I recently noticed the moniker of the following commenter, beneath the line of a CiF Watch post about the Guardian’s coverage of the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike, “Observer op-ed on ‘hunger strikers’ exposes double standards on administrative detention issue“, May 13:
I replied and asked whether this commenter was indeed part of the successful efforts to defeat a BDS movement which targeted a coop in Brooklyn.
First, it’s always nice to be compared favorably to Elder and DivestThis!
But, briefly, for those unfamiliar with the BDS battle in Brooklyn’s upscale Park Slope neighborhood, here’s a quick summary.
On March 27, following a long and heated political battle lasting many months, members of the Park Slope Food Coop soundly rejected a proposal that asked the full 16,000-member market to boycott products made in Israel, turning aside the proposal after a 90-minute debate. (The Park Slope coop, one of the oldest and largest in the U.S., carries Israeli hummus, a seltzer water maker, organic paprika, two styles of kosher marshmallows and three varieties of tapenade and pesto.)
In fact, the commenter above is none other than Barbara Mazor of More Hummus, Please – the Park Slope resident who led the anti-BDS fight.
Mazor’s blog, following the BDS fail, noted the heavy publicity surrounding the debate.
“The Coop vote became quite a media sensation, including a segment from the Daily Show. We filmed this a few weeks before the vote (on Ta’anit Esther and Purim), but it aired the night of the vote. Since we already knew the referendum was defeated by the time we viewed it, I enjoyed it doubly.”
You can see the Daily Show clip (which includes interviews, by the Daily Show’s Samantha B., of both Mazor and a humorless pro-BDS activist named Liz Roberts) at Mazor’s blog, by clicking here.
While, true to form for the Daily Show, both sides are the object of some mockery, those of you familiar with the comic style of Jon Stewart’s show will know who comes out looking worse.
As a commenter at DivestThis! observed about the segment:
“It was clear from the cutting that Barbara Mazor of More Hummus, Please (the lady who led the anti-BDS fight) represented the sane side of the argument.
When Comedy Central makes you out to be “less” crazy, it’s a clear win.”
The BDS movement: a fringe group of extremists obsessed with the single minded goal of eroding the Jewish state’s legitimacy and crippling its economy, which has chalked up failure after failure, while causing no discernible injurious economic impact.
It would be hard for anyone not to appear “less crazy”!
Related articles
- ‘Elder of Ziyon’ responds to the Guardian’s Ben White on BDS. (cifwatch.com)
- My interview on Philadelphia talk radio, about CiF Watch (cifwatch.com)
- BDS-promoting Palestine Festival of Literature supported by British public funding. (cifwatch.com)
- CiF Watch welcomes its first follower from Gaza! (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian reader on “belligerent” Jewish race: 72 Recommends, not deleted by CiF Moderators (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian reader on those uppity British Jews exercizing their political rights (cifwatch.com)
- CiF’s Khaled Diab decries Palestinian fixation on ‘right of return’, but still seeks one state solution (cifwatch.com)
- Why is the Guardian afraid to expose their readers to the truth about Global March to Jerusalem? (cifwatch.com)
- Deborah Orr Tweet defends ‘chosen people’ essay, complains about Zionists’ sense of victimhood (cifwatch.com)
