Israel’s Ambassador to both the United States and the United Nations, together with future PM-designate and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid are threatening to mobilize the laws that nearly three dozen US states have against BDS to fight Ben & Jerry’s decision to stop selling their ice cream in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
In this piece for +972 Magazine, I explain why the BDS movement should welcome such action. Ben & Jerry’s is capable of defending itself against legal action, unlike so many targets of these laws, and they consistently fail the test of protected free speech. Until now, the laws have remained on the books for a variety of reasons (including, in some cases, states simply defying court rulings and leaving them there), and their presence can act as a deterrent against businesses and individuals that hope to do business with or work for the states in question supporting the BDS movement.
I argue that going after Ben & Jerry’s will expose these laws as both unconstitutional and as paper tigers, thereby rendering them useless. Check it out at +972 Magazine.