Park Slope NY voted against Palestinians
I was eight years old when my family was relocated from the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem to the Shuafat Refugee Camp outside the city. Not by Israel, but by Jordan. That displacement set the course of my life: it is why I became a human rights activist and why I have spent thirty years telling truths that powerful institutions prefer to silence. The newest truth is that the members of the Park Slope Food Co-op, who voted this week to boycott Israeli products, did not help Palestinians. They never do.
On May 26, 6,772 members of a Brooklyn grocery cooperative voted 67% to 31% to remove Israeli-made products from their shelves: bell peppers, persimmons, olive oil, sesame goods, Dorot frozen herbs, and Osem Bamba. To reach even that vote, members first had to lower the required threshold from a 75% supermajority to a simple majority, proving that it was a sham vote. Organizers determined that the meeting itself had to be held entirely online, citing security concerns. Let that detail land for a moment: a Brooklyn grocery cooperative could not hold a meeting in person to discuss removing hummus ingredients from its shelves. This does........
