Tuesday, August 3, 2021

Ben & Jerry’s Defense, a cool Act of Decency

Alan Dershowitz is huffing and puffing because two Jews did a noble act, which to him, means committing a horrible thing.

 

Dershowitz is after all, old enough to have been one of the Jewish lawyers who took America by storm at the onset of the Jewish conquest of America. He and others like him, did so by introducing fresh ideas into the legal ecosystem. The ideas were so fresh in fact, they awed everybody: from laymen to lawyers to judges and even legislators.

 

But this situation lasted only a short period of time because the ecosystem eventually discovered that whereas Dershowitz and company had come up with something fresh, it wasn’t a cup of fresh honey excreted by bees, it was a basket of fresh something excreted by bulls.

 

This, however, did not stop Alan Dershowitz from staying on course and producing more of the stinky stuff on a regular basis. His latest directive to the Jewish rank-and-file, is meant to counter the noble act that Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield did when they decided to follow their conscience and call the spade they see a spade, which they did by recognizing that doing business as usual in a country that’s occupied, was an abhorrent act that had to be terminated. And terminate the production of ice cream in the Palestinian territory known as the West Bank, is what they did.

 

Enter a freaked-out Alan Dershowitz whose brain alerted him to the possibility that other Jews doing business in the West Bank, may be encouraged by the Ben and Jerry noble act, and follow their conscience, something that many Jews must be itching to do but could not muster the courage to do it till Ben and Jerry showed them the way.

 

To address all the Jews who might be affected by this development; to dissuade them from falling one after the other like domino chips, Dershowitz wrote an article under the title: “Ben & Jerry’s defense is hard to swallow,” and had it published on August 1, 2021 in the New York Daily News.

 

Dershowitz began his discussion by pulling the most demonic of his tricks. Let me explain. If in a general discussion, you address an audience in the abstract, it is always a good idea to put what you’re talking about in some context so that the people will know how close or how far from the norm is the subject matter you are describing.

 

But if you are addressing a specific act that someone has carried out or intends to carry out, putting things in context takes on a different disposition. That is, you would be telling that someone, they failed to do something they should have done, or they did something they shouldn’t have done. Look now, how Dershowitz began his discussion:

 

“Ben and Jerry’s defense of boycotting disputed territories in Israel fails to put their ice cream company’s actions in a proper context. They continue to sell their products in many of the most repressive countries in the world — countries that murder dissidents, imprison journalists, enslave women, exploit children and occupy other people’s land”.

 

First of all, the morality that Alan Dershowitz is spreading, is of the most criminal-minded that you can think of. That is, he is telling his audience that if someone does any of the following, “murder dissidents, imprison journalists, enslave women, exploit children and occupy other people’s land,” Israel has the right to do all of them and expect to be absolved.

 

Second of all, what Dershowitz says is a damned lie. The truth is that outside of the United States and Israel, Ben & Jerry’s have an ice cream factory in only one country: The Netherland. Is Dershowitz saying that the murder of dissidents, imprisonment of journalists, enslavement of women, exploitation of children or occupation of other people’s land, is practiced by the Netherland?

 

As to where the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is sold, you’ll find it in about three dozen countries, most of them being what Dershowitz would call Western Style democracies. The possible exceptions are these: The Bahamas, Brazil, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and the UAE. Which of these is Dershowitz accusing of practicing the murder of dissidents, imprisonment of journalists, enslavement of women, exploitation of children or the occupation of other people’s land? Let him point the finger at one or more of them, and give details of what they do.

 

Dershowitz ends his article in a way that appeals to the Jewish sense of duty to support Israel because, as he often put it, Israel will always be there for them, to be the home they can go to; the home that will protect them when things get rough. Here is a condensed version of his last paragraph:

 

“Ben and Jerry, Vermont Jews who say they are supporters of the state of Israel, should be ashamed of their hypocrisy. I for one will never eat Ben & Jerry’s ice cream again because their decision to single out parts of Israel for an economic boycott is anti-Semitic”.

 

What Dershowitz misses is what an increasing number of Jews are saying nowadays. They are trying to tell the self-appointed leaders such as Alan Dershowitz: Not in our name. They want these fake leaders to know that what they are doing, and what Israel is doing does not serve the Jews.

 

In fact, they see that most of their troubles are generated by the fake leaders who will lead them to yet another pogrom if not a full-blown holocaust. Ordinary Jews are confident that they can make it on their own without the disruptive hand or the pretentious mouth of Alan Dershowitz or anyone like him.