NEW YORK — Campaigners for and against a boycott against Israel campaigned outside Brooklyn’s Park Slope Food Coop on Tuesday afternoon, handing out fliers and making their pitch to shoppers, ahead of a vote that has riven the co-op community and become a major issue for Jews in the city.

“For the health of the co-op, vote ‘No,'” an anti-boycott activist said, as shoppers filed past. “Keep the co-op free from discrimination.”

“Vote ‘Yes’ to stop genocide,” a boycott campaigner said, holding a sign that read, “You cannot cover up genocide.”

In the vote that took place hours later, the co-op passed a boycott against Israel by a wide margin, leaving the anti-boycott group reckoning with their future in the community. The dispute over the boycott highlighted how Israel issues continue to roil progressive spaces in the US, often alienating Jews, years after the start of the Gaza war.

The boycott measure passed by a vote of 67 percent in favor, 31% against, with the remaining 2% abstaining. More than 6,500 of the co-op’s 17,000 members voted.

A neighborhood cornerstone

The co-op, founded in 1972, is a longstanding cornerstone in the tony Brooklyn neighborhood known for its progressive politics and elegant brownstones. Only members are allowed to shop at the store, in exchange for working shifts in its aisles of organic products. Outside the entrance, members who request help carrying their purchases wait on benches, where “walkers” on shifts meet them to escort them home.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) vote against Israel has formed a rupture in that community.

Coordinators at the co-op told members last week that Tuesday’s general meeting on the boycott would take place via Zoom due to security concerns and the expected large turnout.

“Staff, presenters, Chair committee, and other members have all raised explicit concerns about their safety, attending the meeting in person,” the coordinators said in an email obtained by The Times of Israel.

In an internal email to members last week, the co-op’s management said that disagreements over the vote had “escalated into verbal confrontations and, in some cases, physical altercations” between members.

Threats, hostility, and security guards

The co-op has also received threats that “required coordination with the NYPD,” the email said.

Starting on Tuesday, the co-op placed security guards at the store entrance, while asking for members to “approach one another with the cooperative spirit that has sustained this community for decades.”

Some members of the co-op’s chair committee had told coordinators that, due to........

© The Times of Israel