Israeli-made products were ripped from the shelves of the lefty Park Slope Food Coop just hours after being banned in a historic vote — prompting scores of Jewish shoppers to threaten to quit the member-run market in revolt.
Tuesday’s boycott vote — which drew over 7,000 members and passed with an overwhelming 67% in favor — went into effect immediately, with the Israeli products vanishing from the shelves by Wednesday morning.
Exactly what happened to the verboten goods remains unclear, but one board member suggested they were donated to a local food bank.
The nasty food fight — over about 10 goods like hummus, herbs, matzo and peanut puffs — drew condemnation from even the most liberal residents in the leafy Brooklyn enclave.
“We will not spend one dollar until this goes away. Done. Finished,” said JJ Berney, a coop member for over 20 years. “We bought 90% of our groceries here for the last 21 years.”
“It’s hard to walk inside that building and not feel the object of someone else’s ire or disdain,” the 52-year-old told The Post Wednesday. “I feel it so deeply and so profoundly, where people no longer see me as a human being, they see me for what my identity is.”
Berney is one of many members who’ve threatened to walk away unless things change — with some already quitting over the boycott, divestment, sanctions movement, which members know as BDS.
Coop board member Ramon Maislen told The Post that an informal survey prior to the vote suggested up to 1,000 members would leave if the ban passed. The market has about 15,000 members total.
That could seriously jeopardize the profits and raw logistics of running the 53-year-old store, which relies on volunteers to cover multiple daily shifts.
“People have already quit,” Maislen said.
Some Jewish members have also debated signing up for shifts but then not showing up in acts of civil disobedience.
The controversy has been brewing at the Union Street coop for years, with BDS supporters claiming Israel was committing genocide in Gaza and demanding all products from the country be barred.
It’s dominated monthly board meetings and left scores of coop members deeply uncomfortable as the anti-Israeli rhetoric has grown increasingly vitriolic.
The drama came to a head last month after somebody declared “Jewish supremacism is a problem in this country” and compared Jews to Nazis at an April meeting — while moderators did nothing to denounce the bigot.
And Tuesday’s vote meeting only compounded the controversy, as it was immediately preceded by a successful vote to lower the threshold required to ban coop products from 75% in favor to 51%.
Without that threshold vote, the ban would not have passed — leaving Jewish members feeling cheated, a feeling which was also reinforced by the alleged lack of public discussion ahead of the final vote.
Those tensions were palpable outside the coop on Wednesday, where security hired days ago was posted and is expected to remain for the foreseeable future.
Passing drivers shouted “hypocrites” from their windows, while others on the street condemned the verdict. Someone even posted a note addressed to the pro-BDS voters by the store’s front doors.
“To the co-op members who voted to boycott Israeli products (aka hypocrites),” the letter read. “Have you looked into products from Italy or are you giving the Vatican a pass for protecting pedophiles? Enjoy your mediocre hummus!! xo.”
Others agreed and asked whether the coop would bar food from other nations accused of atrocities.
“It’s bulls–t. I think it’s bulls–t,” said Avi Gould, 38, of Park Slope. “They don’t boycott things from China or Russia. They’d gladly accept imports from Palestine no matter what their government does.”
Deidre Levy — a coop member for eight years — also planned to quit the store.
“As someone who is Asian and Jewish, it’s deeply frustrating when you see discrimination to different people,” the 37-year-old said. “They’re alienating their own neighbors in Brooklyn when they don’t know exactly what’s happening over 5,000 miles away.”
“I’m not going to be spending any more money at the coop for now. This is not right. The coop needs to do something about it,” she added.
And the fight to get the coop to do just that is only beginning — with anti-BDS members filing a complaint Wednesday alleging discrimination and human rights violations with the Human Rights Commission.
The intense divide at the grocery store has become a “hyperlocal example of a proxy war,” laced with antisemitism that divides American communities, Park Slope Rabbi Rachel Timoner said last month during a sermon at her Congregation Beth Elohim.
Following the vote, Timoner called the outcome “a really sad night for a lot of Jews in Park Slope,” and admitted she planned to resign her longstanding membership from the coop.
“This was not a vote for peace, justice, or humanity,” she said. “BDS is a movement for eliminating Israel, and I think a lot of Jews who are my congregants are going to feel that antisemitism has infected a really important local institution.”
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