“When we talk about hummus,” the Israeli academic Dafna Hirsch tells New York Magazine’s Matthew Shaer, “we talk on the material level and also the symbolic level. There is a mythology that completely surrounds hummus that doesn’t surround a lot of other foods. It’s a fascinating thing.”
Shaer was writing on the occasion of tonight’s vote-on-a-vote among the Park Slope faithful: whether the socially-conscious members of a popular Brooklyn food co-op should take another vote at a later date on whether to boycott Israeli products. Hirsch was not speaking specifically about this proposed boycott, but her comment about symbolism was appropriate: the food co-op isn’t exactly filled to the brim with products made in Israel. But the number of items isn’t the point. It’s the symbolic importance of expressing a chic hostility to the Jewish state. As Ruthie Blum put it in Israel Hayom last week:
The Jews of Park Slope are living very near to where their great-grandparents settled after getting off the boat at Ellis Island. However poor and dirty Brooklyn was in those days, it constituted freedom from an actual evil occupation – that of the Nazis. And however gentrified much of the New York City borough has become, many of its Jewish residents still care enough about the quality and price of their kosher food to join a food cooperative.
With a threat as great as Hitler’s annihilation machine looming large today, they should be ashamed of themselves for tolerating any assistance whatsoever to its enablers. In so doing, they are dishonoring their heritage and endangering their future.
Lest you think Blum is being unfairly unkind to the aimless allies of the destroy-Israel movement, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was even harsher:
“I think it has nothing to do with the food,” he said of the boycott. “The issue is there are people who want Israel to be torn apart and everybody to be massacred, and America is not going to let that happen.”
The New York Times notes, “The boycott would be largely symbolic, because the co-op carries only a half-dozen or so products imported from Israel, including paprika, olive pesto and vegan marshmallows.” It’s possible if you have not recently been to Brooklyn, that sentence may strike you as absurd. But that is the modern reality for the borough’s residents, living among self-styled problem-solvers apparently in desperate need of real problems to solve–like how to stop the infiltration of Israeli vegan marshmallows.
As you might expect, Bloomberg is not the only city official who understands the inanity of the vote:
Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, called the idea “ill conceived.” Bill de Blasio, the public advocate, said it was “madness.” Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, described the proposal as “an anti-Semitic crusade.”
Because there are a not-insignificant number of Israeli immigrants and their descendants in Brooklyn (close to 8,000 as of the 2000 census), and New York is famous for welcoming immigrants, one can imagine why these politicians aren’t crazy about the Park Slopers’ hostile “activism.”
New Yorkers are generally a quite proud people when it comes to their city. Let’s hope Bloomberg, Quinn and the others speak for many Brooklynites in their hopes that this shameful episode passes without bringing the city any more embarrassment.
These radical-chic poseurs in Park Slope have too much time on their hands.
Then the coop MUST be boycotted, there is simply no other option. Moreover I'd like to see at least some presence outside the coop advertising that they are in the same camp as Hamas. If the coop has the courage of its own convictions they should be proud of that moniker.
Is this article saying that the Jewish members of the food coop want to boycott Israeli hummus but the Irish/Italian (Quinn/deBlasio — or is deBlasio Spanish?) city officials are against it?
I lived in Bay Ridge Brooklyn in for 3 years. Once day in 2007 I stopped at the Park Slope Barnes and Noble and a deadly serious young woman, wearing fine clothing, earnestly thrust some political papers at me. I said no thanks and I thought she might knock me down. Please. If the young women in Park Slope wish to be heroes, join the Peace Corps and go to someplace with real problems. Park Slope activists – what a joke!
Re: Park Slope wannabe activists. The Peace Corps is hiring. My cousin's only son joined and was sent to Haiti. He nearly died of dengue fever. His parents flew down and hauled him home. He is now a lawyer. That was 10 years ago and of course since then cholera was introduced into Haiti by UN troops. Park Slope ladies: If you wish to help the truly desperate, GO. But to "vote" on international boycotts, while sitting in cushy quarters, carrying Gucci bags and wearing Italian loafers smacks of silly.
Dengue, or "break bone fever," may be a miserable experience, but it is not a deadly disease. And what reason is there to believe that "UN troops" introduced cholera to Haiti? This is medically uninformed, just as the BDS crap is morally/ethically uninformed.
Not deadly? How about when it develops into haemoragic dengue?
How bad is a situation when I find my self in agreement with Nanny Bloomberg….on the subject of food! n n
It's best if the elderly Park Slope Jews stop turning a blind eye to Israel's persecution of the Palestinians. That's standing up for traditional Jewish values, and honoring their forbears,
I just love these "post-colonialist" yuppies, living in town houses built on the fruits of ethnic cleansing and genocide. nI wonder how many American post-colonialist post and anti-Zionists have ever offered to pay rent to the few surviving decedents of the Canarsie Indian clan. (The Canarsies, who dwelled in Brooklyn, were a branch of the Lenape/Delaware Indian Nation.) The NY Times can do the same n nCoop members can send their rent checks to: n nDelaware Tribal Offices n170 NE Barbara nBartlesville, OK 74006 n nOr to n nDelaware Nation nP.O. Box 825 nAnadarko, OK 73005 n
n"Hummus" (in Hebrew HIMTZA) is mentioned in the Book of Ruth which describes how Ruth is invited to dip her "pita" (in Hebrew PAT) into her HIMTZA……. this proves that in the Jewish village of Bethlehem people dipped bread into chickpea/arbanzo/hummus/himtza and probably added some olive oil(still produced in Bethlehem), long before the Arabs invaded the Holy Land and learned Jewish recipes, making them their own.. Today no Jews are allowed to live in Bethlehem which is Moslem with a tiny Christian minority. n n nDavid Zohar- Jerusalem
Since when is preventing terror persecution?
Ah I get it. Israel should stop trying to prevent terror because that is like persecution. It is much better if the Palestinians butcher the Israelis because like that we don’t have to feel guilty and when all the Jews are deaf there will be peace.
Great plan.