Tess Brown-Lavoie and Keyian Vafai, the two Coop members who won
seats on the board of directors in the last election, were
endorsed by a new faction in the coop called "Park Slope Food
Coop Members 4 Palestine." The Members 4 Palestine's social
media celebrated their victory.
The Members 4 Palestine's website states that it operates in
accordance with the doctrine of the Boycott Divestment and
Sanctions ("BDS") campaign. It is fair to characterize Members 4
Palestine as a local organizing unit of the BDS campaign
operating inside the coop.
"BDS" does not necessarily refer to an "organization": it is an
ideology and a political strategy. Any individual or group,
however self-designated, can affiliate with BDS––as the Members
4 Palestine have done. In fact, the BDS strategy includes
infiltrating every possible level of government, every political
or professional organization, every academic institution, and
every community space, and causing them to adopt the
movement's agenda and the goal––a boycott of the State of
Israel until it collapses. The co-founder of the BDS movement
and its most prominent spokesperson, Omar Barghouti,
specifically states that introducing the BDS agenda into an
organization should be divisive. (Nine days after the October 7,
2023, jihadi attack on Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, and people
of other nationalities, the Guardian newspaper published
an opinion piece by Barghouti
in which he explained away the murder, maiming, sexual assault,
and hostage-taking with statements such as "The reaction of the
oppressed, whether or not one considers it legally or ethically
justifiable, is always just that, a reaction to the initial
violence of the oppressor.")
BDS is ultimately a set of slogans and rhetoric that vilifies
"Zionists"––meaning, in effect, the majority of Jews
worldwide––without even a thought as to how the success of its
agenda would not end in a bloodbath. The ideology explicitly
rejects any attempt at fostering co-existence between
Palestinians and Israelis and any dialogue or interaction with
anyone who does not accept its three agenda points. It is an
extremist, binary "us versus them" ideology that reduces one of
the most complicated conflicts in the world to a simplistic
narrative of good and evil, and accuses anyone who does not
profess allegiance as "complicit in genocide." This approach can
be seen in the recruitment efforts by the Coop's Members 4
Palestine: approaching coop members who are waiting in line to
enter, asking them if they support genocide, and signing them up
to join the faction.
As the Members 4 Palestine lay the foundation for restarting the
2012 boycott campaign and becomes more emboldened, its influence
has already created a hostile environment for other coop
members. There is never a guarantee that a community
organization will survive when its members are fragmented into
hostile factions, but in the BDS worldview the triumph of the
BDS ideology supersedes every other value.
In person meetings encourage paying attention to what could be a many-sided debate for an upcoming vote that evening. It affords the opportunity to hear something, meet someone, see something new one wouldn't see if they Zoomed in and saw only what the video camera revealed. If someone simply logs in through video, votes at the required time, and then logs out, this is undermining our cooperative spirit. Online voting is being suggested by those who want to manipulate, not encourage, democracy. Finally, during COVID when we did have voting online, the attendance rarely cracked 100, contradicting the argument that people are too busy to attend an in-person meeting.
The
Coop's Mission Statement
says that we are "a member-owned and operated food store—––an
alternative to commercial profit-oriented business." The Coop's
low prices are due to its focus on member labor rather than
shareholder profits. The Coop is not a non-profit corporation;
it is a corporation organized under
New York's Cooperative Corporations Law.
We love the Coop as much as you do, and we fear
losing it due to the negative consequences flowing from the
political advocacy of the Coop's Members 4 Palestine, who want
to pursue a BDS-driven boycott of Israeli
products. The Coop's continued existence is not guaranteed: the
failure of the Berkley Coop, after years of political infighting over consumer boycotts
(among other issues), is one cautionary tale.
One of the Coop's founders, treasurer and longtime leader, Joe
Holtz,
knows the Coop's future is dependent on its financial
health.
He knows that the unique membership of the Coop––which is in
Brooklyn, an area with one of the most concentrated Jewish
populations in the world––means that the damage to the Coop from
a consumer boycott of Israel could be immense. It could include
thousands of lost members––overnight––and a reputational decline
so severe that the Coop may never recover. This is because,
whether you agree with it or not, a BDS-driven boycott of Israel
at the Coop is seen as virulently antisemitic by a majority of
the Coop's Jewish members and a majority of the Coop's Jewish
neighbors in Brooklyn (home to the largest number of Orthodox
Jews outside of Israel). The Coop has already suffered from a
steep decline in Orthodox Jewish members since the last time an
Israel boycott was proposed at the Coop in 2012.
The
Coop's Mission Statement
also says, "We oppose discrimination in any form. We strive to
make the Coop welcoming and accessible to all and to respect the
opinions, needs, and concerns of every member." A
BDS-driven boycott
of Israeli products at the Coop is disrespectful of the needs
and concerns of a large portion of its Jewish members. To
protect the Coop's business and stay faithful to our mission, we
oppose any boycott proposed by the Members 4 Palestine.