Anti-Zionist protesters in New York City on May 11, 2026. Photo: Zuma Press Wire via Reuters Connect

Jewish advocacy groups decried a famous New York City food co-op’s decision on Tuesday night to enact a boycott of Israeli products, arguing the move endorses an antisemitic movement to destroy Israel.

About 7,000 of the Park Slope Food Co-op’s 17,000 members attended the meeting, which was moved to Zoom after Jewish attendees expressed fear for their safety if they went in person.

The boycott passed by a vote of 67 percent in favor to 31 percent against. The remaining two percent abstained.

According to the text of the approved measure, the co-op will “not sell goods produced in Israel (pre-1967 borders) or in Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” Fewer than a dozen Israeli-made items sold in the co-op will be affected.

The move is on brand, as the organization has a history of advocating progressive causes. However, Jewish civil rights group said on Wednesday that it only serves to further normalize discrimination and assaults on Jewish identity.

“This does nothing to help Israelis and Palestinians make peace,” said Avi Posnick, executive director of the northeast office of StandWithUs. “Instead, it actively promotes the agenda of violent extremists, while fueling hostility and division among members of the co-op. We stand with Co-op 4 Unity, who worked tirelessly to stop their co-op from being co-opted by a global hate movement.”

He added, “We encourage all people of good will to reject campaigns of hate and instead support genuine efforts toward justice and peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”

Last week, the co-op was warned in a demand letter sent by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law that the conduct of some of its members ahead of the vote constituted unlawful antisemitic discrimination. The missive cited examples of antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation directed at Jewish members, including one in which an activist declared during a committee meeting that “Jewish supremacism is a problem in this country” — language Jewish advocacy groups have long associated with antisemitic tropes about Jewish power and influence.

The Brandeis Center further alleged that Jewish co-op members were intimidated during meetings that became increasingly “tense” and “combative,” causing some members to avoid deliberations surrounding the proposal because of what they described as a hostile atmosphere.

On Wednesday, the Brandeis Center denounced the boycott of Israel, noting its origins in the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement.

“The Park Slope Food Co-op’s vote to adopt a BDS boycott is a deeply disappointing and dangerous outcome,” Brandeis Center executive director Kenneth Marcus said. “BDS is an inherently antisemitic and discriminatory campaign whose purpose is the isolation and ultimate elimination of the Jewish state – and as we have seen time and again, it does not stay contained to Israel. It metastasizes into open hostility toward Jewish people everywhere, even those with no connection to Israel. This is the kind of hostility the co-op’s own leadership has acknowledged was already happening within its walls. A grocery store should never become a springboard for extremist political campaigns.”

Formally launched in 2005, the BDS movement opposes Zionism — a movement supporting the Jewish people’s right to self-determination — and rejects Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish nation-state. It seeks to isolate the country with economic, political, and cultural boycotts.

“The Brandeis Center is actively evaluating all available legal claims arising from the discriminatory nature of this boycott and the procedural irregularities that allowed it to pass. We have stopped BDS before, including Ben & Jerry’s,” Marcus continued. “We intend to stop it here too.”

The controversy at the Park Slope Food Co-op coincides with broader tensions in New York City over antisemitism and anti-Israel activism following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.

Earlier this month, masses of anti-Israel demonstrators marched through the heavily Jewish Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn and protested outside Young Israel of Midwood synagogue over its involvement in selling land they say is “stolen” for being located in West Bank.

Video circulated online from the protest appeared to show a female demonstrator, wearing a surgical mask and a red keffiyeh scarf around her shoulders, assaulting a Jewish girl by grabbing her hair from behind as she attempted to move through the crowd to get home. When a group of teenagers near the incident decried the assault, a swarm of hooded protesters confronted them, pushing and squaring shoulders in an apparent effort to dare a response and threaten more force.

Meanwhile, according to recently released New York City Police Department (NYPD) statistics, Jews were targeted in roughly 60 percent of confirmed hate crimes in the city last month despite comprising approximately 10 percent of the population.

The city has also experienced a series of recent antisemitic vandalism incidents, including swastika graffiti discovered in Queens parks and on Jewish-owned properties.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.