JERUSALEM (JTA) – General Mills announced Tuesday it would be fully divesting from a business venture in Israel that had operated in an East Jerusalem settlement, in a move pro-Palestinian activists celebrated as the result of their campaign against the food conglomerate.
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The Minnesota-based company has operated a Pillsbury frozen-food factory in the Atarot Industrial Zone since 2002, in a joint venture with Israeli investment group Bodan Holdings. In a statement, the company said it would sell its majority stake in the venture back to Bodan as part of a larger international investment strategy.
General Mills’ statement did not mention politics and noted that the company had previously moved to sell off its European dough business, as well. The company did not return multiple requests for comment from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The company has been a target of pro-Palestinian activists since it was included in a 2020 United Nations database of companies doing business in Israeli settlements.
American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker-affiliated activist organization that has been pushing the company to end its Israel operations via a campaign called “No Dough For The Occupation,” took credit for the divestment in a statement.
“General Mills’ divestment shows that public pressure works even on the largest of corporations,” Noam Perry, a member of the group’s Economic Activism team, said in the statement.
The divestment carried echoes of another food producer’s Israel-related move: last year’s decision by ice-cream manufacturer Ben & Jerry’s to stop selling ice cream in “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” In that case, the decision was explicitly political, coming on the heels of Israel’s deadly conflict with Hamas.
And the blowback was swift, with Jewish groups and several state governments lining up to not only boycott Ben & Jerry’s products but also divest from its parent company, the British multinational conglomerate Unilever — in many cases citing anti-Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions laws to do so.
Good to know. Now we Jews can boycott General Mills too.
Did they keep shemitttah?
What’s an East Jerusalem settlement? East Jerusalem is a neighborhood of Jerusalem. Jerusalem and all of Eretz Yisroel belong to the Jewish people.
Yup. That’s it, No General Mills products are going to be purchased by this consumer and his family. Nothing to do with Zionism. Just a way to fight back against rabid antisemitism.
get woke, go broke
Time to
Let them know we buy as well
Where do I send back my cereal
General Mills boycotts Israel, we need to boycott General Mills !!!
Well, idiots that they are, it’s gonna be plenty of now -unemployed Arabs, who lose decent jobs at their company!!!
No More Cheerios !
It looks like the company is leaving the raw dough businesses in quite a few locations. Nothing wrong with rationalizing business areas. Of course the BDS folks are going to claim victory, much like the frogs boast at how their croaking makes the rain fall.
Let’s not be “resha’im arurim” about this.
“General Mills sells Helper, Suddenly Salad businesses to Eagle Foods”
“In November 2021, General Mills divested a 51% controlling interest in its European Yoplait operations to Sodiaal. On Nov 24, 2021, GIS unveiled plans to offload its European dough businesses to a leading ready-to-bake dough solutions company – Cerelia. The transaction includes General Mills’ branded and private-label dough businesses in Germany, the United Kingdom and Ireland, including the Knack & Back and Jus-Rol brands. These divestitures put the company a step closer to achieving Accelerate strategy priorities.”