US businessman says arrested for protesting injustice, Gaza war at Senate

The co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s says he was arrested for protesting the injustice that US government is doing to the nation and the globe by refusing to solve domestic health problems while funding Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

Ben Cohen made the remarks in an opinion piece published in Newsweek on Monday, five days after he was arrested during a protest in the US Senate over Washington’s military aid to the occupying regime, whose brutal onslaught has created a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

He said the first injustice that the US government is committing is local as it is refusing to replace lead pipes that are poisoning communities’ drinking water.

“The second injustice is global. It’s our government-funded destruction and slaughter of families living in Gaza. Not only is our government funding genocide; it defends that genocide by attacking the basic American value of free speech. Our government is criminalizing the courageous students who have nonviolently protested this inhumanity, which is being done in our name and with our money,” he added.

“These two things—lead pipes and Gaza—are connected. Every day, our government chooses to buy more bombs instead of replacing lead pipes in America.”

Cohen also said that ending lead poisoning in the US would cost $45 billion, noting that the figure is less than 5 percent of the annual Pentagon budget. 

Describing the Pentagon as the Department of War, he said it is “the biggest, most wasteful, most corrupt department in our government, one that accounts for over half of the entire discretionary budget.”

The US, he said, has spent more than $22 billion in the past two years to provide bombs that are slaughtering and displacing Palestinians.

The businessman disrupted a hearing of the health, education, labor and pensions committee while Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr was testifying.

Video footage posted by Cohen on social media shows him being detained by police officers with his hands behind his back.

“Congress kills poor kids in Gaza by buying bombs and pays for it by kicking kids off Medicaid in the US,” Cohen said after someone asked why he was being arrested and escorted away.

“Congress and the senators need to ease the siege, they need to let food into Gaza. They need to let food to starving kids.”

Police said Cohen was charged with crowding, obstructing or incommoding, a misdemeanor punishable by 90 days in jail, a $500 fine, or both.

Israel launched its genocide in Gaza on October 7, 2023, after the Hamas resistance group carried out the historic Al-Aqsa Flood operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

More than 19 months into its aggression, the Tel Aviv regime has failed to achieve its declared objectives in Gaza despite killing at least 53,486 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring 121,398 others.