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A new Israel-exclusive ice cream flavor from the locally independent Ben & Jerry’s operation has ignited fierce online controversy, reigniting long-simmering tensions between the ice cream brand’s Vermont-based co-founders, its global parent company Unilever, and its Israeli licensee over the ongoing conflict in Gaza and Palestinian rights.

Unveiled this week via the official X account of the Israeli government, the new flavor, dubbed “Milk and Honey,” has been framed as the country’s “official ice cream flavor,” with promotional materials noting that all proceeds from the product will go toward supporting communities in southern Israel. Every ingredient used in the new batch carries explicit regional ties: milk and cream are sourced from Kibbutz Alumim, a community located meters from the Gaza separation fence that was targeted in the October 7, 2023 attacks; the chocolate Star of David inclusions are produced at a facility in Be’er Sheva in the Negev (Naqab) desert; and the honey comes from beehives maintained at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, another southern Israeli border community.

Since the 2022 sale of Ben & Jerry’s Israeli operations to local licensee Avi Zinger, the franchise has operated entirely independently of the global Ben & Jerry’s brand, but the release of Milk and Honey has drawn sharp criticism from social media users worldwide, many of whom have tied the launch to Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza that has been widely condemned by international bodies and human rights groups. Critics have taken to social media to mock and condemn the flavor, with some editing product packaging to rename it “Genocidaires’ Delight,” while others left cutting comments such as “Mmm…tastes like genocide.” The release coincided with the publication of a new United Nations commission of inquiry report released the same week that concluded Israel has deliberately targeted Palestinian children and committed acts of genocide and war crimes in Gaza, as well as additional war crimes in the occupied West Bank. This finding aligns with multiple previous conclusions from leading genocide scholars, legal experts, and major global human rights organizations that have reached the same determination that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza amounts to genocide.

Many social media commentators also highlighted the deep internal rift that has split the Ben & Jerry’s brand for years, noting that the global company’s co-founders and original board have repeatedly publicly endorsed Palestinian rights and have already labeled Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide. One commenter argued the new flavor was fittingly “the most Israeli ice cream in the sense that it was stolen from the original owners and Israelis are pretending it belongs to them.”

The controversy is the latest chapter in a years-long dispute over the brand’s longstanding commitment to social justice activism, which its co-founders say has been systematically sidelined by parent company Unilever. The rift first opened in 2021, when co-founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield announced they would end sales of Ben & Jerry’s products in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, and declined to renew their license agreement with the Israeli franchise. Unilever, which acquired the brand in 2000 under a merger agreement that guaranteed the co-founders autonomy to pursue social justice values, responded by selling the entire Israeli operation to Zinger, prompting the co-founders to file suit against the company for breach of contract. The suit was eventually settled for an undisclosed sum.

Tensions escalated dramatically after the outbreak of the 2023 Gaza war. Ben & Jerry’s global leadership filed a second suit against Unilever, accusing the parent company of silencing its repeated attempts to speak out in support of Palestinian rights. The brand alleges it was blocked from issuing four separate public statements: one calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, one advocating for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel, one expressing support for pro-Palestinian student protesters on university campuses, and one calling for safe passage for Palestinian refugees fleeing Gaza to the United Kingdom. In 2025, co-founder Jerry Greenfield resigned from his position on the board, citing the complete erosion of the values-based autonomy he and Cohen had negotiated with Unilever, saying the company’s original mission had been fully silenced.

Cohen has continued his campaign to “free” the brand from Unilever and its affiliate Magnum Ice Cream, and has become a high-profile activist calling for an end to the Gaza war. He was arrested in May 2025 during a protest against U.S. support for Israel at a U.S. Senate health committee hearing. Last year, he announced plans to release a watermelon-flavored ice cream — a well-known symbol of Palestinian solidarity — that would raise awareness of Palestinian suffering under occupation and call for permanent peace. Unilever blocked the planned release, prompting Cohen to announce he would produce the flavor independently.

Middle East Eye reached out to Ben & Jerry’s Israel, Ben & Jerry’s USA, Cohen, Greenfield, and Zinger for comment on the new flavor and the ongoing controversy, and had not received responses at the time of publication.

A 6.9-magnitude seismic event shook the offshore area of Japan’s northern Iwate Prefecture on Thursday morning, prompting routine safety checks and emergency preparedness protocols across the country’s northeastern region, with no immediate reports of casualties or widespread destruction confirmed. The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) quickly issued an initial assessment, placing the quake’s depth at approximately 50 kilometers, or 31 miles, below the ocean floor. The United States Geological Survey matched JMA’s magnitude reading, aligning on the key details of the seismic activity.

This tremor hit during the bustling morning commute, a time when millions of Japanese residents were traveling to work and school, and light shaking was even felt as far south as the capital city of Tokyo. Critically, the JMA confirmed immediately after the quake that there was no threat of a tsunami following the seismic shift.

The epicenter sits in a seismically active zone that has seen multiple significant tremors in recent months. In December alone, a separate quake in the same broader region triggered a seven-day national advisory warning for potential large-scale seismic activity.

Top Japanese government officials moved quickly to coordinate response efforts. Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara, the country’s top government spokesperson, confirmed that as of initial assessments, no injuries or structural damage had been documented. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told reporters in Tokyo that the government’s emergency response task force had activated immediately, placing public safety as its top priority. The prime minister added that teams are actively collecting on-the-ground data and standing by to launch relief operations if any damage is reported. She also issued a public warning for residents across affected northeastern prefectures to remain alert for possible aftershocks in the coming hours and days.

On-the-ground reports from local communities echoed the official assessment of no major harm. Tomoko Nagane, principal of a public elementary school in the Aomori Prefecture town of Hashikami, spoke to public broadcaster NHK about the experience. She said she was en route to the school when the national earthquake early alert system activated on her phone, and she felt sustained moderate lateral shaking while driving. All students who had already arrived at the campus were unhurt, she confirmed, though a number of young children cried out of fear during the tremor. School officials canceled classes for the remainder of the day, and all students were safely returned to their families by mid-morning.

NHK correspondents reporting from two of the closest major population centers, Sendai and Morioka, told viewers they felt shaking that lasted roughly two minutes, but had not observed any visible damage to infrastructure during initial checks. Broadcast footage from the region showed commuters continuing their daily routines as normal shortly after the tremor passed.

In line with standard safety protocols, East Japan Railway Co., which operates intercity and local rail services across the Tohoku region, temporarily halted service on several bullet train and local commuter lines to allow structural and safety inspections of tracks and infrastructure.

One key reassurance came for facilities with major seismic risk: government spokesperson Kihara confirmed that all nuclear facilities in the affected area, including the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant – the site of the 2011 meltdown following a massive quake and tsunami – and a spent fuel reprocessing facility in Aomori Prefecture, had not recorded any abnormalities from Thursday’s tremor.

Japan sits along the Pacific Ring of Fire, an active tectonic boundary that makes it one of the most earthquake-prone nations on Earth, with a highly developed early warning and emergency response system designed to reduce harm from regular seismic activity.

Thirty-three-year-old Mahrang Baloch, a doctor turned human rights activist and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, has been sentenced to life in prison by a Pakistani anti-terrorism court, in a ruling that has drawn global attention to the long-running crisis of enforced disappearances in Pakistan’s restive southwestern province of Balochistan.

Mahrang’s journey into activism did not begin as a political mission, but as a deeply personal fight for justice. When she was just 16 years old in 2009, her father Abdul Ghaffar Langove, a local political activist, was allegedly taken into custody by Pakistani security forces and never seen alive again. Nearly three years later, his tortured, decomposed body was found dumped in an unmarked grave in Lasbela district. Speaking in her final interview with the BBC before her 2025 arrest, Mahrang described the devastating discovery: her father’s body was still clothed in the same tattered outfit he wore the day he was abducted, bearing clear marks of brutal abuse. The trauma of this loss would go on to shape every chapter of her adult life.

The crisis that Mahrang dedicated her life to addressing is one of the most intractable human rights issues in South Asia. For more than two decades, thousands of ethnic Baloch people have vanished across the province, according to human rights activists and local campaigners. Many of these disappearances are alleged to be carried out by state security forces as part of a counterinsurgency strategy targeting separatist groups that have waged an armed movement for an independent Balochistan since the late 1940s. Critics say the practice is also used to suppress peaceful dissent over the region’s long-running grievances: Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest province by territory, holding vast reserves of natural gas, coal, copper, and gold, but it remains the country’s poorest and most underdeveloped region, with restricted access for outside journalists, crumbling infrastructure, and widespread shortages of basic necessities like clean water and electricity.

Pakistani government officials have repeatedly denied allegations of systemic enforced disappearances. Senior leaders including Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti argue that many reported missing people have joined separatist insurgent groups or left the province voluntarily, framing widespread claims of disappearances as “systematic propaganda” against the state. The government says roughly 80% of the more than 2,900 reported disappearance cases since 2011 have been resolved, while activists put the total number of missing people closer to 7,000. No independent body has been able to verify either figure. The crisis escalated dramatically after 2006, when prominent Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Bugti was killed in a military operation, sparking a surge in both insurgent attacks and state crackdowns.

For Mahrang, the personal cost of this crisis deepened in 2017, when her brother was detained by security forces for nearly three months. “I had made my mother believe that what happened to my father wouldn’t happen to my brother. But it did,” she recalled. “I was scared of looking at my phone, because it might be news of my brother’s body being found somewhere.” That experience pushed her to step into formal leadership of the movement for missing persons. As a trained medical doctor, she rose to prominence through the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), an organization that campaigns against enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings while advocating for greater local control over Balochistan’s natural resources.

Over the next decade, Mahrang became the most recognizable face of the Baloch missing persons movement, leading massive peaceful protests, organizing a 1,600-kilometer long march from Balochistan to the capital Islamabad in 2023, and centering the voices of generations of Baloch women who have spent decades waiting for answers about their missing fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons. Despite facing repeated death threats, travel bans, and arrests, she built an international profile: she was named to the BBC’s 100 Women list in 2024, included in TIME magazine’s TIME100 Next list of emerging global leaders, and nominated for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her human rights work.

State officials have long accused Mahrang and the BYC of amplifying separatist narratives, allegations she consistently rejected. In her final pre-arrest interview, she emphasized her campaign was rooted in a demand for basic rights: “We want the right to live on our own land without persecution. We want our resources, our rights. We want this rule of fear and violence to end.”

Mahrang was ultimately taken into custody in March 2025 while leading a protest in Quetta over the burial of 13 unclaimed bodies, which activists believe were missing Baloch people. Authorities claimed the dead were militants killed after a train hijacking in the Bolan Pass, a claim that could not be independently verified. On Monday, the anti-terrorism court convicted Mahrang and fellow activist Sibghatullah Shah of terrorism, sedition, and murder in connection with the 2024 death of a paramilitary soldier during a protest in Gwadar. Both activists deny all charges, and their legal team says they will appeal the verdict.

Nadia Baloch, Mahrang’s sister and a member of her legal team, told the BBC the trial was fundamentally unfair. “It was not transparent,” she said, explaining that the court replaced the family’s chosen legal team with state-appointed lawyers after the family demanded an open public trial, and denied Mahrang access to witness statements and other key evidence. “She was not given a chance to a fair trial.” Nadia added that the family remains defiant in the fight to overturn the verdict, even as she acknowledged the emotional toll of the conviction: “I don’t have the courage to see her in prison, because I feel I have failed her by not getting Mahrang justice.”

Authorities maintain the conviction is based on criminal conduct, not political activism, and frame the case as a law enforcement matter. But Mahrang’s supporters and family view the life sentence as an attempt to silence widespread dissent in Balochistan. Before her arrest, Mahrang said she had long accepted that imprisonment was a possible outcome of her work, and she did not fear it. According to her family, she remains resolute in prison, and her message to supporters remains unchanged: the struggle for justice will continue.