{"id":1426127,"date":"2022-04-08T16:45:49","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T20:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1426127"},"modified":"2022-04-08T16:45:51","modified_gmt":"2022-04-08T20:45:51","slug":"lawyers-for-ben-jerrys-effectively-concede-opponents-central-argument-in-israel-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/lawyers-for-ben-jerrys-effectively-concede-opponents-central-argument-in-israel-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawyers for Ben &#038; Jerry\u2019s \u2018Effectively Concede\u2019 Opponent\u2019s Central Argument in Israel Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Flawyers-for-ben-jerrys-effectively-concede-opponents-central-argument-in-israel-lawsuit%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1426127&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>Ben &#038; Jerry&#8217;s and parent company Unilever &#8220;effectively concede&#8221; that they cut ties with an Israeli contractor because he refused to participate in an illegal boycott of Israel, the contractor&#8217;s lawyers argued in federal court on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>In a brief filed last week, Ben &#038; Jerry&#8217;s called a claim from Israeli ice cream distributor Avi Zinger that he was pressured to break the law a &#8220;side show&#8221;\u2014but didn&#8217;t deny that it cut ties with him due to his refusal to participate in the boycott.<\/p>\n<p>Ben &#038; Jerry&#8217;s and Unilever &#8220;effectively concede that the only reason for not renewing [Zinger&#8217;s] license is [his] refusal to engage in illegal conduct. They do not dispute [Zinger&#8217;s] understanding of the Israeli and American laws and policies that Defendants&#8217; demand would have forced [him] to violate,&#8221; Zinger&#8217;s lawyers argued in a rebuttal brief on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Zinger&#8217;s lawyers said this bolstered their client&#8217;s allegation that the company was retaliating against him for refusing to commit an illegal action\u2014an argument they say is &#8220;central&#8221; to their lawsuit.<\/p>\n<p>The ice cream maker and Unilever are being sued by Zinger, who was Ben &#038; Jerry&#8217;s sole distributor in Israel for 35 years before the company told him last summer it would not renew his contract. Zinger said Ben &#038; Jerry&#8217;s cut him off after he declined to boycott sales in Israeli neighborhoods in the West Bank due to his concerns that doing so would violate U.S. and Israeli anti-boycott and anti-discrimination laws.<\/p>\n<p>The lawsuit is the latest in a string of legal and public relations challenges for Ben &#038; Jerry&#8217;s and Unilever, following the ice cream company&#8217;s decision last year to boycott Israeli neighborhoods in the West Bank and its\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/international\/article-695621\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">objections<\/a>\u00a0to U.S. military support for Ukraine. Multiple U.S. states have withdrawn pension fund investments from Unilever due to the boycott.<\/p>\n<p>Attorneys for Ben &#038; Jerry&#8217;s and Unilever have argued that the company had &#8220;an absolute right not to renew&#8221; its contract with Zinger, calling the lawsuit a &#8220;contract dispute and nothing more.&#8221; One of Zinger&#8217;s attorneys, Brandeis Center president Alyza Lewin, said the issue of whether Ben &#038; Jerry&#8217;s asked Zinger to break the law is part of the &#8220;central legal doctrine of the case.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Unilever&#8217;s unlawful demand that Avi Zinger and [his company American Quality Products] discriminate against customers based on their residence isn&#8217;t a \u2018side show&#8217;\u2014it&#8217;s the main show,&#8221; said Lewin in a statement on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;By insisting Zinger violate Israel and U.S. anti-discrimination and anti-boycott laws and public policy, Unilever violated the Consent Decree and License Agreement it signed and unlawfully attempted to coerce [American Quality Products] to violate laws both parties agreed to obey.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Zinger told the <em>Washington Free Beacon<\/em> last month that he was in &#8220;shock&#8221; when the company told him last summer that it would not renew his contract. He said the company had buckled to a decade-long pressure campaign from anti-Israel activists to boycott the Jewish state.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was with Ben &#038; Jerry&#8217;s for over 35 years. \u2026 We always got compliments,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Because [the company] had this situation, they had so much pressure, they just dumped me. People who were friends of mine for so many years.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The court could call a hearing on the lawsuit as early as April 12, according to the Brandeis Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ben &#038; Jerry&#8217;s and parent company Unilever &#8220;effectively concede&#8221; that they cut ties with an Israeli contractor because he refused to participate in an illegal boycott of Israel, the contractor&#8217;s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1426127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1426127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1426127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1426127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1426127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}