The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York is calling on the New York State Division of Human Rights and the New York City Commission on Human Rights to take action after reports of a Thursday meeting of the Park Slope Food Coop about a boycott of Israeli goods in which members applauded when someone compared Jews to Nazis and said that “Jewish supremacism is a problem in this country.”
The New York Post, which obtained a recording of the meeting, reported that a member of the Brooklyn-based health food store told fellow members that “applauding a speech that labels Jews as supremacists is not principled. It is wrong.”
“This inflammatory rhetoric does not emerge in a vacuum,” stated Mark Treyger, CEO of the JCRC. “It is the predictable result of a sustained disinformation and demonization campaign advanced by some coop members under the pretext of legitimate criticism of Israel.”
“It is textbook antisemitism,” he added. “Jewish members of the coop should not be demeaned, targeted, made to feel unsafe or subjected to collective blame because of disagreements over Middle East policy.”
The New York and New Jersey office of the Anti-Defamation League stated that “we are appalled that a Park Slope Food Coop meeting this week allegedly platformed blatantly antisemitic tropes and allowed the declaration that ‘Jewish supremacism is a problem in this country’ to go unchallenged by the moderators.”
“It shouldn’t be hard to use good speech to combat all identity-based hate,” the ADL said.
