TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Ben Cohen, one of the founders of the Ben & Jerry's ice cream brand, was arrested on Wednesday after protesting U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over the lack of humanitarian aid to Gaza. As reported by Anadolu, a video from the women-led peace group, CODEPINK, revealed this arrest.
Cohen, a veteran activist and philanthropist, disrupted a hearing on Capitol Hill when Kennedy Jr. faced questions from lawmakers.
“Congress sent the bombs that kill children in Gaza and pays it with cuts to Medicaid,” Cohen shouted at the hearing before being arrested by Capitol Police.
As reported by NDTV, the 74-year-old Jewish descendant said he was speaking on behalf of millions of angry Americans regarding the massacre in Gaza after being removed from the U.S. Senate hearing.
Cohen was among protesters who surprised Kennedy Jr. by interrupting his testimony on his department's budget proposal. While shouting that "Congress pays for bombs to kill children in Gaza" as lawmakers moved to cut Medicaid, a health insurance program for low-income families, the businessman and philanthropist was handcuffed by Capitol Police.
He urged U.S. senators to pressure Israel to allow food to reach "starving kids" as he was taken away.
"It got to a point where we had to do something," Cohen said in an interview after his release. He called it "scandalizing" that the US approved "$20billion worth of bombs" for Israel even as domestic social programs are squeezed.
"The majority of Americans hate what's going on, what our country is doing with our money and in our name," he said.
According to a Pew Research Center poll last month, public opinion in the U.S. toward Israel has become increasingly unfavorable, particularly among Democrats. Outside spending, Cohen referred to the issue as a moral and "spiritual" violation.
"Condoning and being complicit in the slaughter of tens of thousands of people strikes at the core of us as far as human beings and what our country stands for," he said, pointing out that the U.S. allocates about half of its discretionary budget to war-related expenses.
"If you spent half of that money making lives better around the world, I think there'd be a whole lot less friction."
Using a child-rearing analogy, he added: "You go to a three-year-old who goes around hitting people and you say 'Use your words.' There's issues between countries but you can work them out without killing."
A longtime critic of Israel's policies, Cohen last year joined prominent Jewish figures in an open letter opposing the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC. "I understand that I have a higher profile than most people and so I raise my voice, it gets heard. But I need you and others to understand that I speak for millions of people who feel the same way."
The Israel-Gaza war began after Hamas' attack on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people in Israel based on official figures. However, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant admitted in an interview that some Israeli civilians killed that day were a result of Apache helicopter attacks. This was based on the Hannibal Directive, an order for Israeli civilians not to be taken alive by the enemy.
Israel's retaliatory strikes have killed at least 52,928 people in Gaza, mostly Palestinian civilians, especially women and children.
Gaza is at "critical risk of famine," with the entire population facing a food crisis after over two months of Israeli aid blockade, and 22 percent facing a humanitarian "catastrophe," a UN-supported food security monitor warned this week.
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