BEN and Jerry’s is suing its parent company for allegedly “silencing” the ice cream brand as it tried to speak out in support of Palestinian refugees and call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
A suit filed against Unilever alleges that the parent company that the consumer goods giant has stifled its attempts to “speak out in support of peace and human rights” in the Middle East.
Ben and Jerry’s has a fraught relationship with its parent company, which acquired the ice cream brand in 2000, and the firm was previously at odds with Unilever over selling products in the West Bank, which is illegally occupied by Israel.
The lawsuit alleged that Unilever has breached part of an agreement the two companies struck in 2022, which required the parent company to “respect” Ben and Jerry’s “social mission”, the Reuters news agency reported.
The lawsuit said: “Ben and Jerry's has on four occasions attempted to publicly speak out in support of peace and human rights. Unilever has silenced each of these efforts.”
A Unilever spokesperson told Reuters “Our heart goes out to all victims of the tragic events in the Middle East. We reject the claims made by [Ben and Jerry’s] social mission board, and we will defend our case very strongly.”
Ben and Jerry’s said its attempted interventions had been to call for a ceasefire, to support the passage of Palestinian refugees to Britain, to back student protesters in the US and to call for a block on American military aid to Israel, all of which Unilever allegedly blocked.
They further claimed that Peter ter Kulve, Unilever's head of ice cream, said he was concerned about the “continued perception of antisemitism” if the company was to speak out in support of Gazan refugees.
Elsewhere in the lawsuit filed against Unilever, Ben and Jerry’s accused the parent company of objecting to part of the 2022 settlement, which was intended to resolve the companies’ dispute over the West Bank issue.
Unilever had been required to make donations worth a total of $5 million to human rights groups of Ben and Jerry’s choosing, including Jewish Voice for Peace and the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, among others.
But the parent firm objected to the selections, saying that Jewish Voice for Peace was “too critical of the Israeli government”, the lawsuit alleged.
Unilever will spin-off its ice cream businesses, including Ben and Jerry’s, by the end of next year in an effort to simplify its holdings, which include household products like Dove soap, Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Knorr stock cubes.
