With bags of Bamba in hand, about 50 pro-Israel activists rallied outside the Park Slope Food Co-op on June 11 to protest the co-op’s vote to boycott Israeli products, calling the move illegal, racist and antisemitic.

At a general co-op meeting last month, 67% of the more than 6,600 Co-op members who attended via Zoom voted to ban Israeli products from the shelves of one of the nation’s largest food cooperatives, echoing the demands of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a pro-Palestinian campaign that calls for economic pressure on Israel. The vote ended a years-long debate over boycotting Israeli products, which intensified amid the ongoing war in Gaza, launched in the wake of Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Michelle Ahdoot, director of Programming and Strategy at #EndJewHatred, which led the rally, told Brooklyn Paper that PSFC’s boycott of Israeli products was not only antisemitic, but illegal.

“When a marketplace is removing products based on the country of origin, serious questions are raised, you know, whether national identity is being treated as a proxy for individuals and communities,” Ahdoot said, adding that the BDS movement was “seeking to destroy the Jewish State.”

Michelle Ahdoot, director of Programming and Strategy at #EndJewHatred, speaks during a June 11 rally outside the Park Slope Food Co-op protesting its boycott of Israeli products. Ahdoot said the BDS movement was “seeking to destroy the Jewish State.”

Co-op member Malka Spitalny told Brooklyn Paper that her mother fled Nazi Germany to the Netherlands. After growing up in Amsterdam, her mother urged her to immigrate to the United States. Spitalny has been a Co-op member since 1993 but now feels alienated because of the boycott, she said.

“We do the best we can to make this world a better place, and I think it’s outrageous to target a small group of people for things that maybe we sometimes do wrong,” she said. “All human beings have failures, but look at the good things that happen throughout the world.”

When asked about the Co-op’s history of political activism, including past boycotts of products from South Africa over apartheid, Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship, and Colorado over gay rights, as well as boycotts of products from large corporations such as Coca-Cola and Citibank, Spitalny responded, “Don’t bark at it if it’s good. My father had a Volkswagen, even though my family was murdered by the Germans. I mean, Volkswagen was a good car, even though it was a car [from] the German people.”

Pro-Israel activists rally outside the Park Slope Food Co-op on June 11 to protest the co-op’s vote to boycott Israeli products.Photo by Gabriele Holtermann Pro-Israel activists rally outside the Park Slope Food Co-op on June 11 to protest the co-op’s vote to boycott Israeli products.Photo by Gabriele Holtermann

The protesters, most of whom appeared to be unaffiliated with the Park Slope Food Co-op, blocked the sidewalk during the rally, making it difficult for pedestrians and shoppers to maneuver through the crowd. They also handed out some of the Israeli products now banned from the co-op, including Bamba, a popular Israeli snack made of peanut-flavored puffed maize.

Aaron Herman, co-founder and CEO of IMPACT, told Brooklyn Paper that his organization launched the “Impact Snack Crew” initiative, distributing 4,000 Bamba snack bags across the five boroughs and Westchester.

“BDS is bigotry, and snacks are delicious, and so the way you fight some hate is with kindness and delicious food, and that’s what Bamba offers,” Herman said.
Pro-Israel activists hand out Israeli products, including Bamba snacks, during a June 11 rally outside the Park Slope Food Co-op protesting the co-op’s boycott of Israeli products.Photo by Gabriele Holtermann

Alyce Barr of Park Slope Food Co-op 4 Palestine (PSFC4Palestine), the organizers of the boycott, denounced claims that the vote to ban Israeli products from the food co-op was illegal, racist and antisemitic. Barr, who is Jewish, said that numerous organizations, including Jewish Voices for Peace NYC and the American Council for Judaism, had endorsed their campaign to remove Israeli products from the co-op’s shelves.

“[The ban] is not antisemitic or racist. Our group itself is intergenerational, it’s multi-racial, it’s multi-ethnic. It includes lots of Jewish people,” Barr told Brooklyn Paper, noting that even some members who opposed the boycott admitted it was a legal move. “It is legal in this state to have a boycott that protests discrimination, and our boycott is looking for equal treatment of Palestinians and Israel to come into compliance with international law in regard to its treatment of Palestinians. We are not boycotting people. Any person of Israeli descent who lives in New York [and] who wants to join the Food Co-op is welcome to join.”