Inside the Park Slope Co-op: The food store ripping apart over Gaza and antisemitism

Soon after the October 7 massacres in Israel, kaffiyeh-wearing protestors gathered outside the Park Slope Food Co-op, a community owned and operated grocery store, asking if shoppers were pro or anti genocide - and collecting signatures on a petition calling for the co-op to boycott Israeli goods.

The petition now has over 1,000 signatures - and now, a year later, a collective known as Co-op 4 Unity has filed a complaint of antisemitism to the New York State Human Rights Division.

Co-op 4 Unity says there have been numerous antisemitic incidents at the co-op, often related to the protestors, known as Park Slope Food Co-op Members for Palestine. In May one co-op member who tried to speak up against the boycott was harassed by another shopper who called them a “Nazi” and shouted “Sieg Heil.” An Israeli co-op member overheard discussing the boycott during her shift was told by another member that she smelled “of Palestinian blood.” (Park Slope Food Co-op and Park Slope Food Co-op Members for Palestine did not reply to requests for comments.)

“Up until October 7, [the co-op] was a wonderful community where it felt like everyone supported each other,” Sondra Shaievitz, a Park Slope Food Co-op member and member of Co-op 4 Unity, told the Jewish Chronicle.

Shaievitz moved 31 years ago to Park Slope, one of the wealthiest communities in Brooklyn, NY, specifically to be a member of the co-op. Living only a block away, she visited five days per week, loving how everything was democratically run. The fresh, local, affordable produce was perfect for her vegan lifestyle.

For years, Shaievitz had heard whispers that the co-op was antisemitic but she felt these were just ignorant or based on jealousy of the people who shopped there. “But now, I guess that's why we don't see as many clearly Orthodox people there,” she said.

The co-op opened in 1973 and quickly grew to become the biggest member-run food co-op in America. Its 16,000 members each work shifts lasting two hours and fortyfive minutes every six weeks, doing everything from cleaning toilets to operating the tills.

In May Shaievitz ran to be a member of the Co-op’s board. While handing out fliers, another co-op member noticed Shaievitz’s campaign sign, which had a circle with a line through BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions), which the Park Slope Food Co-op Members for Palestine were pushing to align with.

“You're against BDS? Are you a Zionist?” she recalls the muscled man, who was over six feet tall, asking. “She's a Zionist,” he shouted at costumers.

Staff tried to intervene. Shaievitz called friends to help. After an hour, another BDS advocate stepped in and calmed the man down.

“I didn't file a complaint against him,” she says, “because I felt that would be unsafe. I didn't want him to get upset.” Instead, she anonymously told the police but they said they couldn’t do anything because the incident had already passed.

Shaievitz lost the election in July to candidates backed by Park Slope Food Co-op Members for Palestine.

This isn’t the first time BDS has become an issue at the co-op. In 2012 members voted against boycotting the Israeli goods sokd by the co-op, which includes about six products: a shampoo and conditioner, different types of Sabra hummus, Al-Arz tahini, and peppers that are only available when in season.

The difference between today and 2012 is that the BDS advocates are younger and “more relentless and brutal,” Shaievitz said. “I don't believe they have an appreciation of how special this place is.”

75 per cent of members need to vote for a boycott, but Park Slope Food Co-op Members for Palestine are pushing to make it only 51 per cent. They also are aiming to change monthly co-op meetings to virtual instead of in person, which goes against the co-ops’ bylaws, because the group use their large email list to advocate.

Once a predominantly Italian and Puerto Rican neighbourhood, Park Slope is now made up of progressive financial leaders, journalists and authors. In the past, according to Amy Sennesh Vastola, who has shopped at the co-op for 35 years, “people were very friendly.” It was a great place to bring kids. “I don't think anybody was doing their big social justice signalling,” she says. “They would have been hypocrites if they did because they're buying up all these brown stones and pushing people out.” In 2019, the co-op had $58.3 million in sales. Wealth “always divorces you from reality.”

Ramon Maislen, a Co-op 4 Unity member who ran for the board with Shaievitz and also lost says that Park Slope Food Co-op Members for Palestine are “using very misleading language to try to excite people and eventually they will excite enough people that it will lead to violence. I don't see these people as living up to the spirit of a co-op, which is to try to work co-operatively. Because I'm a Zionist, I'm not worthy of speaking to. I’m, in their words, incapable of empathy.”

He says that if an anti-BDS member does something seen as wrong, they face fierce consequences, while pro-BDS members will either have no repercussions or be told to write an inauthentic apology letter, such as in the case of the man who was screaming “Sieg Heil.”

The co-op needs to make a choice, Maislen says. “Do you want to be aligned with an eliminationist group which is totally comfortable alienating a portion of the co-op - or do you want to try to be a beacon of light and pro-coexistence?”