The Brooklyn BDS Failure (COMMENTARY MAGAZINE) Omri Ceren 03/28/12)
Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/03/28/brooklyn-co-op-debate-pro-israel/
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Yesterday, Seth ran down the background of that evening’s Park Slope
boycott vote. The motion asked the unintentionally hilarious members
of the popular Brooklyn, New York, food co-op to vote on whether they
should vote on boycotting Israeli products.
In the end it wasn’t even close:
Initially discussed at a co-op member board meeting over two years
ago, the proposed boycott was brought to a vote on Tuesday night,
with 1,005 members voting against the boycott and 653 voting in
favor. Public Advocate and Brooklyn resident Bill de Blasio said he
was proud of his neighbors for doing the right thing, calling the
proposal inflammatory and destructive.
The Guardian’s U.S. News blog has a darkly entertaining rundown of
highlights from the debate. You have to get past the predictable
headline pitting Israeli goods against “human rights,” but after that
there are treats like:
“Belonging to the co-op means belonging to justice. And injustice
anywhere is an attack on justice everywhere,” said one young woman,
who never quite made it clear which way she was leaning. A midwife
announced that she had delivered babies on both sides of this
argument, and that “peace on earth begins at birth.”
There were also references to hummus-inspired music, musings about
the double-valenced implications of Chomsky quotes, and an
explanation of how Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) can be
properly and positively analogized to uncomfortable “house cleaning”
enemas (and now you can’t unknow that!) By all appearances, the
debate exceeded even the expectations laid out by the preemptive NY
Daily News profile of BDS co-op advocates.
In many ways and on many levels, the Park Slope BDS failure is a
perfect update to the failure of BDS across the United States. First
BDS pushers tried to get entire left-leaning states to boycott
Israel, and they failed. Then they tried to get left-leaning
university campuses to divest, at which point they failed again. Now
this.
Pity Norman Finkelstein. Having spent decades trying to demonize
Israel in the highest international forums, he and his ilk now have
to complain bitterly from the sidelines as 21st century anti-Israel
activism is reduced to some guy trotting out intestinal cleansing
metaphors in a futile effort to get vegan Israeli marshmallows banned
from grocery stores in Brooklyn.
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