The Young Turks - Ben & Jerry's Co-Founder Fights To END Israel's War In Gaza

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen was dragged out of a Trump administration hearing by multiple security guards for protesting the war on Gaza. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. All right, back on the Young Turks. We're going to have a fun interview for you guys in a second, but first let's start it this way. R&A! Members of the audience are reminded disruptions will not be permitted while the committee conducts his business. Capital police are asked to remove the individuals from the hearing room.

All right, Ben Cohen, the man you just saw there joins us now. joins us now. Ben, how are you? How you doing? Good. They sprung me. I had some really nice sellies, but I made it out. All right, I'm going to ask you about obviously why you did it and, you know, what you think U.S. policy should be. But first, some fun. We do have a poll up on t.com on what's everybody's favorite, Ben and Jerry's flavor, obviously. We'll get back to that a little bit later. Hold on. We'll get to it. But I want to ask you, yeah, did you spend some time in lockup? And do you have a nom de gore?

Well, I spent some time in the police holding room. I don't think I was actually in an official cell. I did have some really good fellow, fellow, fellow, uh, detainees. Yeah. No, don't have a number bigger. It's, uh, just old Ben. Okay, because when I did it for civil disobedience on money and politics, they asked me if I had a, a gang nickname and I was like, yes, L. Hefe. I like that.

Yeah. All right, now on to serious stuff. And your protest was about very serious matters. So you were protesting what we're doing in Gaza. So tell me why you did it in the first place, and then we'll get to the rest. You know, you just keep on hearing more and more about all these. people, we've been killing, women, children, old people, men, and all the destruction. You know, all the universities have been destroyed, the schools have been destroyed, the hospitals

have been destroyed, the water plants have been destroyed, 90% of the housing has been destroyed. And it's all being done with bombs that the U.S. taxpayers are. pays for and our government just gives as gifts to Israel to do this genocide and kill all these people. And I couldn't take it anymore. I had to do something about it. I had to make the strongest statement that a citizen can make. And that's to commit civil disobedience. And that's what I did. Yeah. So Ben, I, I yeah, go on. So Ben, you know, the supporters of Israel and and supporters of funding Israel through the United States will say, no, no, no, Israel didn't do any of that.

Hamas made them do it. Hamas was using human shields. So they had no choice but to destroy all of Gaza. What do you say to that? I don't believe it. I mean, you could say the same thing about, you know, the U.S. I mean, we have a military airport right in the middle of our city of Burlington. And if some enemy wanted to, you know, bomb it. They'd end up killing a lot of civilians. I don't think that Israel had a right to wipe out an entire population. I think that Israel had a right to defend itself, but this is not about defending itself. This is about genocide of innocent people. Yeah. So, Ben, a lot of folks in the Jewish community get upset when people use the word genocide.

So now, your background is originally Jewish. So what's, have you gotten a lot of blowback from that community or not? You know, I've certainly gotten blowback. I'd say I've gotten a lot more support than I, I have a blowback. I mean, you can call it, you know, if you don't want to call it genocide, call it slaughter, call it murder, you know, it's all the same. I mean, I believe that when a bomb falls on somebody, it's no different than a terrorist leaving a suitcase bomb somewhere and you know it's no different than ending up uh kills in a gas chamber it's you know the idea that you can bomb your way to peace is absurd yeah so because uh you know and i was

in a debate with on pierce morgan show just earlier today and i was talking about how hamas killed these 36 children and and then there was the sexual assaults and the terrible things that Hamas did. I said, okay, I agree, that's terrible, terrible, right? 36 kids, Palestinians have had over 16,000 children killed. And so, and they make it seem like, oh, Hamas did it with their bare hands, so that's bad. But when you drop a bomb, there's basically two ways that people die, including, like you said, grandmothers and babies and children, either concrete falls on their head and crushes their skull.

or they get lit on fire by the bomb. How is that any better? So I feel like the media sanitizes it by just saying, oh, there's bombs and then 16,000 casualties and, you know, human shields. And then next year you know, you don't realize. No, no, no, no. They lit people on fire with those bombs.

Yeah. You know, the media just doesn't seem to cover people done. and people being mutilated and what they like to cover is, you know, pictures of fighter jets and, you know, the fireworks of bombs exploding, but they don't show you what happens to the people that the bombs exploded on. And, you know, I believe that Americans care about people. I I think that, you know, Americans have no desire to use our money to kill men, women and children, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, people just like them. It doesn't get us anywhere. You know, I mean, spending our money on providing bombs for people to go kill other people is a horrible thing for our national spirit, the soul of our country.

You know, I think the reality is that Congress has been bought off by donations, political donations, and lobbyists. You know, my understanding is that APAC is the highest contributor of political donations, otherwise known as political bribery, this cycle. Yeah, that's right, AIPAC in this cycle was the number one donor. So Ben, to that point, again, it brings in religion because some people say, oh, that's a anti-Semitic trope to say that APAC is buying our politicians. But big farmer buys our politicians, big oil buys our politicians, things as mundane as big sugar by our politicians. So and this is, and I say this every time, this has nothing to do with religion, some

of the best fighters for peace like Ben are Jewish and and so many others that that are trying so hard to get Israel to stop and get America to stop financing it. So this I this basically in my mind trick the people you use to say, oh, you can't criticize APEC. You can criticize the other lobbies, but you can't criticize APEC because then you're saying that, you know, you're using an anti-Semitic trope, what's your response to that? I mean, I mean, this idea that criticizing Israel is anti-Semitic is absurd. I mean, I mean, I criticize the United States, but I'm not anti-the-United States. I'm anti what they're doing and you know when you criticize Israel you're criticizing what a particular

government the policy of a particular government I mean I want to make it clear that I believe that Israel has a right to exist but it does not have a right to slaughter innocent people Yeah, I don't even if they're saying, well, the only way we can get the bad guys is to slaughter, you know, a few thousand innocent guys. No, that's not allowed. You can't, you can't do that. That's not something that, you know, I think the obviously the world does not condone it. I mean, 150 countries that the UN, every country except eight, you know, has voted. to on a resolution to get Israel to stop the bombing. Yeah. So and now they're talking about starving everybody. Well, I mean recently they said, well, we're not going to starve you to death. We're going to let in, you know, a little bit of food so you can survive. Yeah, it's so look, the analogy I use this, so I'm Turkish. It is it anti-Turkish to criticize the Turkish government? What a preposterous thing to say. Of course.

not, right? So Erdogan right now is killing off democracy in Turkey. That's not an anti-Turkish position to say that, arguably a pro-Turkish position to say that. And to say that, hey, maybe Israel should stop starving children is not an anti-Israel position. It's a position that gets Israel back to sanity and decency and morality and helps Israel, right? Nobody's trying to hurt these countries. We're just saying that their current governments are doing something wrong. And to your point, Ben, if there's a Kurdish terrorist group called PKK, and if they killed 36 Turkish kids, that would be terrible and brutal. Would I then say, okay, then we should kill 16,000 Kurdish kids? No, who would be terrible enough to say that? Who would be inhuman enough to

say that? And unfortunately right now, the answer is the current Israeli government and the current U.S. government that's financing it. So, but now something interesting has happened, Ben. Now, before it was mainly the left wing that was anti-war. And, you know, and your generation started this, right? You guys have been the most principled anti-war group in the country, and it may be in the history of the country, and I love you for it. But interesting allies now, some from the right wing coming in and saying, yeah, we're anti-war too, and we don't want to fund this either. So you went on Tucker Carlson's show to talk about this. So what do you make of that? Some folks on the left say, no, no, no, they're all fake. They don't mean it. Don't encourage them.

Don't go on their shows. Don't normalize them, et cetera. And then some folks say, no, if you've got an ally in the anti-war movement, take it, especially because they're in charge. Where do you come out on that? I think that we need to work with anybody who agrees on a particular issue. So I'm, I'm happy to work with, I don't know, conservatives, Republicans, what else do you have? Conservatives, Republicans, independents, Democrats, libertarians, you know, if we let's find things that we agree on and let's work together on those things. I mean, that's the way to get something done. You know, I would say one of the best allies that I've had in the 30 or 40 years, I've been working on this issue of excessive militarism is Cato, the libertarian organization. They also agree that the U.S. should not be trying to militarily control the world and that we should be spending way, way, way less on our Pentagon budget.

I mean, I'll tell you another guy who thinks that we should be spending way, way less on the Pentagon budget is Steve Bannon. And so what can I say? I finally found something that I agree with the guy on. Yeah, and that used to be called America. You know, so, I mean, your point about the Libertarian Institute, Cato is a terrific one. Probably the best fighter on this issue, maybe the whole country is Dave Smith, and he's libertarian. And so now Dave believes that we should cost Social Security. I vehemently disagree with Dave on Social Security.

And I would say, so what? I'll fight him on that and I'll take his great advocacy for peace on Gaza. I just don't see what the downside is. Like you normalize Dave Smith, he already exists. His followers already find him perfectly normal. So I don't think that there's anything we could do that changes that equation other than take yes for an answer on this. But that gets to the main question here. And this is the hardest one of all, Ben, and I don't know that you have a great answer or anybody has a great answer, but how do we actually stop this, right?

Because for all the allies that we've collected, at the end of the day, the politicians vote, and both the Republican and the Democratic Party have a well-known history of overwhelmingly voting with AIPAC. So how do we actually end this monstrosse? Well, the root the root problem is unlimited money in politics, you know, the Citizens United decision that essentially said that, you know, ultra wealthy people and corporations can donate, quote, donate, I mean, that's legalized bribery, as much money as they want to, to politicians. And, you know, I mean, they're not just doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. They want something for it. So that's the root cause is money in politics and we got to get it out. And, you know, the other thing is that even with money in politics, Bernie Sanders came really close to getting the nomination.

And yeah, and if the Democratic National Committee hadn't been tipping the scales against him, I think he would have got that nomination. And I think he would have won. What people want is none of the above. They don't want politics as usual. They don't want the usual, you know, blow-dried, you know, politically, politically. Political consultant prep people that essentially say a bunch of mush out of their mouths and, you know, don't mean anything. Essentially, Congress has lost its heart and sold its soul to the moneyed interests. And getting big money out of politics is that's the root.

that's that's the root of the problem. Yeah, it's impossible not to like you, Ben. So, so I'm going to ask you about how you use your celebrity for good, right? You did it in this case, you've done it a thousand times. But a lot of celebrities are a little worried about it. And they think, well, you know, it could get blowback. And what if the Republican voters don't like me in their half the country or Democratic voters don't like me or, or pro-Israel, anti-Israel, or pro-Norway, anti-Nor, whatever. right? And they get worried about it. But I think their fears are overblown, but what do I know?

So you've done it your whole life. You've used your celebrity to push worthy causes that help others. Has it cost you big problems or no, people are scared for no reason? No, it has not caused me problems. And, you know, and it's, that's for me personally. And it's interesting, you know, Ben and Jerry's, which is separate from me, you know, take stands on a bunch of different issues. And, you know, I always say, you know, there's no sense taking a stand on an issue if everybody already agrees with it. You know, so by definition, if you're going to take a stand on an issue, it's going to be controversial. And what Ben and Jerry's finds time over time is that as we take stands on more issues, we keep on selling more ice cream. You know, what I've what I think is that it's a 30, 30, 30 situation that 30% of the people really like what we're doing and they buy more ice cream.

30% of them, you know, they're not really paying attention. They don't really care. And 30% of them don't like what we're doing and they buy less ice cream or they don't buy it at all. But the net, the way it nets out is that we end up selling more ice cream. Yeah, look, I would appeal to people's morality, but that doesn't work as well. So listen to Ben, you could be moral. it will actually help you too, okay? So don't worry, celebrities. Get out there. Because

look, Ben, to your point about your cellmates, so there's a lot of people who protested that day and got arrested with you. But you drew attention because you're Ben Kone of Ben and Jerry's. So it's impactful. And so I wish more people would go in that direction. So last thing on the serious topic here. Tell me a little bit about who it was that you went with, who the other folks were and what they were trying to accomplish. Well, the whole event, you know, there was a press conference preceding it that was organized by the Eisenhower Media Network, particularly a woman named Josie, who is a veteran. And she put together, a group of veterans and a group of doctors and religious leaders and myself and a couple of

congresspeople. And we had this press conference about that, the very same issue. And then, you know, some of us went off and went to this committee hearing to protest. And I, you know, I, you know, I got a, you know, in terms of that, that video that went out of me, it was taken by the people at Code Pink. And I got to give them a lot of credit for doing such a good job of taking the video. They were prompting me with questions as we walked down there. And so that's that's kind of how it worked. Some of the other folks that were protesting and disrupting the meeting, their main issue was about AIDS funding that the Health and Human Services Committee had totally cut funding for AIDS and a program called PEPFAR around the world. And people are literally dying as we speak because that funding has been cut.

That was a program that George Bush put in place. And, you know, that's, you know, that's as immoral as providing bombs for Israel to go and kill people by bombing. In this situation, they're killing people by withholding medicine, you know, which is, I mean, the cost is pretty minor compared to the trillion dollars a year that we're spending on preparing to kill millions of people around the world. Yeah, I mean, the Elon must of the world said that they were going to cut the defense budget. Instead, they added $100 to $150 billion, and now it says Ben suggested a trillion dollar defense budget, half of which they can't account for at all. They don't even know where it goes. It's absurd.

It's loaded up with pork. And so, and meanwhile, Ben, of course, they're also going to do a $5 trillion tax cut for corporations and the wealthiest people in the country. So, but they're going to cut funding for malaria and cancer and all these critical things. We, we, our government plays, the people in power, they play with people's lives in a way that is just heartbreaking. So the fact that you went to do something bold about it is just wonderful. We appreciate it. All right. So Ben, we did ask the audience to, you know, as we come to a conclusion here on the series topics, what their favorite flavor was.

And we, you know, we only had four options. Obviously, there's, you guys have a lot. Cherry Garcia, Chunky, Monkey, Americone Dream fish food, and then other. But Ben, we can show it now too. Ben, what's your favorite out of these? If it's any of these. I like Cherry Garcia.

Which one? It's really small on my screen. Which one want? Well, other, because other has an unfair advantage, right? But but let's put it up one more at time real quick to see who won other than that. Oh, it's super close. I don't have my glasses on either. It looks like tied between Chunky Monkey and fish food. Hey, the polling is still open. Go to t.com. You can participate too. Yeah, of those, I would have picked Chunky Monkey. Well, Ben.

Good one for breakfast, you know, bananas, walnuts, milk. milk. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. Breakfast of champions and of me. Okay. All right, Ben, thanks for spreading joy in the world through Ben and Jerry's and thanks for trying to do good in the world through your political activism. We appreciate you, brother. All right. Thank you, Jake. Take care. All right, you too. All right, guys, that's all we have for today. We'll see you tomorrow.