The co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream was dragged out of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.‘s budget hearing on Wednesday in a wild meltdown that was caught on video.
Ben Cohen was one of several protesters removed from the hearing after an outburst threw the room into chaos. Security guards struggled to contain the situation.
“RFK kills people with AIDS,” a protester can be heard shouting, holding up an accompanying sign.
The outburst was followed by a second protester, then a third, then Cohen, who stood up with a pointed message directed at Congress.
“Congress pays for bombs that kill kids in Gaza!” Cohen said. Like the other protesters, Cohen was forcibly escorted out, but not before he could be heard yelling off-camera, “Congress kills!”
In a moment of levity, Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy quipped that the commotion was a “made-for-C-SPAN moment.”
Cohen was among a group of seven people who were subsequently arrested with crowding, obstructing, or incommoding, according to a Capitol Police statement cited in Axios. Cohen was ultimately charged. Other protesters—not Cohen—were also charged with assault on a police officer.
Last year, the popular ice-cream brand made a bold statement in its Israel-Gaza war activism, announcing that it would no longer sell its ice cream “in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).”
They added, “We have a longstanding partnership with our licensee, who manufactures Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in Israel and distributes it in the region. We have been working to change this, and so we have informed our licensee that we will not renew the license agreement when it expires at the end of next year.”
In a follow-up statement after Cohen’s removal, a spokesperson said Americans are expected to “be good Americans” and “look the other way as Israel prevents food, water, and medicine from reaching the remaining people of Gaza.”
The statement added, “Israel is literally starving them to death… We will not look away. We will not be silenced. We will do everything we can to get our government to stop being complicit in starving little kids to death.”
