Jewish members of the Park Slope Food Coop, a Brooklyn grocery cooperative with some 15,000 members, say they have faced threats, physical intimidation, and antisemitic harassment from pro-boycott activists in the weeks leading up to a vote Tuesday night on whether to ban Israeli products from the store’s shelves.

The vote, originally scheduled to take place in person at The Picnic House in Prospect Park, was moved to Zoom after members raised “explicit concerns about their safety,” according to internal emails obtained by The New York Post. Coop coordinators Ann Herpel and Matt Hoagland acknowledged in a message to members that even with newly hired security personnel on site, “we cannot guarantee their security.” The coop has also instituted a check-in station for parts of the building.

“People were nervous to go physically,” coop member Ramon Maislen told The Post. “They are fairly violent,” he alleged of the anti-Israel faction within the membership.

A separate internal email from coop management stated that disagreements over the vote had “escalated into verbal confrontations and, in some cases, physical altercations” between members, and that the coop had received threats requiring coordination with the NYPD.

One Jewish member affiliated with the anti-boycott group Coop 4 Unity described witnessing a pro-boycott member physically menace someone distributing flyers opposing the policy change.

“A member walked up to another guy who was flyering and got really physically aggressive,” she said. “He backed up to him closely and started yelling about genocide and apartheid.” Coop staffers eventually intervened.

“The whole time I was out there flyering, my heart was racing,” the 37-year-old mother of two said. “I’m a mom of two. I could think of 1 million other things I could be doing.”

At a meeting last month, one coop member sparked outrage when he declared “Jewish supremacism is a problem in this country” and compared Jews to Nazis.

A formal complaint reviewed by The Post described a longtime member experiencing severe anxiety after receiving emails from boycott organizers referring to “Zionists.” She wrote: “I lost sleep. I had diarrhea. My stomach was in knots for the two weeks between the April 14 email and the April 29 meeting.” She arrived at a prior meeting hours early out of fear she would be prevented from entering, and described the atmosphere as “intimidating,” saying pro-Palestinian activists had “flooded” the venue wearing keffiyehs and watermelon imagery, causing other members to stay away entirely.

Maislen filed a formal complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights in 2024, alleging that he and other Jewish members were harassed for opposing the boycott campaign.
Outside the coop on Monday, pro-Palestinian activists chanted about genocide, apartheid, and Zionism while the newly hired security guards stood nearby. Many shoppers told The Post they were disgusted by the protesters.

Despite the intensity of the conflict, the practical scope of the proposed boycott is narrow. The coop currently carries only a handful of Israeli products: matzo sold seasonally for Pesach, Bamba snack chips, some hummus, an herb, and two Ecolove hair care products — five items in all, or eight if certain produce and tahini brands are included depending on the version of the proposal.

But opponents say the stakes go far beyond the products themselves. Noah Potter, 54, a lawyer and coop member since 2012, said a yes vote would be “a scalp hanging from the belt” of the BDS movement.

“It’s about putting the coop’s brand on the BDS ideology,” Potter said. “When BDS comes into an organization, the modus operandi is to polarize and expel, purge and cause the organization to adopt a statement that is highly reductionist, and inflammatory, and assigns blame to the extent of incarnating evil.”

Boycott organizers have framed their campaign around accusations of genocide, apartheid, and violations of international law — accusations Israel and its supporters vigorously dispute. Among the movement’s stated demands was the “right of return” for all descendants of Palestinians displaced in the 1948 War of Independence, a position that, if implemented, would effectively end Israel’s existence as a Jewish-majority state.

The anti-Israel campaign at the coop has been ongoing since 2012, but intensified sharply following the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.

New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin publicly opposed the measure ahead of the vote. “This proposed boycott serves to further divide New Yorkers,” she told The Times of Israel. “I hope the Coop rejects BDS and instead remains focused on the mission that has guided it for more than 50 years.”

An informal survey estimated that nearly 1,000 current members would leave the coop if the boycott passes — a prospect that concerns Maislen and other opponents beyond the principle of the matter.

“My concern is that if coop members leave in disgust, it actually kind of harms us in a way, because if we have to have another vote, there’s just fewer people that are on our side,” Maislen said.