Last night, members of the nation’s biggest urban food cooperative, the Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn, NY, voted on whether to hold a referendum on the sale of Israeli goods (a whopping five of which the coop presently stocks). Roughly 2,000 coop members gathered for what would become the largest general meeting in the coop’s history, and one which has garnered national media attention, all in order to decide whether the coop’s 16,000 members should vote for a boycott. The exercise in recursive democracy resulted in a resounding ‘No!’, which is frankly unsurprising considering that Brooklyn is the second holiest city in the Jewish faith.
But, I kid! The issue of Israel’s occupation and the means by which we remediate the conflict is one of grave seriousness. And yet, no matter where you come down on the issue, the proceedings have been so over the top and all expected stereotypes so thoroughly embodied, that it has made for great hilarity. Check out The Daily Show’s pre-game (which aired after the vote) to see what I mean, and then read the livetweets below to get a picture of what went down inside the meeting in realtime.
The Coop should actually hold a “Praise Israel” celebration. Why? Because since Jordan “invited” Israel into the disputed territories in 1967, life expectancy among the Arabs there went from 48 years to 72 (compared with an average of 68 years for all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa), and Israeli medical programs reduced the infant-mortality rate of 60 per 1,000 live births in 1967 to 15 per 1,000 in 2000 (in Iraq the rate was 64, in Egypt 40, in Jordan 23, in Syria 22) In addition, under Israel’s systematic program of inoculation, childhood diseases like polio, whooping cough, tetanus, and measles were eradicated.
What better neighbors could the Arabs of the disputed territories hope for?
Dovid K, I agree with you.
72 (compared with an average of 68 years for all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa)
Oh, single statistics compared with aggregates! With that kind of math, I bow towards your argumentative skills.