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July 22nd, 2021 
Awake Goy 
I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling really hopeful this week with the stunning news that Ben & Jerry’s is getting out of the occupied territories. And I’m so proud that Mondoweiss’s early coverage of the campaign gave it the oxygen it needed to grow when just about no one else would.
I’m sure you’ve seen the reactions. The prime minister calling the decision antisemitic, the ambassador calling it an attempt to “dehumanize the Jewish people,” President Isaac Herzog calling Ben & Jerry’s terrorists, and Yair Lapid, another liberal Zionist hero, calling on US governors to use the anti-BDS legislation their states passed to punish Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s parent company.
This is far from over, and Mondoweiss needs your help to cover every step ahead. During our critical summer match, can you send a donation today?
It’s crazy to think that Cherry Garcia and Chunky Monkey could do more to advance the cause of freedom than hundreds of diplomats. But that’s the world we live in: where a small decision in favor of human rights from a celebrated brand (with Jewish roots) completely unhinges the Israeli leadership and their boosters here in the US.
We always told you that the Israeli government is an entitled, fragile, spoiled ethnocracy – and its ice cream meltdown is revealing that to the world. With one hand they run an apartheid regime. With the other they demand US support, and our politicians go along with it by pretending that Israel wants to let Palestinians have their own state. A deception that Ben & Jerry’s has blown out of the water.
This didn’t come out of nowhere. No, it came out of sustained pressure from grassroots groups in Palestine, Vermont, and everywhere in between.
The campaign to get Ben & Jerry’s to leave Israel began in 2013, and we were covering it back then. Just like we were in 2014, 2015, and ever since. Because one of the key reasons Mondoweiss exists is to amplify brave, creative campaigns that start small — and sometimes, like this week, shock the world.
There was never a guarantee that an ice cream boycott would land like this, or even come about at all. But we covered it because we understand how movements work – that when you give small campaigns oxygen, literally anything is possible.
And when almost every other publication on the left steered clear of the BDS movement – often because of their donors, as you well know – we actually listened to and amplified Palestinian activists who knew why BDS was so important and what it could accomplish.
When others said that BDS doesn’t work, we insisted that it does. And the lunatic response to Ben & Jerry’s partial boycott shows the truth of that stance.
Please, help us share that truth far and wide. Can you make a donation, instantly doubled, today?
We have made it a point to investigate the legislation that American states have adopted over the last five years to counter BDS. Unconstitutional legislation that clearly infringes on the political speech that is essential to Palestinians struggling for the most basic rights.
We have shown the clear chain between the Israeli government and those American statehouses. Like the time that a Georgia state rep introduced anti-BDS legislation because the Israeli consul – seated at her side through much of the hearing – “asked me” to do it.
Two years ago we hired Michael Arria to cover this beat, because we recognized its importance…and I cannot tell you how busy he’s going to be now. Prime Minister-in-waiting Yair Lapid himself announced publicly that he expects, even demands, that the over 30 states which have passed anti-BDS bills will take action against Ben & Jerry’s.
No one is better prepared to cover this fight than we are.
And even as I write, we’re covering other campaigns in their early stages. And who can say what will be the next one to catch fire.
If you can make a donation now, I promise not just that we’ll turn it into more fearless coverage of the movement for justice in Palestine. I promise that, whether next week or next year, it will help those campaigns win.
But for now, we have a lot to do–and all at once.
To expose the undue influence in the United States of Israeli diplomats. To expose the devastating consequences of the Israeli occupation that Ben & Jerry’s has had the temerity to challenge. To be there when state legislatures across the country start taking action against Ben & Jerry’s at Israel’s bidding. And to keep covering the creative, bold, exciting new campaigns that are springing up all over in response to this moment.
We need to have the resources to do it all. Can you keep us moving with a donation today?
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