The food fight over the banning of Israeli products from Brooklyn’s Lefty Park Slope Food Co-op is turning rotten, with union members claiming a few bad apples are ruining the bunch.
Longtime members are divided into factions, and Jewish shoppers say they have been subjected to violence and threats for publicly opposing pressure from anti-Israel activists.
The vote was originally scheduled to take place at a meeting Tuesday at the Picnic House in Prospect Park, but had to be moved to a Zoom-only vote after many of the co-op’s 15,000 members expressed “clear concerns for their safety,” according to internal emails obtained by the newspaper.
“People were nervous about actually going,” co-op board member Ramon Mayzlen told the Post.
“They are quite violent,” Meislen claimed of anti-Israel members.
Some union members told Maysren they were worried that those publicly opposing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) motion would be harassed when the meeting ended late Tuesday.
Co-op coordinators Anne Harpel and Matt Hoagland acknowledged in an email to members that even with increased safety measures at meetings, “we cannot guarantee safety.”
The vote was almost entirely symbolic, as the co-op carries only a few Israeli-made products, including seasonal kosher Passover matzo and hummus.
Liberal rabbis also outraged
Tuesday’s vote, which has been on the table for more than a year, is the culmination of an anti-Israel movement within the co-op that has intensified since 2012.
The situation worsened further after the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack in Israel and the war in Gaza.
Mayzlen filed a complaint with the state human rights office in 2024, alleging that she and other Jewish members were harassed for opposing the movement to boycott Israeli products.
Then, at a rally last month, a co-op member sparked outrage by saying, “Jewish supremacy is a problem in this country,” and comparing Jews to Nazis.
Even liberal leaders in the Jewish community are horrified by the push to boycott co-ops.
Rabbi Rachel Timoner, who has come under fire from the Jewish community for publicly supporting Mamdani, has become a vocal anti-boycott leader, telling congregants in a recent sermon that BDS is “not a movement for Palestinian statehood, nor is it a movement for coexistence or peace. It is part of a larger movement to destroy Israel.”
Many union members told the Post that this is now the most volatile and divisive issue in the union’s 53-year history.
“The scalp hanging from the belt.”
Outside the Park Slope Food Co-op on Monday, pro-Palestinian activists shouted about genocide, apartheid and Zionism, as newly hired security guards stood nearby.
One woman, wearing a shirt that read “I am a Jew and against genocide,” shouted: “Vote yes to not be silent during genocide. Be on the right side of history in the hut.”
But far from being welcoming, many disgruntled shoppers told the Post they were fed up with the protesters.
Noah Potter, 54, a lawyer and union member since 2012, said if the board voted yes it would be a “scalp hanging from the belt” of the BDS movement.
“It’s about putting the co-op brand on the ideology of BDS.
“Indeed, when BDS infiltrates an organization, its modus operandi is to polarize, expel, purge, and force the organization to adopt extremely reductionist and inflammatory statements, shifting blame to the extent of becoming the embodiment of evil,” he added.
Another shopper, a Prospect Heights local who has been a member since 1987, said he was so horrified by comments about Jews that he was considering quitting his membership.
“I thought it was disgusting,” she said, adding that if the vote passes, she would do most of her shopping at Key Food on Flatbush Avenue.
“When people are passionate about an issue, they sometimes don’t realize the anti-Semitism that’s out there.”
accusation of physical intimidation
A Jewish member of the anti-boycott group Co-op 4 Unity said he witnessed one of his pro-boycott members physically threaten someone who was distributing leaflets opposing the policy change.
“One member approached another guy who was a flyer and became very physically aggressive,” she said.
“He snuggled up to him and started screaming about genocide and apartheid.”
Co-op staff eventually intervened, but it was just one of several instances of increasing instability at the grocery store in recent weeks.
“The whole time I was flying outside, my heart was racing,” said the 37-year-old. “I’m a mother of two children. I can think of a million other things I could do.”
Ahead of the vote, pro-boycott group Members for Palestine sent out aggressive marketing emails urging its members to support the boycott, while ignoring security concerns as a scare tactic.
The increasingly heated rhetoric has led some Jewish members to say they no longer feel comfortable attending meetings in person.
The paper reached out to its Palestinian members for comment but did not receive a response on Monday.
Palestinian activists ‘swarm’ rally
In a recent formal complaint filed in the past few weeks and seen by the Post, one longtime member said he felt extremely alarmed after receiving an email from boycott organizers that referred to “Zionists.”
“I loved the co-op more than any other institution in my life (and I am rapidly descending into a state of utter disgust with every part of it),” the member wrote.
“For two weeks between the April 14th email and the April 29th meeting, I couldn’t sleep. I had diarrhea. My stomach was in knots,” she continued, referring to the heated debate surrounding the boycott.
“I was so nervous that I went to the Picnic House at 4.30pm to make sure I could get in because I expected to be blocked from getting in.”
The member described the atmosphere at the meeting as “intimidating” and claimed that many members felt intimidated and avoided the meeting altogether as pro-Palestinian activists “swarmed” the venue wearing keffiyehs and pictures of watermelons associated with Palestinian solidarity protests.
Bruno Grandsard, who has been a co-op member for 25 years, said the conflict was unprecedented.
“We’ve had periods like this in the past, but this is the worst yet,” he said.
“The vast majority of people want all of this to go away. This is very divisive, very divisive.”
For board member Meislen, the vote is of particular concern because if the vote is successful, members are likely to leave.
An unofficial poll estimates that nearly 1,000 current members would abandon the Brooklyn institution if the boycott were to go through.
“My concern is that if co-op members get fed up and leave, it’s actually going to hurt us in some ways, because even if we have to vote again, we’re just going to have fewer people on our side,” Meislen said.
#Conflict #Park #Slope #Corp #Jewish #members #fear #safety #boycott #Israel #products