Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, announced he will independently launch a Palestine-themed ice cream flavour after Unilever, the company’s parent, blocked the idea.
The flavour, a watermelon sorbet, is intended to symbolise the Palestinian flag and promote “permanent peace in Palestine”.
Cohen said he will produce it through his separate brand, Ben’s Best, and crowd-source input on name, ingredients and design.
“So I’m doing what they couldn’t,” he said as he squashed watermelons into juice in a video shared on X.
“I’m making a watermelon-flavored ice cream that calls for permanent peace in Palestine and calls for repairing all the damage that was done there.”
The move comes over a month after Jerry Greenfield, the other co-founder, resigned after nearly 50 years, citing Unilever’s restrictions on the company’s stance on the genocidal Israeli war in Gaza.
Greenfield said the brand’s independence and activist mission, once central to its identity, had been “eroded”.
Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s have clashed since 2021, when the Chubby Hubby maker said it would stop sales in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The brand has since sued its parent company over alleged efforts to silence it while describing the Gaza war as “genocide,” a rare stance for a major US firm.
