The iconic, famously woke ice cream company, Ben & Jerry’s, announced on Monday that it will no longer sell its product in “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” As the company explained, “We believe it is inconsistent with our values for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).” However, they added, “Although Ben & Jerry’s will no longer be sold in the OPT, we will stay in Israel through a different arrangement.”

Put another way (and to read between the lines), “We will continue to sell our ice cream to the evil oppressors in their own apartheid state, one that was founded on genocide and ethnic cleansing and one that exists to this day on stolen Palestinian land. But we will not sell our ice cream to these evil oppressors who live in illegal settlements in other portions of equally stolen land.”

How righteous. How consistent. How just.

Had I not given up eating Ben & Jerry’s ice cream 7 years ago (for health reasons, along with lots of other foods I dropped), I would be losing my taste about now.

The responses to Ben & Jerry’s announcement have been as predictable as they have been telling.

From the Israeli side, the new prime minister Napthali Bennett said, “There are many ice cream brands, but only one Jewish state.”

Israelis can do without the ice cream but not without their state.

Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted, “Now we Israelis know which ice cream NOT to buy.”

Well said, sir.

From the anti-Israel side, the BDS movement tweeted, “Following years of #BDS campaigns @benandjerrys has announced it will end sales of its ice cream in Israel’s illegal settlements on stolen Palestinian land.

We warmly welcome their decision but call on Ben & Jerry’s to end all operations in apartheid Israel.

#BDSsuccess”

In other words, “This is a good step in the right direction, but if you really want to do the right thing – and be assured we will keep pressuring you until you – you must stop doing any business with evil Israel.”

A fuller statement from the BDS movement (which stands for boycott, divestment, and sanctions) said this: “After years of pressure from activists, Ben & Jerry’s announced it will not renew its licensing agreement with its Israeli licensee, who is involved in selling the ice cream in illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

“The BDS movement welcomes Ben & Jerry’s decision as a decisive step towards ending the company’s complicity in Israel’s occupation and violations of Palestinian rights.

“Ben & Jerry’s, a leading socially responsible international company, is finally bringing its policy on Israel’s regime of oppression against Palestinians in line with its progressive positions on Black Lives Matter and other justice struggles. We hope Ben & Jerry’s has understood that, in harmony with its social justice commitments, there can be no business as usual with apartheid Israel.”

All, clear, BDS.

The Jewish people in Israel have created an apartheid state on stolen land. No business as usual with them. Not until they remove the protection barrier designed to keep out murderous terrorists. Not until they retreat to pre-1967 (= suicidal, indefensible borders). And not until they allow all Palestinian “refugees” to return to their homeland.

In other words, BDS will exist until Israel is no more, since the demands of the movement, if fully implemented, would result in the end of the Jewish state.

Why then is Ben & Jerry’s only pulling its ice cream from the “illegal settlements” rather than from the nation as a whole? Why allow those evil Israelis, those apartheid genocidal monsters, to enjoy these sumptuous treats in the luxury of their homes in West Jerusalem or their restaurants in Tel Aviv?

And if the ice cream will not be sold in the “OPT,” does that mean that the Palestinians living nearby will not be able to buy it either? Or that those of them whose jobs involve the distribution of the ice cream will be hurt economically by the boycott?

As for these last two questions, I’m simply putting them up for discussion, since the official announcement is lacking in details. But one thing is sure: a good case can be made for the fact that the BDS movement actually hurts the Palestinians more than it helps them. (For a strong, anti-BDS statement from Palestinian activist Bassam Eid, see here.)

Of course, there are other reasons not to be impressed with Ben & Jerry’s “righteous” stand, not the least of which is the company’s contractual agreement with Unilever.

As explained on the Washington Free Beacon, “The most common expression of anti-Semitism on the left is the application of double standards to Jews and the Jewish state.

“Look no further than Ben & Jerry’s partnership with Unilever, which acquired the ice cream company in 2000. There is no comparison between Israeli policy in the West Bank and the practices of the world’s greatest human rights abusers. Unilever happily does business everywhere from occupied Northern Cyprus to occupied Tibet and Xinjiang, home to Uyghur concentration camps. We won’t hold our breath for the ice cream boycott of China or Russia. But hey, there are no Jews in Xinjiang.”

Exactly.

As a lover of God and a lover of justice, I, too, want to see the fair and equal treatment of the Palestinians along with the safety and thriving of the Jewish state of Israel.

That’s why I so reject the incoherent and hypocritical policy decision of Ben & Jerry’s.

This article was originally published at Townhall.com.

If you have logged on to Netflix, Amazon, and other places recently, you have probably seen some of corporate America’s virtue signaling via banners in support of Black Lives Matter. By itself, it is a powerful slogan which no one can disagree with, even if you’d prefer to say all lives matter. However, there’s more to this than just a slogan.

The organization Black Lives Matter has some very specific goals and views that many casual observers may not know: it was founded to dramatically change America, and its leaders have not been shy about where they stand. Here are just a few of their policy positions with a couple of my comments in parentheses.

• Black Lives Matter supports abortion. It states: “We deserve and thus we demand reproductive justice that gives us autonomy over our bodies and our identities while ensuring that our children and families are supported, safe, and able to thrive.” (Aborted babies don’t thrive nor are they safe. Black babies are disproportionately terminated by the abortion industry which has racist roots stemming from Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood.)

• Black Lives Matter supports the radical LGBT agenda. It states: “We foster a queer-affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.” (Two of the three founders of BLM describe themselves as “queer,” a rather radical term for a homosexual activist.)

• Black Lives Matter opposes the traditional nuclear family which is a vital sociological part of overcoming crime and poverty. It states: “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.” (Villages without fathers are poor [literally] substitutes for communities with intact families.)

• Black Lives Matter supports reparations. It states: “Reparations for full and free access for all Black people (including undocumented and currently and formerly incarcerated people) to lifetime education…retroactive forgiveness of student loans, and support for lifetime learning programs.”

• Black Lives Matter supports the abolishment of police. It states: “We believe that prisons, police and all other institutions that inflict violence on Black people must be abolished…”

• Black Lives Matter claims to oppose racism, but it is an organization with anti-Semitic leanings. In 2016 BLM adopted derogatory policy statements about Israel. It described the nation of Israel as an “apartheid state” committing “genocide” and supports the boycott, divest and sanction (BDS) movement against Israel. BLM opposes any support of Israel by the United States government.

• Black Lives Matter’s activism is helping the presidential campaign of Joe Biden. If one goes to the BLM website and chooses to donate, he is redirected to a site hosted by ActBlue and prompted with the message: “We appreciate your support of the movement and our ongoing fight to end state-sanctioned violence, liberate Black people, and end white supremacy forever.” Joe Biden is the top beneficiary of ActBlue’s fundraising efforts.

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.

Last week ten lawmakers from the Jewish Caucus in Springfield sponsored a resolution condemning Illinois Family Action (IFA) and Illinois Family Institute (IFI) for engaging in what they call “hate speech,” because IFA compared the abortion holocaust to the Jewish Holocaust. Titled “Illinois Family Action-Hate Speech” (HJR 55), the resolution uses subjective hyperbole, disreputable sources and unreasonable inferences that make the alleged offense seem overtly sinister.

If you want an exhaustive, well-argued refutation of the resolution, read “Left-Wing Partisans File Stunning Resolution Against Illinois Family.” HJR 55 is stunning for all the reasons that author Laurie Higgins identifies but also because of its glaring omission: any mention of abortion, the topic of the article that started it all.

There are always hazards when invoking the Holocaust, not least of which is overstating the parallel to a current situation. But that’s not the case here. It is indisputable that the Nazis dehumanized an entire class of human beings defined solely by their ethnoreligious heritage, then rounded them up and shipped them off to be exterminated with lethal efficiency in death camps across Europe.

It’s also indisputable that abortion providers—most notably Planned Parenthood—are also in the extermination business. They and their enablers—most notably regressive Democrats, who increasingly champion infanticide—have dehumanized an entire class of human beings defined solely by their stage of development in situ.

One significant difference between the Jewish Holocaust and our modern holocaust is that abortion clinics don’t have to round up babies and send them to a centralized abortion mill. Instead, Planned Parenthood has conveniently dotted the country with more than 600 of their own little death camps for easy access. It’s the children’s own mothers who—whether they gleefully “shout their abortion” or enter a clinic in desperation—play the role of Hitler’s Schutzstaffel.

The parallels between the two holocausts, made so often as to be in danger of becoming cliché, are strong and obvious—except to the willfully blind.

So why the extraordinary step of a resolution in the Illinois House condemning the comparison? Just this: by making the comparison, Illinois Family conferred personhood on the pro-choicers’ blob of tissue. IFI re-humanized them. The resolution’s assertion that IFI is “recklessly comparing those who disagree with their extreme agenda to Nazis” can only be true if babies aren’t human.

The resolution is a naked halogen bulb blinding observers to their real objective, which is to intimidate and shame IFI into submission. Accusations of unspecified threats, anti-Semitism, “hate speech,” “bigotry,” “homophobia” and “extreme rhetoric” are followed by a call for “a formal investigation” into such speech and asking the Secretary of State to suspend IFI’s lobbying credentials.

One of the resolution’s co-sponsors, State Representative Jonathan Carroll (D-Northbrook), took to Twitter to express his outrage. “This is hate speech and I demand a retraction. Comparing Democrats to Nazis to to [sic] promote your agenda is disgraceful.” He was later quoted as saying, “We call on the Illinois State Police to do a full investigation of these incidents.”

To summarize: the all-Democrat Jewish Caucus of the Illinois House of Representatives has circled the wagons and called for reinforcements because they don’t like a commonly-used analogy comparing the killing of 61,000,000 babies (and counting) to the killing of 6,000,000 Jews—and allegedly fear that they will now be the victims of violence. To address the threat, they are summoning the power of the state to crush IFI.

How very Hitler-esque.

Meanwhile, the State of Illinois is circling the drain. We are the least fiscally solvent state, but pay the highest state and local taxes in the country; we are the third most corrupt state in the nation and boast the worst-in-nation pension crisis; we’re unlikely to successfully weather a recession, we have one of the worst home foreclosure rates in the nation, and we lead the country in number of residents fleeing the state.

If regressives get their way, they’ll also bestow on Illinois the distinction of having the most radical abortion laws in the land. (We’re number one! We’re number one!)

Instead of wasting their time and taxpayer money weaponizing the state to kick around a tiny pro-family organization that enjoys First Amendment protections, how about getting busy fixing the national embarrassment that the land of Lincoln has become?

Instead of indoctrinating five freshman legislators on the finer points of virtue signaling (“Hate has no home here,” right, Rep. Sara Feigenholtz?), how about challenging Jonathan Carroll, Daniel Didech, Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, Yehiel Kalish, Karina Villa, Anna Moeller and Bob Morgan to balance a budget by reining in spending? Instead of demonstrating knee jerk outrage, how about demanding an investigation into how the most corrupt big city in the nation let Jussie “O.J.” Smollett skate after slandering half the country’s citizens and lying about it?

Regressives and their junior commies in the Illinois House have more pressing issues to deal with than some petty disagreement about whether legal abortion is like the Jewish Holocaust or not. Judging by the March 20 turnout to protest the proposed abortion legislation that “overtaxed Capitol security,” there are a lot of people who agree that it is.

The Hebrew prophet Isaiah wrote, “Woe to those who call good evil and evil good, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” (Isaiah 5:20). Jewish legislators should understand better than anyone the evil of taking innocent life. Rescind the resolution and do what you were elected to do: rescue Illinois.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to contact your state senator and representative to ask them to reject this dangerous resolution. Ask them to vote down HJR 55 and the unprecedented and tyrannical action being taken by extreme partisans in the Illinois General Assembly.

Read more:

Left-Wing Partisans File Stunning Resolution Against Illinois Family (Laurie Higgins)

Truth and Love or Hate? (Rev. Calvin Lindstrom)

SPOTLIGHT: Illinois’ Abortion Holocaust (Podcast)

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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