Licking Ben & Jerry’s by Melanie Phillips but it ain't over-Judea and Samaria boycott moving forward? Ben & Jerry’s sues Unilever and Hitler’s Furies: The Role of Women in the Destruction of European Jewry on the Eastern Front By Alex Grobman PhD. and Quotes from Einstein
Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.
The Three are Rabbi Yehuda Glick, famous temple mount activist, and former Israel Mk, and then Robert Weinger, the world's greatest shofar blower and seller of Shofars, and myself after we had gone to the 12 gates of the Temple Mount in 2020 to blow the shofar to ask G-d to heal the world from the Pandemic. It was a highlight to my experience in living in Israel and I put it on my blog each day to remember.
The articles that I include each day are those that I find interesting, so I feel you will find them interesting as well. I don't always agree with all the points of each article but found them interesting or important to share with you, my readers, and friends. It is cathartic for me to share my thoughts and frustrations with you about life in general and in Israel. As a Rabbi, I try to teach and share the Torah of the G-d of Israel as a modern Orthodox Rabbi. I never intend to offend anyone but sometimes people are offended and I apologize in advance for any mistakes. The most important psychological principle I have learned is that once someone's mind is made up, they don't want to be bothered with the facts, so, like Rabbi Akiva, I drip water (Torah is compared to water) on their made-up minds and hope that some of what I have share sinks in. Love Rabbi Yehuda Lave.
(JNS) A great victory has been declared over BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement whose aim is the destruction of Israel.
Last summer, the Unilever-owned company Ben & Jerry's said it would stop selling its ice-cream in "occupied Palestinian territory," as this was "inconsistent with our values."
Unilever said this week that it had now sold Ben & Jerry's Israeli interests to Avi Zinger, the licensee who has made and sold its product in Israel and the disputed territories for the past 34 years.
Under pressure from the Ben & Jerry's board last year, Unilever terminated Zinger's license. Now the ice-cream will continue to be sold across Israel and the disputed territories under its Hebrew and Arabic names, although not under its English branding.
Ben & Jerry's צילום: רויטרס
This is a neat win-win outcome. Jews and Arabs throughout Israel and the disputed territories will continue to enjoy Chunky Monkey, Cherry Garcia and the rest of the uniquely named varieties. Unilever will no longer have to deal with any further Israeli issues over Ben & Jerry's that might threaten its reputation and profits.
It shows what can be achieved when there's a backlash against anti-Israel bigotry. Arizona and Illinois had divested their pension funds from Unilever; other states threatened to follow; Zinger and a number of Unilever shareholders had filed lawsuits against the corporate giant over the issue.
Unilever said this week that it was proud of its business ventures in Israel, that it "rejects completely and repudiates unequivocally any form of discrimination or intolerance," and that anti-Semitism had "no place in any society."
But Ben & Jerry's still threatens to undermine Unilever's attempts at political neutrality. Although the company is a wholly-owned Unilever subsidiary, it maintains an independent board focused on its "social mission."
This consists of supporting far-left causes around the world. And its hate-mongering against Israel continues.
Jewish Insider recently reported that Ben & Jerry's was requiring all new employees to watch four videos on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. These included one featuring Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch, who was expelled by Israel in 2019 over his support for boycotting Jewish-owned businesses in the disputed territories.
In response, Ben & Jerry's said that staff members weren't compelled to watch any videos, but it confirmed that last year Shakir gave an optional "lunch and learn" talk about the conflict. In part of the video of that talk published by Jewish Insider, Shakir accused Israel of policies aimed at forcing Palestinian Arabs from their homes in "Occupied East Jerusalem" and moving Gaza's population "off Israel's demographic balance sheet."
What all this shows is that arson cannot be fought by merely putting out the peripheral fires caused by sparks from the main blaze. The priority must be to tackle the source of the conflagration—and the people who started it.
The source of anti-Israel bigotry is the narrative about the Middle East that is deemed to be unchallengeably true, even though it is in fact based entirely on lies.
And this narrative is even believed by some of Israel's friends.
Israel has a clear and effective strategy for dealing with its declared enemies because it can see exactly who they are and the perfidious agenda they promote.
More insidious, and far more difficult to deal with, is the set of false beliefs about the Middle East conflict—that the Palestinian Arabs have a just cause, that there is such a thing as "Palestinian territory," and that this territory is occupied.
Every part of this is untrue. There has never been any "Palestinian territory," and the "West Bank" has been a legal no-man's land ever since Israel was created.
The claim that it is "occupied" by Israel rests upon a willful misinterpretation of the Geneva Conventions. And far from being "just," the Palestinian Arab cause is based on a fictional historic Palestinian identity constructed solely with the aim of exterminating Israel and denying the truth that it is the historic national homeland of the Jewish people.
These falsehoods are rarely challenged. Many have no idea that they are false because they have never been told the real facts.
Israel itself chooses not to address these lies upfront. Diaspora Jews are either too timid or too ignorant to do so. With no strategy to reclaim the public sphere for fundamental realities, these big lies have accrued the status of unchallengeable truth.
The fact that even some of Israel's supporters may not understand they are false has sown a profound moral and intellectual confusion throughout the West, which has undermined Israel by directly playing into the hands of its visible foes.
An example of this is the British government, which under Prime Minster Boris Johnson is one of the most pro-Israel administrations in living memory. And yet, even these supportive politicians seem not to be aware of the contradictions and double standards in the way Britain approaches Israel and other world affairs.
In an article this week for the Telegraph about the war against Ukraine, Britain's Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Ukraine's foreign affairs minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote that there could be no negotiated settlement that replicated the Minsk Agreement, which had undermined Ukraine's sovereignty, security and territorial integrity.
"Those who propose sacrificing Ukraine's land," they wrote, "are actually proposing paying in Ukrainian blood for the illusion of peace. It will be a mirage unless accompanied by the restitution of Ukrainian territory and the containment of Putin's imperialism."
There's an obvious analogy here with Israel. The Oslo Accords and the "peace process" undermined Israel's sovereignty, security and territorial integrity. The proposed Palestinian state would involve sacrificing land to which only the Jewish people has any legal, historical or moral claim.
Those who support the Palestinian Arab cause actually endorse paying in Israeli blood for the illusion of peace. This will remain a mirage unless it is based upon law, justice and the containment of Palestinian Arab imperialism.
And yet the Foreign Office that Liz Truss leads continues to champion the Palestinian cause, promote the "peace process" and accuse Israel falsely of being in illegal occupation of Palestinian Arab land.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin and his supporters in the West invert reality over the war in Ukraine by claiming grotesquely that NATO is the aggressor and that Putin had no choice but to attack.
Such mind-bending assertions that black is white were, of course, the standard brainwashing tactic of the former Soviet regime. It is no coincidence that this also characterizes the Palestinian fantasy narrative, which was cooked up in the 1960s between the Palestinian Arab terrorist leader Yasser Arafat and his allies in the Soviet Union.
One person who really does get all this is the former American Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. In a passionate speech last week to the Hudson Institute, he urged the West to stand firm over Ukraine in order to defeat the alliance between Russia and China that aimed to defeat the West.
And he said America must help build "the three lighthouses for liberty" that should be "centered on nations that have great strife: Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan." These could become the "hubs of new security architecture that links alliances of free nations" across the world.
In other words, Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan were the outliers of Western freedom. If they should ever go down, the West goes down.
From Ben & Jerry's in Israel to Ukraine and Taiwan, evil can be defeated provided it is fought. As Pompeo said, that requires dauntlessness, a seriousness of purpose and the will to win. It also requires a clear-eyed understanding of exactly who and what we are up against.
Unless this is explained and understood, Israel and its allies will continue to rush around dousing small blazes while the conflagration which has sparked them roars on unabated.
Melanie Phillips, a British journalist, broadcaster and author, writes a weekly column for JNS. Currently a columnist for "The Times of London," her personal and political memoir, "Guardian Angel," has been published by Bombardier, which also published her first novel, "The Legacy." Go to melaniephillips.substack.com to access her work.
Judea and Samaria boycott moving forward? Ben & Jerry's sues Unilever
Left-wing ice cream brand sues Unilever in order to advance boycott of Judea and Samaria.
By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News
The Ben & Jerry's ice cream brand, which famously declared its intention to ban the sales of its products in Judea and Samaria last year, filed a lawsuit against its parent company, Unilever, on Monday as part of an effort to move its boycott forward.
Widely hailed as a victory for the BDS movement, the ice cream brand, which has often adopted left-wing political positions, announced in July 2021 that it would no longer offer its products "in occupied Palestinian territory."
The move led to a plunge in Unilever's stock prices, equivalent to a loss estimated at some $26 billion, and several states divesting their pension funds from Unilever in line with anti-BDS laws, with those monies thought to total about an additional $1 billion.
In late June 2022, Unilever announced that it had reached an agreement with Avi Zinger, the manufacturer and distributor of Ben & Jerry's products in Israel, to allow him to continue selling the brand's offerings in Judea and Samaria.
Under the terms of the agreement with Unilever, Zinger will be allowed to use the Ben & Jerry's log and branding on products as long as the products use Hebrew or Arabic, but not English text. Zinger has no geographic restrictions on sales. Zinger will also operate independently of Unilever and Ben & Jerry's.
"We are aware of the Unilever announcement. While our parent company has taken this decision, we do not agree with it," Ben & Jerry's said on Twitter shortly after the announcement.
"Unilever's arrangement means Ben and Jerry's in Israel will be owned and operated by AQP [American Quality Products, Ltd]. Our company will no longer profit from Ben & Jerry's in Israel," the Vermont-based company added. "We continue to believe it is inconsistent with Ben & Jerry's values for our ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territory."
Although Ben & Jerry's was purchased in its entirety decades ago by Unilever, the terms of the sale allow the ice cream brand's board of directors to maintain its independence to take stands on hot button social and political issues.
The board is arguing in its lawsuit that Unilever is violating the purchase agreement by preventing the boycott of Judea and Samaria, and is demanding that Unilever withdraw the permission it granted for the products to be sold in the area.
Anuradha Mittal, the chair of Ben & Jerry's board of directors, is a vocal critic of Israel who told NBC News in July 2021 that the original decision had been to boycott all of the Jewish State, beyond Judea and Samaria.
The London-based Unilever faced enormous pressure from U.S. states which have anti-BDS laws. Several began to divest their Unilever holdings or had announced their intention to do so.
Hitler's Furies: The Role of Women in the Destruction of European Jewry on the Eastern Front
There were practically 40 million German women in 1939, a third of whom (13 million) were actively involved in the Nazi Party. This number continued to rise until the end of hostilities, asserts historian Wendy Lower. Their ostensibly 'minor' participation in daily operations in the government, military, and Nazi Party activities was significant. One chief detective in the Reich Security Main Office, for example, decided the future of thousands of children with the aid of almost 200 hundred female detectives throughout Germany. They gathered proof of some 2,000 Jewish, "gypsy" and other "delinquents" whom they identified as "racially degenerate" and thus, future criminals. They were then imprisoned in special internment camps. [2]
At least half a million German women went to Eastern Poland, the former Russian territories under German occupation, and today's Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, where they became "integral parts" of the operation to destroy the Jews of Europe. They were "zealous administrators, tormentors, and murderers…." [3]
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In Hitler's Furies, Lower stated that although the SS and police were the primary murderers and controlled these organizations, the legions of 200,000 young secretaries (18-25) enabled the mass murder juggernaut to function. "In government hierarchies, female professionals and spouses attached themselves to men of power and in turn wielded considerable power themselves, including over the lives of the regime's most vulnerable subjects." They occupied positions throughout the chain of command, "from the very bottom to the very top," and had the authority to issue directives to subordinates. [4]
"The Angels at the Front"
Approximately four hundred thousand German Red Cross-trained women were sent either near the front lines or in rear areas in the east. Nurses who operated in the war zones aided in medical experiments. [5] Nurses were the largest number of women who were directly involved in the war. They were taught that "hatred is noble." Of all the female occupations, nursing had the greatest "concentration of documented crimes in the euthanasia programs and the medical experiments in the camps."[6] They "employed guns, whips, and lethal needles to achieve a mastery that was not otherwise available, to lord it over victims of the regime rendered powerless." [7]
Thirty thousand were certified by the SS and police as auxiliaries in police and Gestapo headquarters, and prisons, which meant there was a high probability of "direct participation in mass murder." [8] Although the verified cases of women directly murdering Jews or others are "not numerous," they must be viewed seriously and not viewed as "anomalies." These women were "not marginal sociopaths," Lower said. They regarded their cruel and vicious acts as "justified acts of revenge" imposed on Germany's adversaries and thus "expressions of loyalty." [9]
Their primary mission was to care for the soldiers, increase their self-confidence and restore their health. They served in field hospitals of the Waffen SS and the army and soldiers' homes, provided refreshment to troops on train platforms, and worked in hundreds of soldiers' quarters where they socialized with the troops. [10]
Secretaries
Aside from the nurses, the largest number of women providing support to the everyday operations of the war in the East were the German secretaries, office assistants, telephone operators and file clerks who worked in state and private concerns. What emerges is that some of the secretaries who typed up the orders to murder the Jews were also involved in the slaughter and were present at the mass shootings. They saw it "as a professional opportunity and a liberating experience." [11]
Secretaries in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, referred to Jews as 'subhumans' and considered them to be mere commodities. When transports arrived in Minsk, the Gestapo stole their food, which the staff called Judenwurst (Jewish sausage). The secretaries then organized and distributed the Jews' stolen clothes, personal items, and property. [12]
"Riches of the East"
Elsewhere, in the newly occupied territories, tons of clothing were placed in a warehouse established by the National Welfare Associated (NSV). The SS, police leaders, military commanders, and Nazi Party officials, initiated a program to seize Jewish property, clean and repair the clothes and donate them to ethnic Germans who were colonizing these areas. [13] The scarcity of food back home made a compelling reason to send families in Germany and Austria trainloads of clothing, antique furniture, sugar, flour and crates of eggs. [14]
SS-Obersturmführer Karl Kretschmer, who joined Einsatzgruppe C in the summer of 1942, wrote to his wife that he sent a tin of meat, fish, salami, sardines, sausages, French chocolates, and other sweets. He apologized for not being able to locate a Persian rug for her. He was no longer in the right area, and there was competition in procuring carpets. Another problem was that "the Jewish dealers are no longer alive." [15]
These considerable number of transports, arranged throughout German-occupied lands, could not have been organized without the consent of German military officers, who provided transportation. German historian Götz Aly maintained they readily acceded to the requests, not only because they loathed Jews or "were willing to sacrifice the last vestiges of their consciences out of an innate German need for obedience." The transports "served their own interests," which was to ensure the war could be waged without concern for lack of financial resources, which would have adversely affected their military strategy and troop morale. [16]
These material subsidies for the Germans explain how the German government ensured its popularity during the conflict. Concern for the well-being of the German people, whatever the price, was a hallmark of the Nazi practice from its inception asserted Aly. Hermann Göring, Director of the Four-Year Plan in the German economy, made this clear when he said, "If someone has to go hungry, let it be someone other than a German."[17]
Not Every German Woman in the East was a Nazi Agent
Not all of these women in the East represented the Nazis. Frequently, they were girlfriends, mothers, and wives of the SS elite, who joined their loved ones.[18] They provided refreshments in areas close to the deportation and killing fields, and comforted them upon their return from their killing sprees. [19] Although having no official part in aiding in the murders, they goaded their male companions to kill, because they were motivated by their loathing of the Jews.[20]
The wives of Lieutenant Paul Brand and Captain Julius Wohlauf, commander of the Reserve Police Battalion 101's First Company from Hamburg, accompanied their husbands while they were mercilessly torturing and murdering Jews. On August 25, 1942,Vera Wohlauf escorted her husband to the day long killing orgy in Międzyrzec, in central Poland, where Jews were shot in their homes, in the streets, the town square, and where they gathered to be deported.
Approximately 1,000 Jews were murdered and 10,000 were deported to the extermination camp at Treblinka. It "was perhaps the most brutal and licentious of all those that Police Battalion 101 conducted," according to historian Daniel Goldhagen. [21]
Vera Wohlauf was not alone in watching this spectacle. The wives of some of the Germans posted nearby, as well as a number of German Red Cross nurses were also witnesses. Approximately 1,000 Jews were murdered and 10,000 were deported the extermination camp at Treblinka.[22]
In keeping with her regular custom, Vera carried a riding crop, to demonstrate her position of dominance. Previously, Vera had remained with the battalion for a number of weeks and "several killing operations, and participated in one, if not two of the large ones." [23]
Married women personified the "dutiful wife," Lower noted, while their marriages became "partnerships in crime." They believed their actions were critical for the future survival of the Reich because they were "racial equals." [24]
Despite strict rules not to enter "Jewish only" areas, a popular pastime for German women was shopping in the ghetto. Planks and tables were set up on the streets, where Jews placed their personal items—cosmetics, toothbrushes, whatever one needed. [25]
A Final Note
Lower concluded, "the collage of stories and memories, of cruelty and courage, while continuing to test our comprehension of history and humanity, helps us see what human beings―not only men but women as well―are capable of believing and doing." 26 [26]
Footnotes
[1] Wendy Lower, Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), 11-12.
