Shut Up, Park Slope Coop.

Arye -

All of your points are well taken. The Coop is a diverse group of 16,000 people and I would guess you will be hard pressed to find more than 100 who actually support this boycott.

Unfortunately, the Coop’s governance system is not designed to provide protection from people who are willing to abuse the Coop’s reputation. If you would like to mock and critique the way the Coop governance works, by all means go ahead. But please don’t smear the thousands who just want to save thousands of dollars a year on their shopping bills. This group does not represent us, but they too can save money on food.

I have been working for the last 10 months on organizing opposition to BDS at the Coop. We will get out the vote and deliver a resounding defeat to BDS – just like everywhere else that BDS has been subjected to a wide vote.

Thanks for your support.

Barbara Mazor

Don’t you think that it’s the point that these are people with families, responsibilities, etc.? Isn’t that the point of a boycott? To put pressure where it matters? And I’m sure there were people saying boycotting South Africa was misguided and inappropriate for the same reasons.

There is not actually a hierarchy of bad behavior among countries, and the same tactics are not being called for in every circumstance. In the case of Israel’s decades of international law violations, a boycott campaign *is* the tactic in play at the moment. That’s not the case with China or, for that matter, the U.S. and its own bad behavior. Besides, it’s not unheard of for activists to be part of the movement for peace in Israel/Palestine *and* other social justice groups, including the ones you toss off. And the reason that these two “passionate” peoples can’t just “work it out over vegan marshmallows and seltzer” is that there’s a power imbalance – one population is at the mercy of a state that has the power, the guns, and the knee-jerk mainstream American support (as we see in your article). And the reason that people might call for an international boycott of goods and culture, knowing that they themselves may be affected negatively as well, is because the alternative (occupation, human rights abuses, etc.) is *worse.* By the way, there are also some Israeli Jews supportive of the BDS movement (Boycott from Within, at boycottisrael.info).

A clarification: The Coop’s vote on March 27 will happen at our monthly business meeting, and it is a vote on whether we should have a referendum to vote on this issue. So, it’s a vote on whether we should vote.

I completely agree with Marc and I also want to add my 2 cents on this subject. I thought that people, who is in selling food business do their business with their brains, and not with their political preferenses. First of all, this boycott business is like bumerang. When this Coop started to sell Israel food in their store they probably made reseach if there would be constumers, who will buy this staff. Now if they stop to sell Israel products, people, who came to buy them, will be not coming to this store and will find the same things in the different place. Coop also probably made an agreement to sell Israel products and if they will sto to sell it. it would be breach of contract and I hope our Israel companies sue them, for the breach of contract. And what this people gane from their stupid behaviour? Nothing good. First they loos costumers, second they would be sued and third the companies from other countries would think twice to have business with people, who do their business with political choices. I hpe with company just go down for their stupidy and I have no sympathy to this bigots. They will gos what ever they decerve.

Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism are not the same, but they’re ultimately caused by the same thing: a hatred of the bourgeoisie.

Arye –

Your arguments come down to these:

argument 1:

1. If you are going to boycott one country’s goods because you disagree with that country’s politics, then you should boycott the goods from EVERY country whose politics you find disagreeable.

2. If you don’t live up to the standards articulated in #1, then you are a hypocrite – you should shut up.

3. There are many countries whose politics people at the Park Slope Food Coop (PSFC) probably find disagreeable.

4. But, they are not advocating boycotting those countries.

5. So, these people are hypocrites – they should shut up.

I just disagree with your premise 2. The standards articulated in premise 1 express an *ideal* – we should all hope to spend our money on products whose origins aren’t morally problematic. But, we cannot manage to do that – we’d be annoying ultra-locavores some many people love to hate (because they seem so self-righteous, but then again they are living up to the principle that you so stridently insist upon, so maybe they ought to be self-righteous – at least more self-righteous than those of us who fail to live up to principle #1).

So, if we cannot live up to principle #1, we have to pick and choose whom to boycott.

Here’s where your second argument comes in:

1. You should pick to boycott one country vs. another on the basis of some defensible principle.

2. There is no defensible principle that would support boycotting Israel vs. any other country.

3. So, it is either anti-semitism or a wooly-headed view of Jews as politically special that explains the choice by some at the PSFC to try to boycott Israel.

But, here you haven’t defended #2. Maybe there *is* a defensible principle that would support boycotting Israel vs. any other country.

Here’s one: A boycott might actually contribute to change! The shame some Israelis feel at being boycotted might help to push them towards changing their practices.

Here’s another: The US has a very special relationship with Israel: our financial, diplomatic and military support is basically the only reason Israel can sustain many of its policies. So, we Americans are somewhat complicit in maintaining these policies. So, we, as Americans, may want to take whatever steps we can to limit that complicity. A boycott is a symbolic way to do that.

There are, of course, many others.

My point, then, is that instead of mocking the PSFC and its members, you might consider honestly engaging with some of these commitments that might be behind the boycott.

My suspicion, though, is that you don’t want to do that. Why? Because I suspect you don’t think Israel is doing anything particularly morally objectionable. That is: Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is more or less morally permissible, or at least as permissible as the way any other country would treat certain people within its borders.

That is another matter altogether. And, I suspect that it is where lies the real disagreement between you and the boycott people. So, you might be more up front about that.

Finally, I am a member of the PSFC, a semi-observant Jew (go to shul on high holidays, host seders, no-pork/no-shellfish kosher, occasional Shabbos dinners) and, quite honestly, I don’t really care one way or the other about the boycott. There are bigger fish to fry.

Thank you for coming out and taking a stand like this on BDS. It’s important for people step up and make the cause against silliness like the BDS folks. Humor is a particularly good way of making the point against them, because by and large most of these people, if you listen to them, are quite humorless.

Highly unlikely it will happen. I understand it took them two years and multiple meetings make a decision to discontinue a certain bottled water, or some such thing.

Meanwhile, *I* had a dog named Barret! (This was decades ago, before humans devolved to become less intelligent than dogs.) I’ve never met anyone else who had. Mine was a Beagle mix. What’s yours?

They love China and everything it does to Tibet is okay and they sure love those cheap electronics. They love India and everything it does to women and untouchables is okay. Pakistan is a great place with all those cheap clothes. They love Syria and Egypt – ‘nuf said. Let the Turks kill all the Kurds – fine with them. And if Russians want to slaughter tens of thousands of Muslims, well – it’s good ol’ Russia! They love America and would never boycott American things. They just have a simple obsession – they hate Jews.

Would the Coop really go through with anti-Israel BDS? It’s a very offensive and agressive action not against an industry (like walmart or Shell oil) or against a select group of people (like the Koch brothers or the Adelsons) but it’s against an entire country, its culture, its faith, and its accomplishments. If BDS was just “Boycott” and if that was of just a few very specific industries in Israel (like, I’m making this up as an example, a winery from an Illegal settlement in the west bank) i think it would be less harmful, send a clearer message, and garner more support, without risking the possibility of Jewish Park Slopers defecting from the Coop.

Personally I am boycotting the SodaStream you mentioned because all their syrups have Splenda in them. I hope being anti-sucralose doesn’t make me appear antisemitic. I really believe you can be anti-sucralose while not being anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and even anti-SodaStream.

There are good reasons many communities of social justice activists all over the world are focusing on Israel right now, and it has nothing to do with being stupid or anti-Semitic.
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In 2005, the Palestinian people, who are being crushed under an occupation that regularly commits horrific human rights abuses, asked the world to do this one small thing to help even out the power imbalance just a little. And guess what? One of the main reasons they called for the NON-VIOLENT tactic of resistance is because they are tired of violence.
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You wanted Palestinian Gandhis? You got ‘em. You said nothing could be done while violence was going on, and now Palestinian violence has all but ceased and turned to non-violent tactics. If you’re still complaining, it says a lot about how much you actually want peace with justice, vs. simply letting Israel do whatever it wants, expropriate as much land as it wants, regardless of the consequences for other people.
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Regarding the human rights abuses, I lived there for two and a half years, and the abuses are much worse than I ever imagined. I’ve spoken with many black South Africans who visited Palestine and said without hesitation that the occupation is worse than Apartheid ever was. I wrote a book about it called Fast Times in Palestine if you want to learn more (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00513NHNI).
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Most of my references in my book are from Israeli sources. Journalists and organizations in Israel are allowed a broader spectrum of dissent than we are allowed here in America without attack dogs accusing us of stupidity mixed with latent anti-Semitism and telling us the onus is on us to solve every single problem in the world before we’re allowed to say one peep about the country that is the single largest recipient of US foreign aid in the world.