Here’s Reason No. 501 never to set foot in the People’s Republic of Park Slope. And it’s got nothing to do with the loony couple who recently lost, then found, a stuffed monkey they’re raising like a baby.
This is as serious as the Middle East conflict. With a side of hummus.
The Gaza Strip has moved to the center aisle of the iconic Park Slope Food Co-op, where elite lefties meet to share organic recipes as they gossip about social justice and the best private schools.
In the past month, neighbor has been pitted against neighbor in the most annoyingly upscale, ultra-liberal, and sanctimonious neighborhood to call itself part of New York.
The issue isn’t plastic bags, banned from the co-op in 2008 to save the planet. Nor is it plastic water bottles (banned), or Coca-Cola (banned in protest of labor abuses in Colombia). And it’s not about meat, which arrived on the free-range shelves in 2002 — to the horror of militant vegans — along with microbrewed beer but, tragically, no Budweiser.
The Battle of Brooklyn is all about Israel. A push has been launched by some of the co-op’s 16,000 members to dump Israeli products from the shelves. And not just ban them. A vote against Israel, which could come up next month, would sign up the co-op, where people have stuffed cloth bags with locally farmed produce since 1973, with an international movement aimed at severing America’s money from the Jewish state.
“Something drastic has to be done in the Middle East,” said Brenda Iijima, 44, an eight-year co-op member, boycott supporter, and poet. (How do I get that job?) She rejects the notion that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a matter of Jewish survival. Israel, she contends, has all the power.
But this is Park Slope, where all human-rights violations are not created equal. No one here has suggested making a statement against, say, Iran, Egypt or Sudan, whose genocidal acts of mass killing make Israel look like a nation of Boy Scouts by comparison. And no one has said a peep about the Palestinian Authority, whose leadership has enriched itself through the looting of its own people. But never mind.
“I’m upset about it,” said Barbara Mazor, a 23-year co-op member and Orthodox Jew.
“The goal of the [dump-Israel] movement is to end the Jewish state. People are latching on to it because they think it’s cool.”
Co-op members have talked idly about removing Israeli products for three years. Then on July 26, a group labeling itself Park Slope Food Co-op Members for Israeli Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions proposed scheduling a vote. If the group wins, the co-op would pull Israeli-made products from the shelves, including bath salts, paprika and the popular Sodastream seltzer maker.
Mazor says she loves the co-op — “the costs are so low because of member labor, it depends on people getting along … I know I sound like a cult a member!”
But she’ll quit if the vote comes to pass, and figures 20 percent of members will leave with her.
“Israel’s not perfect, but who is?” she said. “We’re having these discussions while rockets are flying down the highway, flying into towns. Flying into Israeli schools.”
So far, she’s signed up 140 people to vote against the ban. What will happen is anyone’s guess.
Pro-boycott member Dennis James, 73, wants the matter to come up for a vote. “We believe that Israel has been guilty of massive violations of international law.”
The proposed boycott has even caught the attention of Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz (not a member), who told The New York Observer it would prompt him to shut down the co-op. “Some [supporters] don’t know they’re anti-Semites,” he said. “That doesn’t give them a pass.”
Mazor just wants this to blow over, so she can go back to bagging her all-natural greens. “If I have anything to do with it, it won’t come up for a vote.”
Being reduced to shopping at Pathmark would be a major letdown. In Park Slope, it might come to that.
Shaking NYers on the edge
Some folks downtown thought it was terrorism. One employee of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office told Mogulite.com that he feared it was a bomb scare protesting the decision to drop charges against freaky French guy Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
Christian Falero, 23, became a naked, knife-wielding sicko, witnesses said. He allegedly stabbed five people in his Washington Heights apartment building, killing an elderly man and injuring four others before stabbing himself, because he thought the end of the world was coming.
The fear and commotion was caused by a 5.8-magnitude earthquake, almost never seen on the East Coast, that was centered in Virginia and felt from the Carolinas to New Hampshire — rattling New York and Martha’s Vineyard, where President Obama was on vacation.
We got away without severe injury. Still, the quake is a reminder that nature is the most powerful force of all.
Run for your livelihoods!
The news came days after billionaire nanny Mayor Bloomberg said that if it were up to him, every American, rich and poor, would pay higher taxes to solve the nation’s debt woes. A new report by the Empire Center for State Policy reveals that New York lost an astonishing 1.6 million people in the past decade — more than the entire population of Philadelphia.
Folks are running for this great state’s exits because of the ridiculous cost of living and lack of jobs. New Yorkers pay the highest taxes in the nation, and they continue to spiral out of control — erasing even more jobs each time a business is forced to leave the state or shut its doors.
So go ahead and soak the people, if you can. Pretty soon, there won’t be anyone left here to turn off the lights.
Nice fatwa-ha-ha-ha, Dave
The line of the week comes from David Letterman, who joked about an al Qaeda terrorist’s threat to “paralyze” his tongue for daring to joke about, well, terrorists.
“I have a fatwah on me. And they say the guy that issued the fatwah is an Internet jihadist. Internet jihadist?
“And I said, ‘Well, heck, who says Obama isn’t creating jobs?’ ”
Nice one, Dave.
Can you top this — please?
An aesthetic rule of the universe holds that those who wear the least clothing need the most.
Three dozen topless women (and a few pervy men) marched through Columbus Circle last weekend to commemorate national “Go Topless Day” — apparently missing the fact they have already won. New York courts allow women to leave their tops at home, provided they’re not selling anything.
This case of too-much-mammo-information was greeted by a commenter’s keen observation: “This rally needs support.”