestinian Arabs have refused to agree to the various peace offers Israel put before them. Until that time, the only Palestinian territories are the ones that Israel handed to the Palestinian Authority in Gaza and Areas A and B in the West Bank which cover 86% of West Bank Arabs. By definition, those aren’t “occupied” and are run by Palestinians.
“Threaten Al Aqsa”
This is a term that extremists use to rile up riots against Jews around the world. Israel has not made any moves against the al Aqsa Mosque, and welcomes Muslims to pray peacefully in their holy site. Still, there are many Jews which are appalled by the anti-Semitic edict which prohibits Jews from also praying on the Temple Mount. Just as the Cave of the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron has space and time for people of both religions to pray, Jews seek a similar accommodation. In no manner shape of form do they want any harm to befall the Islamic holy site. Stating that Jews are threatening the site has generated multiple riots and killed hundreds over the years and is dangerous and inflammatory.
“Expulsions”
As reviewed in “ethnic cleansing,” Israelis have not and are not seeking to get rid of the Arab population. There have been “evictions” of people who live in a house illegally and “expulsions” of a select number of terrorists over the decades. But the general usage of the term has no bearing to reality.
“Crimes against Humanity”
The term “crimes against humanity” has a particular definition covering genocide, slavery, apartheid and torture. As reviewed above, these do not apply to Israel. The country does its utmost to have a peaceful society for all of its citizens with a wide range of freedoms not found elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa.
“War Crimes”
Israel is in an asymmetric war against a terrorist group that fights from schools and hospitals and has a network of tunnels beneath houses and mosques. It attempts to use a targeted approach to fight against Arab terrorists who deliberately attack Israeli civilians. It is an approach that will most likely be adopted by other parts of the world that seek to manage wars against terrorist groups embedded with civilians (who support them).
“Open air prison,” “Apartheid Wall” and “Collective Punishment”
When the Palestinian Arabs rejected Israel’s peace proposal in 2000 that gave them almost everything that they wanted, they launched the Two Percent War which is generously marketed as the “Second Intifada,” in which they went on a terrorism campaign against ice cream stores, buses, restaurants and any soft targets populated with Jews. To stop the barbaric wave of hundreds of murders, Israel constructed a security barrier roughly along the 1949 Armistice Lines which anti-Zionists call an “apartheid wall.” The barrier is 90% fence and only 10% wall and built specifically because of Palestinian terrorism.
When Israel abandoned the Gaza Strip in 2005 it did not place a blockade on the area. Only after Palestinians voted the political-terrorist group Hamas to 58% of parliament in 2006 with the most anti-Semitic charter ever written, followed by Hamas’s take-over of Gaza in June 2007, and the attempted import of missiles and attack against Israel in 2008, did Israel resort to a full blockade of the terrorist enclave. Even though anti-Zionists call Gaza the world’s largest “open air prison” and a form of “collective punishment,” the actions were deemed legal by the United Nations (no friend of Israel) which commissioned the Palmer Report. That report stated that it “concludes that Israel’s naval blockade was legal… Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza. The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law.”
Weapons on the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara which sought to bust the Gaza blockade, used to attack Israeli soldiers
“Settler” and “Settlement”
The term “settler” has morphed into something anti-Semitic.
Once upon a time, an Israeli who developed a new outpost east of the Green Line (EGL) was called a “settler” because he and she established a new settlement. But people who wanted to see a new Arab state of Palestine without the presence of a single Jew changed and weaponized the meaning of “settler.” A Jew buying an apartment in an existing building in an existing town – even Jerusalem – somehow became a “settler.” The media has now gotten to the point where Jews who are just visiting EGL including the Western Wall, are called “settlers.” The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas calls the entirety of Israel a “painful settlement.“
“Zionist” and “Zionism”
Zionism was and is a two-part movement: a deliberate action against the scourge of pervasive anti-Semitism through the encouragement and support of 1) Jews moving back to their ancestral land and 2) to reestablish sovereignty in the Jewish holy land.
In 1975, with dozens of Arab and Muslim lands holding oil barrels over the world economy, the United Nations passed the “Zionism is Racism” resolution. While cancelled in 1991 due to the efforts of the US, it was revived in the August 2001 Durban Conference Against Racism. It has since been picked up broadly by Israel haters ranging from the far right to the alt left.
The extremist media empires like The New York Times have adopted the smear, and state openly that “Zionism was never the gentlest of ideologies.” Zionism is rapidly becoming a curse word, where left-wing schools are preaching that in order to be an anti-Racist one needs to be an anti-Zionist. This gaslighting campaign has corralled Jews to join the anti-Israel crusade, forgetting that the entire purpose of Zionism was to fight anti-Semitism and to have the same self-governing status that they seek for the stateless Arabs of Palestine.
The anti-Zionist lexicon is changing the very meaning of words in an aggravated assault against the Jewish State and Jews around the world. Everyone should readily recognize the mendacious slander and call out the perpetrators for their libel.
Due to the pro-Israel backlash about Ben & Jerry’s announced decision to stop selling ice cream in the West Bank/area east of the Green Line (EGL), the two founders penned an opinion piece in the liberal opinion paper, The New York Times on July 29, 2021. Here is a review.
Ben & Jerry comment: “We are the founders of Ben & Jerry’s. We are also proud Jews. It’s part of who we are and how we’ve identified ourselves for our whole lives. As our company began to expand internationally, Israel was one of our first overseas markets. We were then, and remain today, supporters of the State of Israel.“
FirstOneThrough review: Sounds reasonable. The duo is asserting that they are proud to be both Jewish and supporters of Israel so everything that follows must be read in that light. Meaning, this is what they want readers to believe are opinions of pro-Israel Jews.
B&J: “But it’s possible to support Israel and oppose some of its policies, just as we’ve opposed policies of the U.S. government. As such, we unequivocally support the decision of the company to end business in the occupied territories, which a majority of the international community, including the United Nations, has deemed an illegal occupation.“
FOT: B&J say they oppose lots of U.S. policies BUT THEY STILL SELLS ICE CREAM IN THE US. Double-standards, anyone? Further, while it is true that “a majority of the international community” views Israeli Jews living in EGL as “Illegal,” it’s also a fact that most of the world considers homosexuality to be illegal. Are B&J really going to use international standards to decide what is a progressive value?
B&J: “While we no longer have any operational control of the company we founded in 1978, we’re proud of its action and believe it is on the right side of history. In our view, ending the sales of ice cream in the occupied territories is one of the most important decisions the company has made in its 43-year history. It was especially brave of the company. Even though it undoubtedly knew that the response would be swift and powerful, Ben & Jerry’s took the step to align its business and operations with its progressive values.“
FOT: Progressives say that climate change is the most important issue of our lifetimes and B&J proudly supports environmental issues. Yet these two men proclaimed that boycotting the West Bank because Israel has held off annexing it, in the hope of trading some of it for an enduring peace with local Arabs is “one of the most important decisions the company has made.” I guess B&J’s long list of progressive issues really aren’t that important.
B&J: “That we support the company’s decision is not a contradiction nor is it anti-Semitic. In fact, we believe this act can and should be seen as advancing the concepts of justice and human rights, core tenets of Judaism.“
FOT: In what orbit is objecting to Jews living and praying somewhere – let alone in their holy land – advancing human rights, and not anti-Semitic? B&J should re-read the bible to understand that the land of Israel is a core tenet of Judaism.
B&J: “Ben & Jerry’s is a company that advocates peace. It has long called on Congress to reduce the U.S. military budget. Ben & Jerry’s opposed the Persian Gulf war of 1991. But it wasn’t just talk. One of our very first social-mission initiatives, in 1988, was to introduce the Peace Pop. It was part of an effort to promote the idea of redirecting 1 percent of national defense budgets around the world to fund peace-promoting activities. We see the company’s recent action as part of a similar trajectory — not as anti-Israel, but as part of a long history of being pro-peace.“
FOT: The company opposed US wars but still sells ice cream throughout the United States, but uniquely decided to boycott the West Bank. This is not consistent at all. A parallel move would be to sell a new ice cream flavor – maybe with halavah and dates called “Abraham’s Twins” – and to donate part of the proceeds to schools and organizations that promote peace and coexistence.
B&J: “In its statement, the company drew a contrast between the democratic territory of Israel and the territories Israel occupies. The decision to halt sales outside Israel’s democratic borders is not a boycott of Israel. The Ben & Jerry’s statement did not endorse the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.“
FOT: As the two surely know, the issued statement was not approved by its independent board, which did not include the statement about Israel. The last sentence was inserted by Unilever as the board actually wanted a boycott of all of Israel.
B&J: “The company’s stated decision to more fully align its operations with its values is not a rejection of Israel. It is a rejection of Israeli policy, which perpetuates an illegal occupation that is a barrier to peace and violates the basic human rights of the Palestinian people who live under the occupation. As Jewish supporters of the State of Israel, we fundamentally reject the notion that it is anti-Semitic to question the policies of the State of Israel.“
FOT: It is not “anti-Semitic to question the policies of the State of Israel,” but it is anti-Semitic to boycott the State of Israel in a complete double standard. The company does not boycott the US where it objects to many policies nor does it boycott China, Turkey, Morocco, India, Pakistan, Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan or many other countries which have disputed territory. The “perpetuation” of the Arab-Israeli dispute is because the Palestinians have rejected Israeli offers time and again, not because Israel never made any offers to make peace.
B&J: “When we left the helm of the company, we signed a unique governance structure in the acquisition agreement with Unilever back in 2000. That structure is the magic behind both Ben & Jerry’s continued independence and its success. As part of the agreement, the company retained an independent board of directors with a responsibility to protect the company’s essential brand integrity and to pursue its social mission.“
FOT: Anti-Semitism is not a “social mission” and the boycott of Israel is illegal in many jurisdictions so the board acted outside of its authority. Will this board that advocates for “defunding the police” stop selling ice cream in cities that don’t slash police budgets? The board is in favor of expanding voting rights so will it get engaged in vote harvesting which is considered illegal in many states? Being in favor of peace means promoting peace through legal activities. The board is not advancing peace and taking illegal actions.
B&J: “We believe business is among the most powerful entities in society. We believe that companies have a responsibility to use their power and influence to advance the wider common good. Over the years, we’ve also come to believe that there is a spiritual aspect to business, just as there is to the lives of individuals. As you give, you receive. We hope that for Ben & Jerry’s, that is at the heart of the business. To us, that’s what this decision represents, and that is why we are proud that 43 years after starting an ice cream shop in a dilapidated gas station in Burlington, Vt., our names are still on the package.“
FOT: The piece ends as it began with innocuous statements that have nothing to do with the insidious actions taken by the board.
A Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream delivery truck is seen at their factory in Be’er Tuvia, Israel July 20, 2021. (Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun)
Progressive Jews like Ben & Jerry have endorsed Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism which calls for the destruction of Israel, to have a legal pathway to nuclear weapons, and wants that Islamic State to be able to freely ship such weaponry to Hamas in an un-blockaded Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. It should therefore not surprise anyone that the far-left would stop selling ice cream to Israelis in bomb shelters.
Ben & Jerry are boycotting the Old City of Jerusalem, the holiest location for Jews, while they preach that they are both proud Jews and supporters of Israel who are taking action to advance a core tenet of Judaism. The two may not only be guilty of double standards, but lack a basic understanding of Judaism, as they encourage the whole world to engage in the BDS movement to rid the holy city of Jewish presence once more.
When Donald Trump pushed an executive order (EO) to limit the entry into the United States of people from a few countries who were deemed to have poor border controls and many terrorists, the Democratic Party called it a “Muslim ban,” even though the order still allowed people from over forty Muslim-majority countries to enter the US. The Democratic cheerleaders in the mainstream media picked up the phrase and each used it to advance the narrative of Trump as a racist and “Islamophobe.” It wasn’t hard to do, as Trump frequently attacked various minority groups and Islam in other situations.
But the phrase “Muslim ban” made no sense in regards to the actual EO which continued to allow in people from Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia and many other Muslim war-torn countries beset by terrorism.
In sharp contrast, the media refuses to call the global effort for a boycott, sanctions and divestment from Israel (BDS) campaign, a “Jewish ban,” even though it is explicitly that on many levels.
The BDS movement is economic warfare against the only Jewish state and does not target any other country involved in a dispute over land, of which there are many. The effort is to refuse selling products or services to Israel and also to refuse buying such from the country. It attempts to block any speakers, professors, exchange students, sporting teams and athletes, as well as to push investment funds to not invest in any Israeli companies. A variant of the BDS movement only seeks to impose those restrictions against the Israeli territory of Area C in the area east of the Green Line (EGL)/ the West Bank.
The rationale behind this effort is not to protect citizens like Trump’s EO, but to punish Israel for not annexing the West Bank, which Israel has held off doing in the hopes of trading some of the land for an enduring peace with Palestinian Arabs. Israel already gave the Palestinians the entirety of the Gaza Strip and land in the West Bank which is home to 86% of the Palestinian population. The Jewish State has offered more land in various initiatives but each proposal was rejected as insufficient by the Palestinian Authority.
BDS supporters are not interested in a negotiation between the parties but full Israeli capitulation to Palestinian demands.
In the interim, BDS supporters want to enforce a number of additional Jewish bans beyond those listed above. They want to ban Jews from living, working or visiting the West Bank and the eastern part of Jerusalem. They want to bar Jews from praying at their holiest site of the Jewish Temple Mount. They want Jews to abandon their second holiest location in Hebron and the Tomb of the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs to sole Muslim control.
Members of the Israeli security forces stand guard to protect Jews from Palestinian Arabs as they visit the Jewish Temple Mount on Tisha B’Av (Ninth of Av), commemorating the destruction of the Jewish temples some 2000 and 2600 years ago. (Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP)
As part of the effort, they will deny Jewish history in the holy land and engage in Holocaust denial. They will attempt to alter Arab history by declaring that Jesus was a Palestinian rather than a Jew and instead of acknowledging that Arabs invaded the holy land in the 7th century, claim that Palestinians are descendants of Canaanites and Jebusites in a comic attempt to pre-date Jews. They will further attempt to smear Jews as “colonialists” engaging in “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing” as a core message of their campaign, in sharp contrast to reality.
The so called-“Muslim ban” was solely placed on people coming from a few countries and did not persecute citizens from those lands nor Muslims generally in the US. Not so for the BDS movement, which attacks the Jewish State and Jews globally.
When the United States placed sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran, it did so because the leading state sponsor of terrorism was attempting to build nuclear weapons, a matter of global security concern. When the US put limits on the ability of China to own and operate communications infrastructure, it did so because of national security concerns.
But the BDS movement is not about protecting local or global interests. It is not even about being pro-Arabs-thousands-of-miles-away who have a better situation in Israel and Area C than Arabs in all of the surrounding countries. Those Arabs in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Iraq and elsewhere get no support from the BDS’ers, because BDS’ers aren’t pro-Arab but anti-Jew. They believe that a Jew controlling Arab land or people offends Muslim sensibilities and denies their dignity.
BDS is a movement against the Jewish State, Jews living in the holy land and Jews around the world. It is a “multipronged Jewish ban and jihad,” and should be clearly labeled as such.
There is an emerging fight going on about Ben & Jerry’s sudden decision to stop selling ice cream in what it calls the “occupied Palestinian territories.” One side has called it anti-Semitic while the other defends the company and its parent, Unilever, from the charge stating that not deciding to sell a product in the OPT but continuing to do so in Israel cannot be called anti-Semitic as it differentiates between Israel and the West Bank/ Judea and Samaria.
While this sounds like a niche and irrelevant subject – about selling ice cream! – the discussion and decisions made on this topic are important for the broader review of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. As dissected and reviewed below, the Ben & Jerry’s board engaged in a boycott of the West Bank (and likely Israel) in concert with its far-left progressive followers but likely outside of its agreement with Unilever. Other companies will be taking note of the fallout.
The Ben & Jerry’s Boardand Mission
B&J was acquired by Unilever in 2000 with a clause in the purchase agreement that allows the ice cream maker to retain its own independent board to preserve “Ben & Jerry’s social mission, brand integrity and product quality, by providing social mission-mindful insight and guidance to ensure we’re making the best ice cream possible in the best way possible.” The term “social mission” is a progressive catch-all that covers a wide range of activities. The three primary categories of values detailed on the company’s website are “human rights and dignity,” “social and economic justice” and “environmental protection.” The company pursues each of these items through a progressive lens which directs the company to use capitalism to the benefit of all, to protect the environment as best it can, and “support nonviolent ways to achieve peace and justice.”
These are clear and worthwhile missions for the company and within its rights to run a company as it sees fit. But any company working with a mission statement as its guide – and Ben & Jerry’s in particular, as this independent board takes actions BASED on the clause in its acquisition agreement that it can pursue its “social mission” – cannot do anything that it wants and just claim it as a “social mission.” Some important criteria to review:
is there really a social mission behind the action
is the action being taken an internal or external concern to the company
is the action itself legal and moral
While B&J was acquired with the proviso that it’s social mission is at the discretion of its independent board, these questions are critical for Unilever to review as to whether the board acted within its rights to boycott the OPT.
The Board Boycott and Intent
Before delving into each of these points, it is important to review what was and wasn’t said by B&J.
On July 19, 2021, B&J issued a statement which read:
“We believe it is inconsistent with our values for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). We also hear and recognize the concerns shared with us by our fans and trusted partners.
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. We will share an update on this as soon as we’re ready.”
The statement makes clear that its “values” make it difficult to see its product in the “OPT.” It differentiates the OPT from Israel and states in the last line that it will continue to sell ice cream in Israel.
But the B&J board never authorized the last sentencethat it will remain in Israel. The board subsequently released a statement that “The statement released by Ben & Jerry’s regarding its operation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (the OPT) does not reflect the position of the independent board, nor was it approved by the independent board.” The sentence was added solely by Unilever without B&J knowledge. The chair of the B&J board, Anuradha Mittal, was incensed by the statement that the ice cream will continue to be sold in Israel and said “I am saddened by the deceit of it. This is not about Israel; it is about the violation of the acquisition agreement that maintained the soul of the company. I can’t stop thinking that this is what happens when you have a board with all women and people of color who have been pushing to do the right thing.“
Mittal specifically wanted no mention of Israel in its statement, just that it is boycotting the “Occupied Palestinian Territory,” presumably meaning the area east of the Green Line (EGL). She seemed poised to rally minorities to her defense describing her situation as pitting “women and people of color” against a conglomerate, deflecting the conversation from her values and actions.
B&J’s website showcases its board members and notes that Mittal’s primary social cause is “Land and Indigenous Rights.” Her resume led with a note that she is “founder and executive director of the Oakland Institute, is an internationally renowned expert on development, human rights, and agriculture issues.“
The Oakland Institute website covers a number of topics including “Palestine.” It refers to “research” published by Mittal on “Palestinian resistance & resilience 70 years after the Nakba & 100 years after the Balfour Declaration.” It includes a map regarding places of such “resistance” which includes areas in Israel.
The Oakland Institute website founded by the board chair of Ben and Jerry’s, refers to Palestine and occupation with locations inside of Israel.
Mittal’s references to the “Nakba” in 1948 and Balfour Declaration in 1917 (each well before there was a land called the “West Bank” in 1967) are part-and-parcel of her objection to the inclusion by Unilever of a statement regarding operating in Israel. Her position is seemingly that all of Israel and Israeli territory is “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” That is why she was alarmed by Israel’s “downgrading Arabic as an official language,” (nothing to do with the West Bank) and efforts by Congress “that would criminalize the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel and Israeli settlements,” (note the inclusion of Israel.)
The B&J board’s statement was vague in verbiage as to whether OPT meant just the West Bank or the entire area known as Palestine in 1917, allowing mainstream progressive groups to jump to the defense of B&J on the premise that this action was just a non-violent “social mission” fighting against Israel’s “military occupation” of the West Bank, and cheered by the radical left and jihadi extremists who consider ALL of Israel to be under occupation.
What Constitutes a Social Mission
Is opposing the existence of a Jewish homeland a valid social mission?
That is the current mindset connecting jihadists, progressives and the alt-right today.
The anti-Zionists were birthed in the Arab and Muslim worlds in 1917 at the Balfour Declaration. The alt-right joined the cause in earnest during the reign of Nazi Germany which collaborated against “the shared… enemy [of world Jewry] and joint fight against it and creating the strong base uniting Germany and freedom-seeking Arabs around the world,” as Heinrich Himmler wrote to the Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in 1943. The toxicity spread at the United Nations as more Arab and Muslim countries were admitted and effectively passed the “Zionism is Racism” resolution in 1975. While that resolution was rescinded in 1991 due to the efforts of the United States, it was reintroduced to the world at the Durban Conference in 2001, just before the jihadi attacks on America on 9/11. With the Zionism-is-Racism smear once again in vogue and the progressive wing of intersectionality pushing active anti-Racism initiatives, Anti-Zionism got incorporated under the same banner by necessity.
Is anti-Racism a social mission? Most likely. If one believes that “Zionism is Racism” it follows naturally that anti-Zionism is a social mission too.
Lost in the logic is recognizing the false premise of the “Zionism is Racism” mantra. The notion that Jews should be able to live throughout their holiest land where they have thousands of years of history is a matter of simple human rights. The dream of having independence and sovereignty in the land is no longer a “debatable political philosophy” (to quote Keith Ellison, a progressive politician) but a reality. Arguing against Zionism today is a call to dismantle the sole Jewish State, an anti-Semitic urge.
Anti-Semitism is not a social mission. At least, not for any decent human being or organization.
Internal / External Social Mission
The social mission of a company often helps it build its brand, empower employees and the community in which it operates and serves. The choices are therefore important.
Some experts suggest avoiding politics, niche causes and charisma-fueled social missions, while stressing issues like the environment, local community involvement and charity.
Ben & Jerry’s did not follow this advice and always made its political leanings known. It’s current focus areas include a host of progressive issues including: criminal justice reform; voting rights; racial justice; LGBT rights; climate justice; campaign finance reform; and refugee rights.
The company actively engages in some of these things as a matter of how it runs the company, for example making products in an environmentally-friendly way. In other situations, it tries to inform people about a topic – like criminal justice reform – with articles on its website and directing people how to register to vote.
The company is not shy about getting involved in controversial topics like “Defund the Police,” where it argues that Minneapolis disbanding its police department “is a great start.”
Some topics, like abortion, do not make it onto its website, perhaps to avoid alienating about 40% of America. Still, it signs onto letters in advertisements that criticize abortion restrictions.
So with such history of activism outside the walls of the company’s business, it should not be a surprise that the company would wade into the Arab/Muslim-Israeli conflict.
The question is, what is its position? Does it seek coexistence and peace? Does it advocate for a one state, two state or three state solution? Does it want to see the end of Israel as a Jewish State?
Ben & Jerry’s has operated in Israel since 1987, even before the First Intifada. It has distributed ice cream throughout Israel and EGL/West Bank over this time, even during the waves of Palestinian terrorism and wars over the past 20 years. This suggests that the company has (or at least had) no issue doing business in the Jewish State or its territories.
Anuradha Mittal joined the B&J board in 2008, the same year she founded the Oakland Institute. Her publications there covered many countries including Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Sierra Leone. Some publications were highly critical of the U.S. Bush Administration for using the War on Terror to cut aid to some poor countries. She wrote that “the U.S. threatened to sever humanitarian aid to the people of Palestine for exercising their right to vote.” Well, maybe not for the act of voting but for voting overwhelmingly for Hamas, a US designated terrorist organization which killed over a thousand people. She skipped that part but added “Alarmed by its [Hamas’s] victory, President Bush announced to his Cabinet that he will not support a Palestinian government made up of Hamas. The U.S. has put pressure on other international donors to follow similar action with the intention of bankrupting the future Hamas-led Palestinian Authority,” and added her concern that “nearly one-half of all Palestinians already live below the poverty line…. and cutting off aid would push the Palestinian territories into chaos.” She tacitly advocated for the US to support a government run by a Palestinian political-terrorist group.
That article which covered the broad War on Terror was an outlier and Mittal did not devote much time to the Arab/Muslim-Israeli conflict at the Oakland Institute until 2017 when she became alarmed at the election of Donald Trump and his pro-Israel positions. It seems that despite B&J operating in Israel for 30 years, the idea of taking action against Israel really came to the front of her mind as U.S. policy began to favor Israel more explicitly.
Is the Action Legal or Moral
As discussed above, the promotion of peace and coexistence is a noble social mission. Actions to advance that mission could include donating to schools and organizations that facilitate dialogue and working together. Ben and Jerry’s donates to numerous causes and there is no shortage of groups (mostly in Israel) which seek to develop a harmonious future which would be happy beneficiaries of the company’s funds but the company specifically excludes donating to international organizations.
In contrast, there are actions that do not advance peace and coexistence such as supporting a ban on Jews living alongside Arabs in the West Bank and in eastern Jerusalem. The denial of Jewish history and connection to the land is not only anti-Semitic but harms the ability for the people to live together as it falsely portrays Jews as foreigners. Promoting a status quo which prevents Jews from praying at their holiest location is a simple denial of basic human rights.
The question comes back to what is the underlying “value” that the board is seeking to promote and is the subsequent course of action, legal and moral.
The board clearly feels that the United States needs to improve a lot in areas like police reform, refugee and LGBT rights, not to mention those of indigenous Americans. Yet B&J continues to manufacture and serve ice cream in these non-perfect lands. It runs its business as a profit-oriented company, selling its products in all 50 states, while articulating methods in which it believes the country can improve. It comments on its values and continues to sell ice cream.
The company has done the opposite in regards to Israel. There is no stated message anywhere on the B&J site about its objection to the state and how it is “inconsistent” with its values. It just published the July 19 statement above that it was going to stop conducting business in the “occupied Palestinian territories.” It did this, with the full knowledge – and perhaps hoping – that various states and countries which have laws banning the boycott of Israel and its territories would take action against the company to elevate the discussion globally.
If the company is against serving its products in disputed territories then it should say so and take similar actions in Cyprus/Turkey, Kashmir/India/Pakistan, Tibet/China, Western Sahara/Morocco and other locations as a new corporate policy and live with the ramifications of doing so. I cannot imagine that Unilever would allow B&J to take such actions of severely hurting the company’s business, which must fall outside the spirit of their agreement.
Israel did not annex the territory it took in a defensive war against Jordan (which itself, had illegally annexed the land in 1950), with the exception of the eastern half of Jerusalem which had been ethnically-cleansed of its Jews under Muslim Arab rule. Israel has withheld annexation in the hopes of arriving at a land-for-peace arrangement which has been consistently rejected by the Palestinians. To penalize Israel and/or the people living in the territory for holding out the hope of reaching an enduring peace goes beyond being illegal in many jurisdictions to being simply asinine.
Ben & Jerry’s board is headed by someone who seemingly thinks all of Israel is occupied Palestinian territory and believes the US should support the popular political-terrorist group Hamas. She is now taking aim at Israel and its territories in full knowledge that such action is considered illegal in many jurisdictions despite the company not taking similar actions in other disputed lands (which also do not incur financial repercussions). Further, while decrying a long list of problems in the United States, B&J continues to operate and sell its products here, but in contrast, it never says anything about the Arab/Muslim-Israeli conflict and then suddenly announces its intention to boycott the region.
The shroud of a social mission does not provide a shield from the accusations of inconsistency, double-standards and poor business judgment, and a global progressive company joining the BDS movement does not miraculously christen anti-Zionism as a “value” for a either a person or a company.
The fallout from the B&J boycott is in the early days and may yet claim the chair of its board.
First One Through 