What Does Ice Cream Have To Do With Israel?
Ice Cream Guillotines
Ben Cohen wants to make the world a better place. There are three ways to go about that. The first is to persuade others to change their ways by any means necessary. The second is to persuade others to trade by means of their own rational self-interest. The third is to sell more ice cream. Naturally, the first is far more popular than the second, the second is far more effective than the first, and the third is an absurd contradiction.
When you see that making the world a better place becomes the primary goal, you can assume with great confidence that it is not the primary goal. Unearned wealth and power is the primary goal — and the world will not become a better place. But there is money to be made in ice cream — and the cynical pandering of Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield (Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream). When combined with voluntary trade, it is a case study worthy of The Moneyball Method’s scrutiny.
Why? Because in a culture conditioned to believe that “making the world a better place” is a higher virtue than independence or integrity, there is a high probability of commercial success. Regardless of the competitive value of the ice cream itself, Ben and Jerry were sellouts from the beginning.
Throughout the decades of 1980s and 1990s, Ben and Jerry championed political and social causes for the secular religion of anticapitalism. Those included the “1% for Peace” campaign that was aligned with Soviet interests during the Cold War, their “Peace Pops” against the consolidation of dairy farms in Vermont, salary caps on executive compensation they later loosened for themselves, and plowing a token 7.5% of profits into social change non-profits that accomplish nothing measurable.
If 7.5% is good, does it not make even more sense to donate half their profits to their favorite charities — especially since millions of customers buy their product for that very reason? Ben and Jerry’s could take the additional tax write-off, reinvest the other half for greater future profits, and compound their “investments” in social justice. Would that not make the world a better place with six times the initial impact?
Thirty years later, those social justice entities are tens of thousands of NGOs around the country that collect untold billions from governmental agencies in the biggest money laundering operation in world history. On the flip side, the Baltic states and most eastern European countries are free of the Soviet stranglehold and enjoying freedom and prosperity more than ever. And America’s farms are also more productive than ever, which keeps prices low, supermarkets stocked, and capital flowing to its most talented producers.
True to their character as pragmatists, Ben and Jerry sold their company in 2000 to Unilever for $326 million. In a transaction hailed by the State funded Wharton School of Business (University of Pennsylvania), the deal was unique for its creation of an independent board of directors that was nominally free to pursue Ben and Jerry’s phony virtues.
Doubling down on horrid ideas, those included their “dismantle white supremacy” campaign that coincided with the burning, looting, assault and murders (“mostly peaceful protests”) in dozens of American cities in 2020. And in 2021, Ben and Jerry’s board sided with the primitive and violent culture that has wrecked the Gaza region where they live and two years later produced thousands of murderers, gang rapists, baby roasters and hostage takers. As Isabel Paterrson called it in her 1943 classic, The God of the Machine, Ben and Jerry resemble the humanitarians with a guillotine in her book.
However, reality will always win, capitalism obeys reality, and poetic justice is superior to social justice. Unilever sold its Israeli trademark to a local entreprenur — and as of two months ago, you can buy the “Milk and Honey” specialty flavor with honey swirls and Star of David fudge pieces, but only in Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem, etc. Now I have another great reason to visit Israel!
But I won’t be looking for Ben or Jerry. Their independent board sued Unilever in 2024 after the board had become impotent to use their platform to demonize Israel. Apparently, property rights (ownership) trump the board’s arbitrary whims. And in 2025, Unilever terminated Ben and Jerry’s CEO, created a subsidiary ice cream division named Magnum, and scuttled the board’s Watermelon flavor for Palestine.
It keeps getting better. Ben Cohen then crowdsourced a Watermelon Sorbet adorned with Palestinian flag emblems. He also attempted to buy back his namesake company, but it is not for sale and he doesn’t have the capital. And last month, Magnum cut funding to Cohen and Greenfield’s philanthropic foundation and they shut it down. However, the brand is performing very well and Magnum claims to be committed to the original mission, as reported by The Guardian:
“Since it was acquired in 2000, Ben & Jerry’s “footprint has grown from four to over 40 countries, [and] revenue has grown more than fivefold,” McKenzie-Gould said. The company’s overall social mission has received €500m ($576m) from the parent – more than the original purchase price.”
Armed with talent for campaigning, a foundation with no one left to shake down — and no skin in the game, Ben Cohen has chosen to go the boycott route.
On the benevolent side, corporate America is finally becoming wise to the social justice scam. Ultimately, principled builders and creators will know they serve far more people effectively when there are more of them earning higher profits — and celebrating with a Milk and Honey ice cream cone.
