The CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York is calling on city and state human rights commissions to investigate what he said was “textbook antisemitism” at a recent meeting of the Park Slope Food Coop.
The coop has long been a frontier for clashes over Israel among progressives in the Brooklyn neighborhood, with efforts to ban Israeli products sparking conflicts repeatedly since well before the war in Gaza.
But things took a turn there on Tuesday when, during a meeting of members, an attendee used his remarks to say that “Jewish supremacism is a problem in this country.”
The attendee’s remarks, which were first reported by the New York Post, came as the member-owned and operated grocer debated a proposed amendment to adopt a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, policy against Israel.
“We can’t keep making the same mistakes between what we did with the Nazis and what we did with other hateful, racist groups,” the attendee, who used the Zoom screen name “Michael Huarachi,” said during the meeting, according to a recording obtained by the Post.
Huarachi’s remarks drew applause from some people attending the in-person meeting, coop member Ramon Maislen told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. While attendees were told to stop applauding, Maislen said it was an “extremely hostile crowd.”
“It was just like, whoa, that is far beyond the scope of what I would consider acceptable rhetoric, you know, that’s just veering into blatant antisemitism,” Maislen said. “Jewish supremacy and ideas about that has long had a lot of buy-in from the right, like the neo-Nazi and antisemitic right-wing, and it was really disheartening to hear that.”
Maislen — who ran unsuccessfully for the coop’s board in 2024 on an anti-BDS slate — said he was then called to discuss his agenda item, a proposal requiring a supermajority vote to approve any BDS measures, and used the opportunity to criticize both the attendee who made the remarks and the crowd for cheering them.
“This is not who we are as a coop,” Maislen said he told the attendees. “This is not acceptable rhetoric, the way that we’re dehumanizing and demonizing one another is completely, like, not okay.”
Maislen — who has also organized others in Park Slope against anti-Israel politicians, including Mayor Zohran Mamdani —said on Thursday that he had not received any communication from the coop since the incident.
The incident Tuesday marked the latest antisemitic incident in a years-long saga of tense relations within the Park Slope Food Coop, which has long faced divisions over BDS proposals. In October 2024, Maislen as well as several other Jewish coop members filed a state human rights complaint alleging antisemitic and anti-Israel harassment at the grocery.
On Thursday, JCRC-NY CEO Mark Treyger condemned the incident in a statement, calling on the New York State Division of Human Rights and the New York City Commission on Human Rights to “review these reports promptly and take appropriate action.”
“This inflammatory rhetoric does not emerge in a vacuum,” Treyger wrote. “It is the predictable result of a sustained disinformation and demonization campaign advanced by some Coop members under the pretext of legitimate criticism of Israel. It is not. It is textbook antisemitism.”
Looking ahead, Maislen said he hoped the coop could move past the tensions — though he admitted that things didn’t feel like were moving in that direction.
“I hope that we can really come together as a coop to find just and peaceful means of promoting cooperation and promoting unity and promoting peace without demonizing one another,” Maislen said. “But that seems to be a little bit hard for people right now.”
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