The members of the Park Slope Food Co-op voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to boycott Israeli products, approving a measure hailed by supporters as a moral stand in defense of Palestinian rights but castigated by opponents as an endorsement of an antisemitic movement to eliminate Israel.
The measure was approved by a wide margin of more than 2 to 1, reflecting the depth of dismay in one of New York’s most progressive and well-heeled neighborhoods at Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Only 31 percent of those who voted opposed the boycott, and 67 percent approved.
The co-op has long embodied the political concerns and consumption habits of many Brooklyn liberals and is sometimes mocked as the fastidious superego of one of the borough’s most expensive neighborhoods.
But the push to ban Israeli products drew public attention far beyond Park Slope’s leafy streets and alarmed Jewish leaders who saw the campaign as a hyperlocal manifestation of rising antisemitism.
The co-op will boycott goods produced in Israel or the occupied Palestinian territories until Israel abides by international law, including by ending discriminatory treatment of Palestinians in any territory under Israel’s control, according to the text of the approved measure.
The boycott would apply to a small number of goods, including some produce, several brands of tahini, olive oil and hair care products.
The co-op’s more than 17,000 members have debated a ban on Israeli goods on and off for years, but the campaign gained new momentum during Israel’s war in Gaza.
In recent weeks, the debate has devolved into physical fights outside the store, tense community meetings and sweeping accusations about supposed conspiracies to either benefit or destroy Israel.
On Tuesday, Alyce Barr, a leading boycott campaigner who has belonged to the co-op since 1978 and is Jewish, said the co-op “is not now and never was just a grocery store” and that it has a responsibility “to avoid products that depend on the exploitation of others.”
She said the co-op’s members had to take a stand against Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, and that allowing the status quo to continue was as much a political choice as making a change.
“Voting yes on this boycott is voting against genocide, voting against apartheid and voting yes to getting our co-op back on the right side of history,” Ms. Barr said.
(The Israeli government has repeatedly denied that it has committed genocide in Gaza, although Israeli and international human rights groups and a United Nations commission on Israel’s war conduct have said that the country has done so.)
Opponents of the measure said its significance was greater than it might seem. In a sermon earlier this month, Rabbi Rachel Timoner, a leader of the anti-boycott campaign and the senior rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope, told congregants that the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement, known as B.D.S., sought “the elimination of Israel.”
“Why is this petty, annoying fight in our neighborhood grocery store worth so much time and effort?” she told the congregation. “Because it is part of something much bigger.”
After the vote on Tuesday, Rabbi Timoner said in an interview that “this was a really sad night for a lot of Jews in Park Slope.” She said she planned to resign from the co-op, where she had been a member for many years.
“This was not a vote for peace of justice or humanity,” Rabbi Timoner said. “It was disguised as one, but B.D.S. 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 at a time when there is so much antisemitism growing everywhere.”
By the third hour of the meeting on Tuesday night, the membership voted to move immediately to a vote after the pro-boycott side addressed the meeting, but the anti-boycott side had not. Maribeth Batcha, a senior member of the committee running the meeting, complained that in all her years at the co-op “no one has ever voted to end discussion before discussion began.”
After the boycott proposal passed, Joseph Szladek, the co-op’s general manager, said that most of the paid staff had wanted the boycott to be put to a referendum rather than to be voted on during a meeting.
Tensions over the vote led the co-op to say over the weekend that it would hire security to protect its building after it received threats and suspicious substances sent through the mail. In an email on Tuesday, the co-op’s management asked the attendees “to maintain a respectful and cooperative tone” during the meeting, which was held online, with anonymous voting conducted via Zoom.
“We recognize that these issues have generated intense interest and that members hold deeply different views,” the co-op’s management said in the email. “Personal attacks, inflammatory language, or comments directed at anyone’s identity — including religion, ethnicity, or national origin — are unacceptable.”
At the beginning of the Zoom meeting on Tuesday night, the co-op’s management said roughly 8,400 people had registered to attend it. After the measure passed, the co-op’s management said on Zoom that almost every person present had voted.
Opponents of the boycott have argued that the move would align the grocery store with a force they view as antisemitic — the global Boycott, Divest and Sanctions Movement, known as B.D.S., which seeks to economically and culturally isolate Israel because of its treatment of Palestinians.
Other critics have said they simply did not want to navigate the conflict in the Middle East while steering their grocery carts through the shop’s packed aisles.
But the supporters viewed it as a common sense and humane response to the current crisis in the Middle East, which has accelerated since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel and has grown into a yearslong series of regional wars in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran and elsewhere.
Claire Fahy contributed reporting.
Liam Stack is a Times reporter who covers the culture and politics of the New York City region.
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