TEL AVIV – A New York City food coop has adopted new measures that make it more difficult for members to pass boycott resolutions against Israeli products, the Times of Israel reported.
Brooklyn’s Park Slope Food Coop, which had previously rejected a proposal by some of its members to boycott Israeli products, voted 294 to 192 to require a 75% majority to boycott food producers. The debate over the boycott is largely symbolic since the coop only sells about six items produced in Israel.
Coop secretary Jesse Rosenfeld, who was behind the new anti-boycott measures, praised the vote’s outcome and said the new 75% threshold would end “division and hostility.”
Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) activists have targeted the market for carrying Israeli-made products, but in March 2012, members of the coop overwhelmingly voted against boycotting Israeli products in a 1,005 to 653 vote.
According to the Times of Israel, New York City mayor and then-Public Advocate Bill de Blasio said at the time he was proud of his neighbors for doing the right thing, calling the boycott effort inflammatory and destructive.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn called the idea “ill-conceived,” and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer slammed the boycott as “an anti-Semitic crusade.”