Zohran Mamdani urged Ben & Jerry to boycott Israeli settlements
Democratic socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani claimed he personally urged the co-founder of Ben & Jerry's to stop selling ice cream in the West Bank — a month before the company announced the anti-Israel boycott, according to a recently resurfaced video.
Mamdani, a Queens assemblyman who supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against the Jewish state, recalled meeting Ben & Jerry's co-founder Jerry Greenfield at an unrelated June 2, 2021 press conference.
'I told Jerry I was disappointed in the company's work in Israel,' Mamdani said in the video interview, posted on Facebook at the time by the Muslim Democratic Club of New York.
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5 NYC Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was surrounded by about 15 supporters as Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed Mamdani on June 17, 2025 inside Sami's Kebab located at 35-57 Crescent Street, Astoria Queens.
Paul Martinka
'Ben & Jerry's sells their ice cream in Israeli settlements. They have partnerships with Israeli supermarkets that have been found by the United Nations to be profiting off the occupation,' Mamdani says in the clip, titled 'Teach In: Collective Liberation from Minneapolis to Palestine.'
He recalled telling Greenfield that while the ice cream maker had a strong record supporting 'social justice in America,' it was 'completely silent and frankly complicit about injustice in Palestine.'
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'I want to see consistency in these values. I want to see you stop selling in Israeli settlements,' he said he told Greenfield.
'Cancel your licensing agreements with all Israeli supermarkets that are profiting from these settlements. Have consistency about justice.'
The following month, Ben & Jerry's announced it would move to stop selling ice cream in Israeli-occupied territories, citing inconsistency with its values — triggering backlash, shareholder divestment and legal disputes with parent company Unilever.
5 Jerry Greenfield and Ben Cohen, co-founders of Ben & Jerry's, partnered with MoveOn to hand out free ice cream at Franklin Square in Philadelphia during their Scoop The Vote tour on September 16, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Getty Images for MoveOn
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Pro-Israel activists said Tuesday that Mamdani's years-old push for the ice cream boycott was just another example of antisemitism.
'It's further evidence that Mamandi is not just an antisemite — he's a virulent antisemite,' said former CUNY board of trustee member Jeffrey Wiesenfeld.
Brooklyn Assemblyman Kalman Yeger, an Orthodox Jew who is backing ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo for mayor, said, 'Zohran didn't invent Jew hatred but he sure likes to profit from it.'
New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli announced that he pulled $111 million in investments out of Unilver because of Ben & Jerry's West Bank boycott — one of many state officials to take similar action against the parent company.
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5 A motorist drives past a closed 'Ben & Jerry's' ice-cream shop in the Israeli city of Yavne, about 30 kilometers south of Tel Aviv, on July 23, 2021.
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Cuomo, now the frontrunner in the Democratic mayoral primary facing off against a surging Mamdani, had signed an executive order barring state government from doing business with any entity that engaged in BDS activities to harm Israel.
His successor, Gov. Kathy Hochul, renewed the executive order and threatened to sever ties with Unilever over the boycott.
Meanwhile, City Comptroller Brad Lander, who is also running for the Democratic mayoral nomination, has been criticized for divesting pension funds from Israel government bonds.
5 An Israeli flag is set atop a delivery truck outside US ice-cream maker Ben & Jerry's factory in Be'er Tuvia, on July 21, 2021.
AFP via Getty Images
Last month, Ben & Jerry's stoked controversy again after its independent board issued a statement labeling the conflict in Gaza a 'genocide' — placing renewed strain on its already tense relationship with Unilever.
Mamdani, in his 2021 interview, recalled how he had pulled aside co-owner Greenfield to push the West Bank ban following an event where he and other lawmakers advocated for ending qualified immunity for police officers sued for civil rights violations.
Elsewhere in the interview, Mamdani told activists to 'demand' that politicians and community leaders back BDS, warning that 'it is not enough' to merely voice support — there 'must be consequences for speaking up in favor of apartheid.'
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5 Protesters demonstrate against Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream at the New York Public Library on August 12, 2021 in New York City.
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Mamdani's campaign didn't comment on the resurfaced clip Tuesday.
Shortly after getting elected to the New York State Assembly in 2020, Mamdani had also said Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island should be boycotted because of its partnership with an Israel-based school — Technion University, The Post recently reported.
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'If you were to look at the lens of BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] and how it applies here in New York City, you would say that Cornell-Technion is something you would be talking about,' Mamdani said in the 'Talking Palestine' podcast with Sumaya Awad.
'Technion University is an Israeli University that has helped to develop a lot of weapons technology used by the IDF [Israel Defense Force],' said Mamdani, as he voiced support for economic boycotts against Israel.
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