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Ice cream lovers – and the land of milk and honey – traveled to a Ben & Jerry’s on the Upper West Side on Thursday to save the store after its parent company’s West Bank sales freeze cooled its markets. results.
Customers hailed owner Joel Gasman’s boldness for taking a stand against the boycott in a Post cover story – and declared his wish to donate to help Israel melt them down.
“I’m trying to celebrate my feelings about the occupation with my support from a local businessman,” said a customer in her sixties at the 104th Street and Broadway store.
“This guy who owns the store is a really good neighborhood person… he’s just trying to make a living.”
Shaya Adonolem, a 30-year-old nurse munching on a New York Super Fudge Chunk cone, praised Gasman for being “able to stand up and have a voice.”
Sales at the Manhattan store plummeted after Ben & Jerry’s imposed a boycott of Israel-occupied areas last week – but they rebounded 10% after the Post’s report on Thursday, Gasman told The Post.
“It has been very heartwarming,” Gasman said. “We had a family from New Jersey today, they drove – paid two tolls – and said they weren’t going to any other Ben and Jerry’s.”
Gasman, who is Jewish like many of his customers, said the store was hit by a slew of negative comments online from people who had never been there after Ben & Jerry’s announced it would cease to sell ice cream in the “Occupied Palestinian Territory” on July 19.
Other customers have canceled catering events or simply stopped visiting, he said.
Internationally, the move sparked a backlash from Israelis and Jewish groups, some of whom called the move anti-Semitic.
Gasman first spoke about the move last week on Facebook, saying it left a bad taste in his mouth – and pledged to donate 10% of the proceeds to educational causes in Israel.
72-year-old Joseph Telushkin said on Thursday that he stopped by the store to support Gasman’s pro-Israel policies.
“I am very happy that they made this decision [to donate] because there is a name for people who don’t want to do business with Jews, and the name is anti-Semitic, ”he said. “So that’s very impressive.”
Despite the surge of support, Gasman said the store’s future is still uncertain.
“We don’t really know what we have in store for the future,” he said. “At least I got my point across.”
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