B&J Isn’t Selling “Free Palestine” Ice Cream, But Will End Israel Deal

A widely-circulated image of a “Free Palestine” tub of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is faked, and was made using ChatGPT.

The picture shows a carton of ice cream with two smiling children wearing kaffiyehs, and standing next to a plate of fish. Along with other faked images of pro-Palestine Ben & Jerry’s packaging, including one labelled “From the River to Sea”, it’s been doing the rounds on social media – and attracting both approval and outrage.

However, the image was in fact created and posted by pro-Palestinian Instagram user @iampocoloco.

I just had ChatGPT create this because I thought it’d look sweet,” he wrote.

Fact-checking organization Polifact has run the image through programs that identify whether images have been generated with artificial intelligence. And, it found, WasItAI concluded that it was created with AI, with Hive Moderation finding that the change it was AI-generated was 98.2%.

Meanwhile, fact-checker NewsGuard has checked through Ben & Jerry’s menu of flavors and social media accounts, without finding any flavors referring to Palestine or Israel.

However, this didn’t stop internet users sharing the image. One, pro-Israel X user @VividProwess, asked “Is this real? Wow. Shame on Ben & Jerry’s”, and received 484,000 views and 10,000 likes in one day, also posting “Ben & Jerry’s openly supporting terrorism now.”

Meanwhile, TikTok user shewritestales wrote: “The poets and novelists in Gaza – from beneath the fire, the rubble and the ruins – extend their deepest thanks to you. Ben & Jerry’s, the human company, we are proud of your support and the image you’ve raised that cries out on our behalf.”

Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is sold in Israel by a completely independent firm, Ben & Jerry’s Israel, which took over full local ownership of the brand in 2022.

However, said Ben & Jerry’s in as statement last week, “We have been working to change this, and so we have informed our licensee that we will not renew the license agreement when it expires at the end of next year.”

It added: “We’re a values-led company with a long history of advocating for human rights, and economic and social justice. We believe it is inconsistent with our values for our product to be present within an internationally recognized illegal occupation.”

Ben & Jerry’s co-founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield have previously spoken out against the conflict and criticized the humanitarian conditions in Gaza. Last year, the firm sued its parent company, Unilever, claiming that Unilever had attempted to silence it.

The company said it does plan to stay in Israel through a different, unspecified arrangement.