Park Slope Food Coop Rejects Israel Boycott
A well-known cooperative grocery store in Brooklyn voted to reject a boycott of Israeli goods.
At a special meeting Tuesday night, members of the Park Slope Food Coop rejected by a vote of 1,005 to 653 a proposal to hold a mail ballot referendum for all members on whether to stop selling Israeli goods.
The meeting was held at an area high school to accommodate the expected crowd, which ended up exceeding in size any previous co-op meeting, The New York Times reported.
The co-op, founded in 1973, is well known in New York City as a bastion of socially conscious consumerism. Each member is required to do a work shift of 2 hours and 45 minutes every four weeks in order to shop at the coop, which offers a wide selection of organic and other goods at significant discounts.
Supporters and opponents of a boycott had campaigned aggressively in the run-up to the vote at the co-op, which has a large number of Jewish members.
The call to boycott Israeli goods had been percolating for several years, the subject of vigorous debate in the co-op’s newsletter.
The issue garnered substantial media attention. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other elected officials strongly criticized the boycott proposal.
“I think it has nothing to do with the food,” Bloomberg said Monday when asked about the boycott at a news conference. “The issue is there are people who want Israel to be torn apart and everybody to be massacred, and America is not going to let that happen.”
The co-op’s general manager and one of its founders, Joe Holtz, urged members to reject the boycott call, calling it “divisive.”
The co-op reportedly sells only a handful of Israeli-made products.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
