Ben Cohen amongst seven folks arrested after interrupting testimony by US Well being Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.
The cofounder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and 6 different folks have been arrested after disrupting a United States Senate listening to to protest Washington’s help for Israel’s conflict in Gaza.
The arrests of Ben Cohen and the opposite protestors on Wednesday got here as US Well being Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr was giving testimony to lawmakers on his shake-up of federal well being businesses.
“Congress kills poor children in Gaza by shopping for bombs and pays for it by kicking children off Medicaid within the US,” Cohen stated as he was escorted away by police.
The seven had been arrested on costs of “crowding, obstructing or incommoding”, assault of a police officer or resisting arrest, US Capitol Police stated in a press release.
Police stated Cohen was solely charged with crowding, obstructing or incommoding, a misdemeanor punishable by 90 days in jail, a $500 effective, or each.
Cohen and his Ben & Jerry’s cofounder Jerry Greenfield are well-known for his or her progressive activism, together with opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza and the occupied West Financial institution.
In an interview with former Fox Information host Tucker Carlson earlier this month, Cohen, who’s Jewish, stated the US had a “unusual relationship” with Israel that concerned Washington “supplying weapons for its genocide”.
“Proper now, what it means to be American is that we’re the world’s largest arms exporter, we have now the most important navy on the earth, we help the slaughter of individuals in Gaza,” Cohen stated.
“If any individual protests the slaughter of individuals in Gaza, we arrest them. What does our nation stand for?”
In 2021, Ben & Jerry’s introduced that it might now not permit its Israeli licensee to promote its ice cream within the West Financial institution and Gaza, saying that doing so could be “inconsistent with our values”.
A US choose the next yr rejected Ben & Jerry’s bid for an injunction to dam the gross sales after discovering that the corporate had failed to point out that it might undergo irreparable hurt.
Ben & Jerry’s, which was based in 1978 within the US state of Vermont, and its father or mother firm, Unilever, later settled their authorized dispute on undisclosed phrases.
In March, Ben & Jerry’s filed a lawsuit accusing Unilever of firing chief government David Stever over his help for the model’s “social mission”.
Greater than 51,000 folks have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its conflict, following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, assaults on the nation.
