Ben & Jerry’s decision to halt sales of their ice cream in the West Bank will harm Palestinian workers who work for the main distributor of the ice cream in the West Bank, Hen Israeli, vice president of the distributor, warned in an interview on Wednesday.
Israeli is vice president of Sagi Group, which operates in the industrial area at Mishor Adumim outside of Jerusalem and employs about 45 employees. Sagi Group distributes about two tons of ice cream to Jerusalem and the West Bank every week.
The company employs 10 Palestinians from nearby villages who receive working conditions and salaries they could not earn under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority, according to Israeli, who stressed that the decision would hurt the Palestinian employees if the company’s share of the distribution of the ice cream is lost.
cnxps.cmd.push(function () { cnxps({ playerId: ’36af7c51-0caf-4741-9824-2c941fc6c17b’ }).render(‘4c4d856e0e6f4e3d808bbc1715e132f6’); });
if(window.location.pathname.indexOf(“656089”) != -1){document.getElementsByClassName(“divConnatix”)[0].style.display =”none”;}else if(window.location.pathname.indexOf(“/israel-news/”) != -1){ document.getElementsByClassName(“divConnatix”)[0].style.display =”none”; var script = document.createElement(‘script’); script.src=”https://player.anyclip.com/anyclip-widget/lre-widget/prod/v1/src/lre.js”; script.setAttribute(‘pubname’,’jpostcom’); script.setAttribute(‘widgetname’,’0011r00001lcD1i_12258′); document.getElementsByClassName(‘divAnyClip’)[0].appendChild(script);}Avi Zinger, owner of the Ben & Jerry’s Israel franchise – who always sold his ice cream on both sides of the Green Line – has for years resisted pressure by the parent company to boycott West Bank settlements. Politicians and activists called to continue buying Ben & Jerry’s within Israel in order to support the Israeli franchise.
This would not be the first time that boycotts against Israel have caused harm to Palestinians.
Nabil Basherat, a Palestinian who works as a manager at SodaStream, told Israel Hayom in 2018 that the “global BDS campaign has done the Palestinians more harm than good,” adding that BDS pressure led to thousands of Palestinians losing their employment when the Mishor Adumim factory shut down.
Nadia Aloush, a Palestinian who works as a manager at the Mishor Admumim branch of the Rami Levy supermarket chain, also expressed opposition to BDS. “They want Rami Levy to close his stores, but I ask – who will employ Palestinians instead? The Palestinian Authority has failed to offer jobs to the Palestinians who worked in SodaStream. I don’t understand why the world keeps donating [to the PA] when it fails to even provide its people with jobs,” Aloush told Israel Hayom.
Tovah Lazaroff contributed to this report.