Heritage Florida Jewish News - Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice

New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio told a news briefing Tuesday that he would stop eating Ben & Jerry’s ice cream after the company announced that it was stopping its sales in Judea and Samaria as soon as the Israeli franchise’s license runs out in December 2022.

“I can say I will not be eating any more Cherry Garcia for awhile,” de Blasio said in allusion to his favorite flavor, in a video shared on social media.

He added that it was “sad to me” that the “good people” who founded the company, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, were making the “mistake” of boycotting Israel in this way.

“BDS is a movement that will undermine peace in the Middle East. It’s as simple as that,” he said. “You cannot have peace if you undermine the economic reality and create division. I just believe it’s absolutely the wrong approach and I don’t think Ben & Jerry’s should be doing that.”

“They’ve done a lot of good in the world but they should stand back from this,” he added, in reference to the various progressive causes the company has actively supported over the decades.

Several local kosher groceries have already pulled the ice cream from their shelves, and at least one supermarket chain, Morton Williams, sharply reduced its inventory in reaction to the anti-Israel move.

The virulently anti-Israel BDS movement was founded in 2005 to promote international boycotts, economic divestment and sanctions against the Jewish state. Its supporters claimed Ben and Jerry’s decision as a “huge” victory.

Thirty U.S. states have passed anti-BDS legislation in recent years, deeming it illegal because it is a form of antisemitism in its delegitimization of the Jewish state and holding Israel to a standard of behavior it does not demand of any other country.