Israel's actions in Gaza are genocide, says Ben & Jerry's
The ice cream brand, known for its outspoken approach to social issues, said: 'We join with those around the world who denounce the genocide in Gaza.
'We stand with all who raise their voices against genocide in Gaza – from petition-signers to street marchers to those risking arrest.'
The independent board made the comments in a statement seen by Reuters.
Its description of Israel's actions as genocide comes just weeks after one of the brand's co-founders, Ben Cohen, was arrested in the US Senate for protesting against the provision of military aid to Israel during testimony by Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary.
The statement by the independent board threatens to deepen the disagreement between Ben & Jerry's and Unilever. The two sides have been at odds over Israel and Gaza for many months.
The ice cream brand sued Unilever in November 2024, claiming that the company had attempted to block it from making public statements about the conflict.
The two companies have clashed over Israel before, including in 2021 when Ben & Jerry's stopped selling its ice cream in the occupied West Bank, arguing that doing business there was 'inconsistent' with its values.
In response, Unilever sold its Israeli ice cream business, causing a legal battle that was later resolved.
Founded by Cohen and Jerry Greenfield in 1978 in Vermont, Ben & Jerry's has repeatedly spoken out on issues such as refugees' rights, LGBTQ+ issues and climate change.
Though it has been owned by Unilever since 2000, an agreement was written into its $326m (£241m) acquisition deal to allow the company to continue operating with an independent board. This effectively protected the company's ability to take a stand on social issues.
However, Ben & Jerry's has accused its owner of undermining that deal. In March, the brand accused Unilever of ousting Dave Stever, its chief executive, over his outspoken approach to political and social issues, rather than because of performance.
Escalating tensions threaten to overshadow the much-anticipated spin-off of Unilever's ice cream arm into a separate business in an effort to streamline and focus on its core business of consumer goods such as Dove soap and Hellmann's mayonnaise.
A Unilever spokesman said: 'We took notice of the comments made by members of the social mission board of Ben & Jerry's.
'Unilever supports efforts for a peaceful resolution and the end of violence to conflicts around the world. Unilever is in litigation with the above mentioned board and will not comment on its positions.'
Ben & Jerry's and its founders were approached for comment.
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Epoch Times
12 minutes ago
- Epoch Times
What to Know About Aid Access to Gaza
Twenty-one months into the Israeli offensive launched after the Oct. 7 attack by terrorist group Hamas, the situation on the ground in Gaza has become one of the most complex and contested crises.
USA Today
34 minutes ago
- USA Today
Trump's golf trip to Scotland reopens old wounds for some of his neighbors
BALMEDIE, Scotland − Long before talk of hush-money payments, election subversion or mishandling classified documents, before his executive orders were the subject of U.S. Supreme Court challenges, before he was the 45th and then the 47th president: on a wild and windswept stretch of beach in northeast Scotland, Donald Trump the businessman was accused of being a bad neighbor. "This place will never, ever belong to Trump," Michael Forbes, 73, a retired quarry worker and salmon fisherman, said this week as he took a break from fixing a roof on his farm near Aberdeen. The land he owns is surrounded, though disguised in places by trees and hedges, by a golf resort owned by Trump's family business in Scotland, Trump International Scotland. For nearly 20 years, Forbes and several other families who live in Balmedie have resisted what they describe as bullying efforts by Trump to buy their land. (He has denied the allegations.) They and others also say he's failed to deliver on his promises to bring thousands of jobs to the area. Those old wounds are being reopened as Trump returns to Scotland for a four-day visit beginning July 25. It's the country where his mother was born. He appears to have great affection for it. Trump is visiting his golf resorts at Turnberry, on the west coast about 50 miles from Glasgow, and at Balmedie, where Forbes' 23 acres of jumbled, tractor-strewn land, which he shares with roaming chickens and three Highland cows, abut Trump's glossy and manicured golf resort. On July 28, Trump will briefly meet in Balmedie with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to "refine" a recent U.S.-U.K. trade deal, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Golf, a little diplomacy: Trump heads to Scotland In Scotland, where estimates from the National Library of Scotland suggest that as many as 34 out of the 45 American presidents have Scottish ancestry, opinions hew toward the he's-ill-suited-for-the-job, according to surveys. "Trump? He just doesn't know how to treat people," said Forbes, who refuses to sell. What Trump's teed up in Scotland Part of the Balmedie community's grievances relate to Trump's failure to deliver on his promises. According to planning documents, public accounts and his own statements, Trump promised, beginning in 2006, to inject $1.5 billion into his golf project six miles north of Aberdeen. He has spent about $120 million. Approval for the development, he vowed, came with more than 1,000 permanent jobs and 5,000 construction gigs attached. Instead, there were 84, meaning fewer than the 100 jobs that already existed when the land he bought was a shooting range. Instead of a 450-room luxury hotel and hundreds of homes that Trump pledged to build for the broader community, there is a 19-room boutique hotel and a small clubhouse with a restaurant and shop that sells Trump-branded whisky, leather hip flasks and golf paraphernalia. Financial filings show that his course on the Menie Estate in Balmedie lost $1.9 million in 2023 − its 11th consecutive financial loss since he acquired the 1,400-acre grounds in 2006. Residents who live and work near the course say that most days, even in the height of summer, the fairway appears to be less than half full. Representatives for Trump International say the plan all along has been to gradually phase in the development at Balmedie and that it is not realistic or fair to expect everything to be built overnight. There's also support for Trump from some residents who live nearby, and in the wider Aberdeen business community. One Balmedie resident who lives in the shadow of Trump's course said that before Trump the area was nothing but featureless sand dunes and that his development, carved between those dunes, made the entire landscape look more attractive. Fergus Mutch, a policy advisor for the Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce, said Trump's golf resort has become a "key bit of the tourism offer" that attracts "significant spenders" to a region gripped by economic turmoil, steep job cuts and a prolonged downturn in its North Sea oil and gas industry. Trump in Scotland: Liked or loathed? Still, recent surveys show that 70% of Scots hold an unfavorable opinion of Trump. Despite his familial ties and deepening investments in Scotland, Trump is more unpopular among Scots than with the British public overall, according to an Ipsos survey from March. It shows 57% of people in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland don't view Trump positively. King Charles invites Trump: American president snags another UK state visit While in Balmedie this time, Trump will open a new 18-hole golf course on his property dedicated to his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, who was a native of Lewis, in Scotland's Western Isles. He is likely to be met with a wave of protests around the resort, as well as the one in Turnberry. The Stop Trump Coalition, a group of campaigners who oppose most of Trump's domestic and foreign policies and the way he conducts his private and business affairs, is organizing a protest in Aberdeen and outside the U.S. consulate in Edinburgh. During Trump's initial visit to Scotland as president, in his first term, thousands of protesters sought to disrupt his visit, lining key routes and booing him. One protester even flew a powered paraglider into the restricted airspace over his Turnberry resort that bore a banner that read, "Trump: well below par #resist." 'Terrific guy': The Trump-Epstein party boy friendship lasted a decade, ended badly Trump's course in Turnberry has triggered less uproar than his Balmedie one because locals say that he's invested millions of dollars to restore the glamour of its 101-year-old hotel and three golf courses after he bought the site in 2014. Trump versus the families Three families still live directly on or adjacent to Trump's Balmedie golf resort. They say that long before the world had any clue about what type of president a billionaire New York real estate mogul and reality-TV star would become, they had a pretty good idea. Forbes is one of them. He said that shortly after Trump first tried to persuade him and his late wife to sell him their farm, workers he hired deliberately sabotaged an underground water pipe that left the Forbes – and his mother, then in her 90s, lived in her own nearby house – without clean drinking water for five years. Trump International declined to provide a fresh comment on those allegations, but a spokesperson previously told USA TODAY it "vigorously refutes" them. It said that when workers unintentionally disrupted a pipe that ran into an "antiquated" makeshift "well" jointly owned by the Forbeses on Trump's land, it was repaired immediately. Trump has previously called Forbes a "disgrace" who "lives like a pig." 'I don't have a big enough flagpole' David Milne, 61, another of Trump's seething Balmedie neighbors, lives in a converted coast guard station with views overlooking Trump's course and of the dunes and the North Sea beyond. In 2009, Trump offered him and his wife about $260,000 for his house and its one-fifth acre of land, Milne said. Trump was caught on camera saying he wanted to remove it because it was "ugly." Trump, he said, "threw in some jewelry," a golf club membership (Milne doesn't play), use of a spa (not yet built) and the right to buy, at cost, a house in a related development (not yet constructed). Milne valued the offer at about half the market rate. When Milne refused that offer, he said that landscapers working for Trump partially blocked the views from his house by planting a row of trees and sent Milne a $3,500 bill for a fence they'd built around his garden. Milne refused to pay. Over the years, Milne has pushed back. He flew a Mexican flag at his house for most of 2016, after Trump vowed to build a wall on the southern American border and make Mexico pay for it. Milne, a health and safety consultant in the energy industry, has hosted scores of journalists and TV crews at his home, where he has patiently explained the pros and cons − mostly cons, in his view, notwithstanding his own personal stake in the matter − of Trump's development for the local area. Milne said that because of his public feud with Trump, he's a little worried a freelance MAGA supporter could target him or his home. He has asked police to provide protection for him and his wife at his home while Trump is in the area. He also said he won't be flying any flags this time, apart from the Saltire, Scotland's national flag. "I don't have a big enough flagpole. I would need one from Mexico, Canada, Palestine. I would need Greenland, Denmark − you name it," he said, running through some of the places toward which Trump has adopted what critics view as aggressive and adversarial policies. Dunes of great natural importance Martin Ford was the local Aberdeen government official who originally oversaw Trump's planning application to build the Balmedie resort in 2006. He was part of a planning committee that rejected it over environmental concerns because the course would be built between sand dunes that were designated what the UK calls a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to the way they shift over time. The Scottish government swiftly overturned that ruling on the grounds that Trump's investment in the area would bring a much-needed economic boost. Neil Hobday, who was the project director for Trump's course in Balmedie, last year told the BBC he was "hoodwinked" by Trump over his claim that he would spend more than a billion dollars on it. Hobday said he felt "ashamed that I fell for it and Scotland fell for it. We all fell for it." The dunes lost their special status in 2020, according to Nature Scot, the agency that oversees such designations. It concluded that their special features had been "partially destroyed" by Trump's resort. Trump International disputes that finding, saying the issue became "highly politicized." For years, Trump also fought to block the installation of a wind farm off his resort's coast. He lost that fight. The first one was built in 2018. There are now 11 turbines. Ford has since retired but stands by his belief that allowing approval for the Trump resort was a mistake. "I feel cheated out of a very important natural habitat, which we said we would protect and we haven't," he said. "Trump came here and made a lot of promises that haven't materialized. In return, he was allowed to effectively destroy a nature site of great conservation value. It's not the proper behavior of a decent person." Forbes, the former quarry worker and fisherman, said he viewed Trump in similar terms. He said that Trump "will never ever get his hands on his farm." He said that wasn't just idle talk. He said he's put his land in a trust that specified that when he dies, it can't be sold for at least 125 years.
New York Post
41 minutes ago
- New York Post
I quit my high-flying corporate career for a $32k-a-year job at a factory — life's too short for stress
For this ex-exec, money doesn't buy happiness. A British woman who quit her high-flying corporate job to become a minimum-wage factory worker says the gigantic pay cut has been worth it to eliminate stress from her life. Shany Hagan, 56, spent two decades working as a business development manager, earning $66,000 per year (£50,000). Advertisement 3 Shany Hagan, 56, spent two decades working as a business development manager, earning $66,000 per year (£50,000). Charley Atkins / SWNS While that figure may not sound like an exorbitant amount, it's far more than the UK's average annual wage, which stands at $47168 (£37,430). In Hagan's home city of York, the white-collar worker was building wealth and living in luxury, but her mental and physical health was suffering. Advertisement 'I had been in the business for 20 years, and it had always been very stressful,' she told Southwest News Service. 'I could cope when I was younger, but now I want time to reflect on myself and my life. In those kind of roles, it doesn't matter how hard you work, they will always want more from you.' Now, Hagan has secured a new job working as a floor worker at a factory — earning just $32,250 (£24,000) a year. 3 'I had been in the business for 20 years, and it had always been very stressful,' she told Southwest News Service. Charley Atkins / SWNS But bringing home less than half of what she used to doesn't phase the mother-of-one, who has paid off her mortgage. Advertisement Since May, Hagan has been working at a factory where she packs food, labels products, does computer admin and cleans. 'I wanted to be on my feet a bit more, a more physical job, to lose some weight for my health, which I have,' she explained. 'I don't get the Sunday evening scaries at all, and the people are kind. You can actually switch off when you leave.' 3 Since May, Hagan has been working at a factory where she packs food, labels products, does computer admin and cleans. It's allowed her time outside of work to pursue her passion for painting. Charley Atkins / SWNS Advertisement The mom-of-one admits she has to watch what she spends, but says it's allowed her extra time to pursue her passion for painting. And Hagan has declared that she'd rather be thrifty than feel burned out, saying no amount of money can buy back time or health. 'My mental health has already improved, I have such a spring in my step now,' she enthused. 'I'm the happiest I've ever been — and I don't care what people think about it.'
