Hoping to participate in the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, members of the Davis Food Co-op are petitioning for an initiative to boycott all Israeli products from the grocery store.
The Davis Committee for Palestinian Rights has localized this campaign.
The non-violent campaign was initiated in 2005 and pro-Palestinian organizations from around the world joined. Their aim is to put political and economic pressure on Israel for, what they deem violations of human, civil and political rights toward the Palestinian people.
The store management is not affiliated with the initiative.
“The Co-op does not support or endorse this boycott and wants to make clear it is being organized by members using their rights given in the bylaws,” said Co-op General Manager Eric Stromberg.
Mikos Fabersunne, a coordinator for the Davis Committee for Palestinian Rights, said grassroots movements such as this boycott will help change policies toward this issue.
“The boycott is aligned with the BDS campaign to put pressure on Israel’s economy,” he said. “People have to act on this opportunity to help change the egregious behavior of the Israeli government. The campaign won’t end until [Israel complies] with international law.”
The Co-op sells a small number of Israeli products, including wine, a brand of feta cheese and couscous.
The Co-op is owned and operated by 10,000 shareholders. Its bylaws allow members to decide what to vote on during annual elections.
Five percent of this governing body must sign the petition in order for it to appear on the store’s May ballot. The Davis Committee for Palestinian Rights has been collecting signatures since Jan. 1.
Fabersunne believes the necessary 500 signatures will easily be reached before the March deadline.
Stromberg said the members’ vote can be deemed advisory and not binding if its provisions do not qualify under a legal and proper purpose. The Co-op is reviewing the validity of this boycott initiative because of the possible complications.
“For example, the Co-op sells an olive oil manufactured in the West Bank that is exported through Israel,” Stromberg said. “This boycott requires us to stop selling their product, in turn, hurting Palestinian workers.”
In response to this problem, Fabersunne believes this is part of the process to achieve the overall goal – restoring a free and independent Palestinian state.
“Although this might not seem like a hard hitting strategy, it comes in steps,” Fabersunne said.
Fabersunne said there is substantial change needed.
“Our efforts add another straw to the pile supporting the global community that condemns Israeli action towards the Palestinians,” he said.
Others strongly oppose this boycott because they feel it undermines the state of Israel and is filled with half-truths, according to Karen Firestein, Co-President of Congregation Bet Haverim. Yolo County’s primary Jewish organization, the congregation represents a large portion of Co-op shareholders.
“If the Co-op becomes a political tool for those who want to commandeer it for ideological reasons, it will no longer be able to serve the entire Davis community,” Firestein said in a written statement.
The Davis Interfaith Coalition for Peace and Justice in the Middle East is also opposed to the boycott and is soliciting signatures for a counter-petition.
Doug Walter, Membership Director of the Co-op, believes the shareholders have strict criteria in selecting products, and moving forward with the boycott will have wide implications.
“We respect and recognize the voters who support this boycott, but anything that proposes to drop items for reasons past product quality makes things complicated,” Walter said. “This directly engages us into an international relations debate.”
Students for Justice in Palestine support the boycott and encourage members to take action.
“There is an image of Israel that has been preserved by the ignorance of their policies,” said SJP president Geoffrey Wildanger. “This boycott brings attention to the facts and should cease when Israel is no longer an apartheid state.”
MICHAEL STEPANOV can be reached at city@theaggie.org.
I’m not Jewish. Anyone who knows the Christmas story knows that there were Jews in this land roughly 2,000 years ago, and Romans too. No Palestinians. No Arabs. No Muslims. They simply hadn’t been invented yet.
And they aren’t more Arabs than Jews in Israel- only 20% of Israel is Arab.
And I’m afraid the Hamas run territory of Gaza will never agree to a one man one vote democracy – they are determined to have Sharia law in their land.
Ari- were you considering sending in the US military to compel Hamas to accept Jews and Christians as equals? I just don’t think thats going to work.
Like it or not, US business entities who participate in or act in furtherance of the Arab boycott of Israel or any other country or person based on race, religion, or nationality are in violation of federal law, with both civil and criminal penalties. The Arab boycott began in 1921 as a boycott against “Jewish” products or services in British Mandate Palestine. In 1945, the Arab League instituted a boycott of “Zionist” products. After the Israeli War of Independence, Arab League extended that boycott to the State of Israel. The effort in Davis is part of the continuous effort since 1921 to boycott Jews and Israel. In the 1970’s, in response to blackmail by oil exporting nations requiring American companies to cease to do business with Israeli companies, the United States passed a series of statutes making such actions illegal. Not only is the boycott illegal but federal law obligates the object of the pressure (in the case the Davis Co-op) to report the individuals trying to enforce the boycott.
Barry Broad
Chairperson
Jewish Community Relations Council of the Sacramento Region
Contrary to popular belief, before 1948, historical Palestine wasn’t a bunch of sand and a cactus..Israel does NOT stand as an example of “how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy” .
Facts are facts, just because you are jewish doesn’t mean you have to pretend they don’t exist and be ignorant about them. Israel is an infringement upon the rights of people already living on those lands. It’s not accidental that there’s more arabs than jews in the Iraeli/Palestinian terrorities. The only answer is for Israel and Palestine to both drop their bids for 2 state solutions and form one independent one man one vote democracy. Apartheid never wins.
I like this quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, instead: “Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality.â€
This petition is simply the act of a few extremists trying to bully a community into compliance with their political agenda. Anti-Israel boycotts are anti-Semitic in effect, if not in intent. They are discriminatory against the only democracy in the Middle east. You don’t want to buy Israeli products? Fine. Don’t buy them. But don’t prevent the rest of the community from having free choice.
The anti-Israel forces have tried this tactic before- and have even resorted to vandalizing kosher foods in various grocery stores including Trader Joes. What did they accomplish? All those who value freedom, choice and tangy Israeli feta got together and Israeli product sales went through the roof. Lets do that again at Davis. Lets organize a response to this outrage.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Martin Luther King Jr.
The international community has begun to realize the incredible atrocities committed by the Israeli government. The recent Goldstone report is but a scratch on the surface. Also the notion that one must forgot the Israeli occupation in order to speak about other atrocities taking place around the world is absurd. Israel is the only country in the world without defined borders that continues its illegal construction of settlements without any regard for international law. Finally, this is not a a ploy to hate all Jews, surely some of the biggest critics of the Israeli government are Jews themselves. Oh but wait, I guess those are the “self hating” ones. In the end, the beautiful thing about Democracy is that the final word will be rendered by the people, and the Davis co-op is heading in the right direction.
This is a very selective boycott advocated by these members of the Davis Food Co-op. If they are serious about wanting to boycott Israeli products, then they will want to boycott all of the medical advances developed by Israel which save lives. Furthermore, they should throw away their computers since Israelis also developed much of this technology. I suggest that the energy these individuals are putting into this boycott be redirected to creating a Palestinian democracy that will live peacefully with its neighbor, Israel.
This petition makes me very sad. Why is Israel on the attack for protecting itself and the people in it’s country? Israel has been on the attack since the formation of the country 62 years ago! This boycott is senseless. I love shopping at the co-op and hope the rest of the members can act logically by abstaining from joining those who are believing “half-truths.”
I know that the pro-boycott organizers live in a fantasy world (where people who rain thousands of rockets upon civilian targets are treated as heroes, and the only democratic country in the Middle East is singled out as “the” pariah), but do they really believe in “restoring a free and independent Palestinian state”?!?
Reality Check: there was NEVER a free and independent Palestinian state. While there was an historical Israel, there was only a Palestinian area, administered by various empires, most recently the British. Over 3/4 was given outright to the Arabs (Jordan), and the remaining fraction was to be divided between a Jewish state and a Muslim state. The Jews accepted their small portion, Israel was reborn, and their Arab neighbors immediately declared war and invaded. Israel has been besieged ever since, but there has never been a free and/or independent Palestine.
Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitism. This proposed boycott, as are all of the divestment efforts, is the new form of Jew-hatred. You take the Jewish people’s homeland and treat it differently than any other country. You try to dress it up as just a debate about a nation’s policies. However, it is very thinly disguised Jew-hatred, indistinguishable from the Jew-hatred we have seen for thousands of years. You first apply standards to Jews that you apply to no one else. Where is the boycott of China for its practices in Tibet? Of Russian for its treatment of minorities? Of the Sudan? Of Saudi Arabia and several other Arab nations for their treatment of women and Christians, Jews, and Africans? Then you utilize one of the Nazi’s chief tools: economic boycott, isolation, and demonization. You also use the Nazi’s and all hatemongers chief tool: the big lie. You lie about Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians (the West Bank is experiencing 7 percent annual growth and, as terrorism has declined due to the anti-terror fence, roadblocks and checkpoints have come down), you ignore the 7,000 rockets that Gaza shot into southern Israel, you ignore the unilateral pullout from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, you ignore the terror ridden Intifada staged by the Palestinians.
So, pro-boycotters, enjoying joining the long history of Jew-haters. Lie, demonize, boycott. But do me a favor: don’t try to fool anyone, including yourselves, by thinking you are anything but old-fashioned Jew haters.
Israel is a one person one vote democracy, and is a wonderfuly diverse land. There are over 80 languages spoken in Israel, and it recognizes 15 different languages. I visited Israel as part of a Christian peacekeepers mission last summer, and know that this campaign is just spreading lies. In Israel, even the highway signs are in Arabic, English and Hebrew.