Op-Ed: Proposed Israeli Ban at Co-op is 'Utterly Absurd'
Ginia Bellafante’s latest Big City column in the Times offers a rousing takedown of the Park Slope Food Co-op’s proposed ban on Israeli products, with zingers aplenty: “Calling for a boycott of Israeli-made foods at the Park Slope Food Co-op turns out to be a lot like calling for a boycott of Speedos in Minsk….
Ginia Bellafante’s latest Big City column in the Times offers a rousing takedown of the Park Slope Food Co-op’s proposed ban on Israeli products, with zingers aplenty: “Calling for a boycott of Israeli-made foods at the Park Slope Food Co-op turns out to be a lot like calling for a boycott of Speedos in Minsk. …there are currently only a handful of foods in the whole establishment produced in Israel”; “That a protest of this scope would be both dubious as a symbolic gesture and utterly absurd as a means of levying economic impact has hardly diluted the tensions of those invested. Great effort is being made to defeat something unlikely to occur”; and “The co-op, despite the wonderful job it does providing organic foods at affordable prices, suffers from its own adolescent myopia: It believes that what it does has broad implications. Suppressing hummus on Union Street won’t change the world.” Bellafante also notes that “the vast majority” of the co-op’s 16,000 members don’t care about the proposal.
Food Co-op Politics Leave a Bad Taste [NY Times]
Photo by binolio
“Suppressing hummus on Union Street won’t change the world.”
I have no idea about this situation at the co-op (and NYT won’t let me into the article) but this quote is a self defeating attitude for losers. Change is a self fulfilling prophecy. If a billion people thought their minute action didn’t matter or was just too small even to be a symbolic gesture, then there certainly will be no effect. So I think that is a horrible thing to say in general.
As for the co-op issue, i can’t speak but if the members desire to make a statement through their food purchases, but this country is so oblivious to the rest of the world, yet we have the freedom to do what people couldn’t dare to do, yet here you have someone browbeating others about how their actions are too small to matter – its insulting to oppressed people in general.
And i’m not even that open minded. Who cares, let them do what they want. Also, i don’t even think the vast majority of people care about the election of their congresspeople so not sure thats a good measuring stick.
As someone in a community that’s been the subject of a Ginia Bellafante piece, I’ve learned firsthand how unbelievably biased and distorted her writing is. It is amazing to me that the Times puts her work where it does, allowing it to reside next to legitimate reporting. Nothing but mean-spirited and ill-informed rumor.