We have commented previously on the fad of “land acknowledgments” that are currently the rage on college campuses and at city council meetings in progressive outposts like Burlington, Madison, etc. I’ll repeat, for the record, why land acknowledgements are so unserious that they can hardly be dignified even as virtue-signaling:
I want to ask: “If the land the university sits on rightfully belongs to an Indian tribe, why don’t we give it back?” At the very least, justice demands that Indians be compensated for the wrongful expropriation of their land. Failing that, how about some back rent? Or current rent? We’re talking justice here. If nothing else, at least allow the local Indian tribe to open a casino in the middle of campus, and call it “ongoing reparations.”
A group of Israeli students has employed a variation of this argument to hit back at Ben and Jerry’s, the artery-clogging health hazard company that wanted to ban sales of its product in Israel because of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. In what could be our “feel good story of the day,” the New York Post reports:
Israeli students claim that ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s is “illegally” occupying land in Vermont that once belonged to a Abenaki native American tribe and should practice what it preaches and immediately evacuate the properties.
A cheeky letter sent to B&J — signed by more than 1,000 Israeli students and academics affiliated with Students for Justice in America — accuses B&J of of hypocrisy.
“We have concluded that your company’s occupation of the Abenaki lands is illegal and we believe it is wholly inconsistent with the stated values that Ben & Jerry’s purports to maintain. Ironically, in July of the last year you announced that you would discontinue the sale of your products in Israel because you object to the Jewish State allegedly occupying Palestinian territories,” the letter to B&J’s chairperson, Anuradha Mittal said.
Best sentence in the story: “Ben and Jerry’s speak with a forked tongue.” And as one of our readers put it in a note: Revenge, like ice cream, is a dish best served cold.
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