There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
– “For What It’s Worth” (Stephen Stills/Buffalo Springfield)
By Andrew Adler
Community Editor
The Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn, NY, where a substantial majority of its approximately 17,000 members voted on May 26 to pull Israeli-sourced items from its shelves. (Wikipedia)
This was not an optimal week to be shopping at the Park Slope Food Co-op.
Founded almost exactly 50 years ago and boasting some 17,000 members, the Brooklyn, N.Y. co-op has a reputation for progressive social politics that, of late, is being sorely tested. A vociferous segment of its membership voted on May 26 to remove all products sourced from Israel from its shelves. The supporting arguments are all too familiar: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, West Bank settlers are murdering Palestinian farmers, while IDF bombs are killing scores of Lebanese civilians in the name of vanquishing Hezbollah.
Just as familiar are the opposing arguments: Boycotting Israeli goods is synonymous with antisemitism, a pallid dog whistle on behalf of Boycott, Divest and Sanctions Movement – “BDS” in the predominant vernacular.
Not surprisingly, some circumstances in upscale Park Slope have devolved into dispiriting extremism. “While the overwhelming majority of members have continued to engage respectfully and cooperatively, we have also seen incidents that have gone beyond normal disagreement and escalated into verbal confrontations and, in some cases, physical altercations between Co-op members,” said a co-op email, as reported by The New York Times this past May 25.
Such is the sorry state of dialogue, or what passes for same, in much of contemporary America. Maybe certain stakeholders who populate the Park Slope Food Co-op should take a cue from Louisville’s Year of Civil Discourse, which aims to defuse the confrontational dynamics that make a mockery of reasonableness.
And if anyone believes such devolved “debate” is confined to the U.S., a glance at the sorry state of Middle East politics will quickly put the lie to that notion. Recent images of detained activists from an intercepted protest flotilla – showing detainees with hands bound behind them, forced to kneel face-down on the bare floor (while surveyed by a gloating national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir) – were so disturbing that even Israel President Isaac Herzog was compelled to respond.
A screenshot from a video posted by Israel Minister of Security Itamar Ben-Gvir on his X feed, showing a group of activists from a flotilla intercepted by Israeli authorities.
“Detainees must not be abused,” he said. More forceful, still, was his condemnation of violent acts by West Bank settlers against Palestinians living nearby. As quoted in a May 24 account by The Times of Israel:
“We are witnesses to a wave of terrible violence that is being carried out by an anarchist mob,” Herzog said in a speech at a ceremony granting the Jerusalem Unity Prize, describing the near-daily acts of violence by Jewish extremists as “acts that defile and violate every basic moral, legal, and Jewish norm.”
“There are elements on the fringes of our society that have normalized violence, and, sadly, some go even further — celebrating it and taking pride in it,” he added.
Consider the phrase “normalized violence” and its close cousin, “normalized extremism” – the latter manifesting in seemingly benign circumstances like the Park Slope Food Co-Op dustup. Of course, there’s a vast difference between verbal altercations and outright physical abuse (or worse). Yet verbal violence is threatening enough when a previously accepted norms crumble, each side convinced that their methodology is the sole authentic truth.
Whatever moderating forces are present in Israel (or for that matter, in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, wherever) find themselves shoved aside by mutually declarations of righteousness. Inject sectarian extremism – Jewish, Islamic, whatever, into the mix – and you have a recipe for chaos, if not catastrophe.
Entrenched beliefs are always difficult to shake loose. In Park Slope, where over the decades the Co-op has exemplified institutional cooperation and participation (to be eligible to shop there, each member must work least one three-hour shift per month), the present ideological conflict is poised to pit neighbor against neighbor. It is a conflict that no one can win.
In a genuinely cooperative context, the two camps would have devised a strategy to head off confrontation. But on May 26, roughly two-thirds Co-op membership voted to proceed with the boycott. Now those same members — no matter how they stand — will have to address the enmity that is almost certain to linger.
It may be a stretch to declare that as Park Slope goes, so goes the world. Regardless, the battle lines have been drawn, and it will be up to all parties – whether in Brooklyn or Tel Aviv – to pull back from the brink of calamity.
Andrew Adler is Managing Editor of Community.