When Daniel Rosen first thought of doing a large-scale distribution of the Israeli snack foods Bamba and Bissli in New York City, he thought it might involve 10 small groups of people going out on behalf of Impact, a grassroots activation group that responds to antisemitic incidents.
He scheduled the campaign, called IMPACT Snack Crew, to last four days—from June 10 to June 14. One of the first distribution sites was outside the Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn, N.Y., which recently adopted a boycott of Israeli products, and which sparked initially sparked this idea.
More than 10 days later, it was still going strong.
American distributor Osem USA has donated pallets of the savory treats. Bamba comes in classic peanut butter- and also strawberry-flavored corn puffs. Bissli, made of wheat, come in flavors like BBQ, pizza, onion and falafel.
So far, about 100 groups of people have participated in the Bamba-Bissli brigade.
With each bag of snacks, volunteers distribute a one-page flier about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in an effort to educate New Yorkers about what such boycotts represent and try to accomplish.
“BDS is bigotry,” Rosen, chairman and a co-founder of IMPACT, told JNS. “You tried to hurt Israel, and our response is to help Israel.”
The Bamba-Bisli brigade has so far distributed some 6,000 bags of the snacks at sites of major New York City foot traffic in all five boroughs, as well as on Long Island and in Westchester.
Crews have brought the snacks to Times Square and Grand Central Station, as well as Cunningham Park in Queens on the evening of a free concert by the New York Philharmonic. They are sharing the snacks at shopping centers and at a commuter train station in White Plains. When that volunteer crew ran out of snack bags, the local kosher grocery store Seasons gave them cases more.
Initial distributions also took place in Manhattan, with assistance from the the Anti-Defamation League and emissaries from the Jewish Agency for Israel. And they circled back to one of their original stations outside the co-op during an recent interfaith rally against BDS.
Volunteers are “using Israeli snacks as a vehicle to educate communities about the dangers of discrimination, challenge the BDS movement and promote messages of unity, connection and Jewish joy,” Aaron Herman, CEO and co-founder of IMPACT, told JNS. “We are demonstrating that we can transform moments of division into opportunities for connection, resilience and positive action.”
