Ben & Jerry's, by refusing to sell ice cream in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, is committing "economic terrorism" and the company's products should lose their kosher designation, Morton Klein, the national president of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) said on Newsmax Monday.
"Ben & Jerry's and Unilever, which owns Ben & Jerry's (and) refused to condemn this, has sided with Hamas and the Hezbollah and PFLP (the Popular front for the liberation of Palestine), who are the leaders of the boycott Israel movement," Klein told Newsmax's "Wake Up America."
"They're siding with the terrorists, and that's why it is proper to call it economic terrorism," Klein added.
Ben & Jerry's said last week that it would stop selling its products in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and contested east Jerusalem, saying the sales territories sought by the Palestinians are "inconsistent with our values."
But Klein said Monday that it is a "misnomer" to call the territory occupied, as there was "never a country of 'Palestine,'" and the only country ever in the West Bank is Israel.
"Israel's given away over half of the disputed territories where 99% of the Arabs live," said Klein. "This is one of the misnomers that there's an occupation of Palestinian territory."
Meanwhile, Ben & Jerry's is continuing to sell ice cream in Iran "which calls for the destruction of America and Israel" and in the Palestinian Authority territories "which pay Arabs to murder Jews and Americans."
Klein continued that rabbinical authorities in Australia and New Zealand removed the company's kosher label, which is described to mean fit or proper as it relates to Jewish dietary law, and ZOA is asking for the same to happen in the United States
"If you're boycotting the human rights loving state of Israel, siding with Arab terrorists who murdered Jews, or that murdered Jews and want to destroy Israel, that is certainly not kosher," Klein maintained, adding that Unilever is also refusing to condemn Ben & Jerry's for its decision.
"We are demanding that all cultural authorities around the world stop giving the kosher label to Ben and Jerry's," said Klein. "It is not kosher to side with terrorists who want to murder Americans and want to murder Jews and destroy the Jewish state."
Meanwhile, Ben & Jerry's denied that anti-Semitism is at play, but Klein insisted that "if you're against the Jewish state, you're antisemitic. If you're against Italy, you hate Italians."
"This movement is growing many supermarkets around America is saying we're not going to carry their product anymore," said Klein. "Florida has said 'we're going to stop any store from holding Ben and Jerry's under the law,' and I think Ben and Jerry's is going to have to do the right thing and sell to the Jewish people of Israel."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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