Park Slope Food Coop Members for Palestine – May 1, 2026
At the April GM, our presentation highlighted how the 75% supermajority rule was only passed in 2016 specifically to prevent a boycott of Israeli products. This took place after Operation Cast Lead, the 2008-2009 Israeli bombing campaign that killed 1,417 Palestinians in Gaza. Previously, from 1973 to 2016, the Coop used a simple majority for all boycotts. The presentation also described how the supermajority rule prevented the Coop from boycotting Tom Cat Bakery in 2017, after members voted 59% in solidarity with workers being targeted by ICE.
During the discussion, many members spoke about how the existing supermajority rule “disenfranchised” them, questioning why 26% of the membership should be able to veto a principled boycott.
After the discussion, a member of the pro-Israel group “Coop 4 Unity” gave a slapdash presentation on his counter-proposal to further entrench the 75% requirement. After saying he “did not care” about his proposal, he used the presentation as a soapbox to rail against the Palestine solidarity movement. At one point, he also warned against the “changing demographics” of the Coop as a reason to keep the supermajority rule, an implicitly racist statement. He finished his presentation by projecting a swastika on the screen, effectively telling the audience that pro-Palestine members were Nazis.
At a separate moment during the General Meeting, one member called out the hypocrisy of the Coop's Indigenous land acknowledgement and statement of support for the Black Lives Matter movement, given its refusal to take a stand against the Israeli government's apartheid regime. During his comment, the member used the term “Jewish supremacism.” The use of this term in an American context can call to mind harmful, centuries old conspiracies portraying Jews as a coordinated group seeking power over politics, finance, or public life. In the context of Israel/Palestine, this term is used by Israeli and Palestinian scholars, human rights experts, and political leaders to describe the racist belief that Palestinian people are inferior or less than human, which motivates Israeli apartheid (including the 2018 Nation-State Law and the 2026 death penalty for Palestinians) and the Israeli genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza.
To avoid confusion and be inclusive, Park Slope Food Coop Members for Palestine uses the term “Zionism” to refer specifically to the settler-colonial political ideology that, since its origins in the late 19th century, has sought dominance and territorial expansion in Palestine through apartheid rule, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of the indigenous Palestinian people. Political Zionism is a racist, ethno-nationalist movement that is distinct from Judaism. We must continue to make that separation clear to strengthen our analysis and to support our Jewish community members who call for a clearly pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist Judaism.
Park Slope Food Coop Members for Palestine is a multi-ethnic, multi-generational coalition. Many of us and our allies are Jewish. We encourage all members to use language that avoids bad faith interpretations or suggestions that Zionism is inherently part of Judaism. For more on this, check out Molly Crabapple's beautiful new book on anti-Zionist Jewish emancipation movements that emphasized solidarity with all oppressed peoples. We should keep educating ourselves and each other as we build a durable, growing movement for Palestinian freedom.
We remain resolutely focused on passing a boycott of Israeli products until Israel complies with international law in its discrimination against Palestinians. We are wary of attempts to drum up controversy and distract from the reality that our Coop purchases food from a genocidal apartheid state that uses mass starvation as a weapon of war. Let us be intentional with our words so we may end our Coop's support of this cruel regime.
In solidarity,
PSFC Members for Palestine