Applauding a speech that labels Jews as supremacists is not principled: It’s hatred — and wrong

At this month’s Park Slope Food Coop general meeting, a member announced on Zoom: “Jewish supremacism is a problem in this country … “

And the crowd cheered.

I have been a coop member for 15 years, and I have never felt more unwelcome in my own community.

Members of the self-proclaimed “Park Slope Food Coop members for Palestine” have called me a racist genocide-supporter, simply for opposing their attempt to have our coop join the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, which wants consumers and stores to boycott Israeli companies.

Ramon Maislen is fed up with the unwelcome feeling he and others have endured in Park Slope. J.C. Rice

I have grown used to it. What I have not grown used to is hearing antisemitic rhetoric spoken so openly, and so comfortably, in my own community.

This did not happen overnight. The coop has seen a steady rise in anti-Jewish sentiment.

In 2024, an Israeli woman stocking shelves was screamed at and told she smells of Palestinian baby blood. Weeks later, a queer Sephardic Jewish woman was given a Nazi salute outside our entrance. This past Halloween, a member wearing a costume themed around the Israeli peanut-butter snack Bamba was menacingly confronted by two men at the entry desk.

These are not anonymous online incidents.

They happened in our store and were perpetrated by our fellow neighbors. At the April 2025 general meeting, a coop member accused “right-wing Jews” of sabotaging a BDS vote. When a Jewish member filed a complaint, the response was that he should stop invoking “Jewish privilege.”

Then, of course, there was what happened Tuesday night, and the mask is slipping. Today, the hatred toward Jews rises again.

The Park Slope Food Coop has faced numerous accusations of hatred toward Jews in recent years. Gregory P. Mango

What is striking is how voices that rarely agree are beginning to echo one another. Tucker Carlson and Hasan Piker have little in common, yet on the idea that “Jewish power” is a corrupting force that must be confronted, the far right and the far left are finding common ground.

The idea of Jewish power has a long and troubling history. Framing Jews as a supremacist force controlling institutions, finance and politics is not a new critique. It is the foundational conspiracy of modern antisemitism. Today, versions of it are being cheered in brownstone Brooklyn by people who consider themselves progressive.

The proposal to boycott Israeli products echoes campaigns in Jewish history that began with economic exclusion and did not end there. Stores in Crown Heights already post stickers refusing service to “Zionists.” The trajectory is legible to anyone with knowledge of where such things have led.

Last night, I stood up onstage at the meeting, facing a hostile crowd, and said what many did not want to hear. Jews, like Palestinians, are indigenous to the land of Israel. Dehumanizing one another at the Coop violates the values we claim to share.

Applauding a speech that labels Jews as supremacists is not principled: It is wrong.

What makes this moment particularly painful is that it is not happening despite the Jewish community, it is happening with the tacit support of a portion of it. Park Slope’s own Brad Lander, currently campaigning for Congress, has deployed anti-Jewish dog whistles, which have sent a clear message: Jewish concerns come second to political alliances.

Maislen asserts that applauding a speech that labels Jews as supremacists is not principled: It is wrong. J.C. Rice

In 2024, some coop members launched a campaign to strip the store’s shelves of Israeli products. Obtained by The New York Post

Some of our neighbors, distraught by the war in Gaza, have aligned themselves with a movement where anti-Jewish rhetoric has become routine. Their grief is understandable. The hostility it has helped normalize is not.

For more than 50 years, the Park Slope Food Coop has been a model of shared responsibility and mutual respect. I stood on that stage last night, and the room went quiet. Not because what I said was radical, but because, for a moment, everyone present understood what had just happened.

That silence was the coop’s conscience. The only question now is whether it listens.