Newly hired employees joining the Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream company are required to watch four video lectures, each an hour in length, featuring activists discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as part of their job orientation, Jewish Insider reported on Monday.
“The videos are part of what the ice-cream company dubbed ‘Scooper Series: Social Mission,’ ” according to the report, claiming to address racism in the United States and as part of the conflict, citing an employee who saw the content.
One of the videos features Omar Shakir, director of the Human Rights Watch’s Israel and Palestine section, who was expelled from Israel in 2019 over allegedly supporting the anti-Israel BDS movement.
“If you look at the recent escalation that took place in May of 2021, it started over discriminatory efforts to force Palestinians out of their homes in occupied East Jerusalem as part of this larger policy,” Shakir says in the video, according to the report.
“The policy also extends to the Gaza Strip,” he said. “Although the Israeli government withdrew its settler population and ground forces in 2005, the Israeli government continues to exercise control over Gaza.”
Ben & Jerry’s did not respond to a request by Jewish Insider for comment.
Last week, 16 Jewish and Christian pro-Israel groups urged New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to take decisive action against Unilever and its subsidiary, Ben & Jerry’s, for the ice-cream maker’s July 2021 decision to stop selling its products in “Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
