Washington (AFP) – Ben Cohen, co‑founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and a longtime progressive activist, told AFP he was speaking for millions of Americans outraged by the “slaughter” in Gaza after his removal from a US Senate hearing on Wednesday.
Cohen, 74, was among a group of protesters who startled Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. by interrupting his testimony about his department’s budget proposal.
Shouting that “Congress pays for bombs to kill children in Gaza” while lawmakers move to slash Medicaid – the health insurance program for low‑income families – the businessman and philanthropist was placed in handcuffs by Capitol Police.
He urged senators to press Israel to let food reach “starving kids” as he was led away.
“It got to a point where we had to do something,” Cohen said in an interview after his release, calling it “scandalizing” that the US approved “$20 billion worth of bombs” for Israel even as social programs are squeezed back home.
“The majority of Americans hate what’s going on, what our country is doing with our money and in our name,” he said.
US public opinion toward Israel has become increasingly unfavorable, especially among Democrats, according to a Pew Research Center Poll last month.
Beyond the spending, Cohen framed the issue as a moral and “spiritual” breach.
“Condoning and being complicit in the slaughter of tens of thousands of people strikes at the core of us as far as human beings and what our country stands for,” he said, pointing to the fact that the United States pours roughly half its discretionary budget into war‑related spending.
“If you spent half of that money making lives better around the world, I think there’d be a whole lot less friction.”
Invoking a parenting analogy, he added: “You go to a three-year-old who goes around hitting people and you say ‘Use your words.’ There’s issues between countries but you can work them out without killing.”
A longtime critic of Israeli policy, Cohen last year joined prominent Jewish figures in an open letter opposing the pro‑Israel lobby AIPAC. “I understand that I have a higher profile than most people and so I raise my voice, it gets heard. But I need you and others to understand that I speak for millions of people who feel the same way.”
If your enemies are upset at you, that means you’re doing something right.
Keep fighting the good fight.
Gigachad.
Thank you for posting this. I have never felt hate for a race of people like I hate what Israel has done. All the crap about their history is turgid to me at this point and I have absolutely zero sympathy for any of them now. As humans sure, but as Jews, that identity is only tied to monstrous atrocities and killing of innocent people. If I were a Jew I would disown that heritage and history like if my grandparents were Nazis. I have no sympathy for Nazis just the same. Starving people to death is worse than the concentration camps of WWII. If you want anything to do with a people that act like that under the same religious banner, fuck you. It is only a prejudice social network like all other religions. It is a collective imaginary friend that real people use as an excuse to kill. Grow up and leave the dark ages of human primitivism and stop the stupidity cycle or your children’s children will kill just the same regardless of your present perspective. It is ultimately a cowardly continuation of the familiar and inability to escape the things you learned and accepted when you were a gullible child.
There are Jewish sects that believe israel shouldn’t exist yet and damn what you said just sounds racist.
Yup, I hate the Nazi race, and I’m proud of that. Fuck Nazis and all murderers of innocent people, and all labels used to justify such behavior in a disordered mind. I practice what I preach. I abandoned my toxic mysticism based heritage I was born into that is used for murder. It isn’t racist. It is simply doing the right thing. If you cannot see that, you are the disordered racist.
