No Cooperation With Occupation

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PSFC Members for Palestine is a group of PSFC member-owners, organizing in solidarity with Palestine.

As members of the Park Slope Food Coop, we call upon each other to support a targeted boycott of Israeli products within our aisles.

The horrific violence perpetrated against Israeli civilians on October 7th and Palestinian civilians each day since is a reminder of the untenable status quo in Israel-Palestine. For 75 years, we have witnessed Israel’s ongoing occupation and apartheid of the Palestinians, as well as the reduced civil and political rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel—all with international impunity and the full economic, diplomatic, and military support of the United States. As residents of Israel’s foremost geopolitical ally, we are uniquely positioned—individually and as members of collective institutions—to pressure companies that play a direct role or are complicit in Israel’s apartheid, occupation, and ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. We the Coop are no exception.

PSFC has a long history of principled boycotts. From the Coop’s inception in 1973, we instituted a ban on apples from apartheid South Africa until the country held its first truly democratic election. When Coca-Cola was complicit in the murder of Colombian union leaders and workers in the late 90s, we joined the global boycott of their products. In 2018, we took the Coop’s finances out of Citibank for its support of the Dakota Access Pipeline. And in 2019, we entered a partnership with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to financially support their Fair Food Program, a human rights initiative targeting harmful farm labor practices. However, after 50 years of operation, the Coop has yet to speak out about Israeli apartheid and occupation.

The history of Israel’s human rights abuses is long and deep, including on issues we as a Coop will understand: food production and labor rights. Olive trees are living symbols of Palestinian history, and Israel has destroyed millions of them—many cultivated within families for generations—as a tactic of land dispossession. The “occupation of water” means Palestinian farms suffer from frequent crop failures because Israel controls, prevents, and even destroys the development of infrastructure such as rainwater cisterns and pumps, all the while diverting water resources to illegal settlements. In the West Bank, tens of thousands of Palestinian laborers cross into Israel daily through caged checkpoints to work on Israeli-operated farms and construction sites. Laborers must secure expensive work permits that lack protections for workplace injury or death. In Gaza, the Israeli navy routinely opens fire on Palestinian fishermen for attempting to fish in more plentiful waters. Israel has been known to keep Gazans on a strict caloric diet so that the population remains suppressed at near-starvation levels. More recently, Israel has razed entire orchards and farmlands in Gaza as part of their ground invasion and considered a plan to flood the tunnels below Gaza with seawater, destroying Gaza’s drinking water and soil for generations to come. Today, Gaza’s entire population is food insecure, with people being reduced to eating animal feed, grass, and whatever else they are forced to rummage for. The situation of Palestinians remains bleak.

Our campaign is about ensuring we the Coop are not supporting an apartheid government and unfolding genocide. The Coop has ample stock of several items of Israeli origin—and there is ample reason to remove them from our shelves. The Coop is a unique institution with an equally unique history as one of the largest and oldest food coops in the country. Adding our voice to this issue will not go unnoticed, and will set a positive example for other food cooperatives in and out of New York City.

We advocate for a boycott of:

• Israeli produce — Many Israeli agricultural products are grown in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights but are falsely labeled “Made In Israel” when imported to the US.

• Sabra — Owned by the Strauss Group, which financially supports the Israeli military, including the Golani Brigade, that is notorious for human rights violations against Palestinians.

• SodaStream — Demonstrated history of racial discrimination against Palestinian workers, including forcibly displacing indigenous Bedouin-Palestinian citizens of Israel.

For Palestinians to live with freedom and dignity, there can be no cooperation with occupation.

Why a watermelon?

The watermelon bears the same colors as the Palestinian flag, the flying of which has been banned by Israel numerous times. As both nourishing produce and Palestinian symbol of resistance, the fruit is an apt icon for this campaign.