From City Hall to Trader Joe’s

One year ago, an attempt to force a municipal anti-Israel BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) resolution onto the election ballot was defeated through the efforts of a grass-roots coalition of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community members and allies. A second attempt was defeated in March.

Having failed at marginalizing our presence through local government, the BDS movement turned to another front: grocery stores. Initially they targeted the East End Food Co-op, a member-owned business.

EEFC claims it is “open to all.” But many Jews feel unwelcome due to ongoing efforts by union members to enact BDS at the co-op.

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The atmosphere became so hostile that some Jewish member-owners — me included — began attending board meetings to raise concerns about the attempted boycott. What we encountered was worse than we expected: Some co-op employees (and occasionally member-owners) were promulgating lies about Israel and screaming antisemitic slurs, including accusing Israel of apartheid, genocide and ethnic cleansing, and denying Oct. 7 atrocities.

A number of Jewish member-owners have stopped shopping at the co-op.

This has gone on for over a year. During this time, all over our country, Jewish businesses, academics, writers, college students and others have been targeted, doxed, excluded, ostracized, attacked and murdered because they are Jews.
 
In last week’s Chronicle, Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, pointed out that, “In 2024, the United States experienced the worst year for antisemitic incidents in ADL’s recorded history.”

After a year of exploiting every board meeting into a forum for political theater (the East End Co-op carries only a few Israeli-sourced products) with aggressive accusations and belligerent behavior, the BDS group has still not succeeded in gathering the number of signatures required to put their petition to a member vote.

Now the anti-Israel activists are extending their boycott efforts to another, larger, local grocery: Trader Joe’s — even though Trader Joe’s sells just a handful of Israeli products — in an attempt to exclude Jews and Jewish businesses from the public sphere.

This is not the first time there has been an organized attempt to exclude, vilify and boycott Jews and Jewish businesses. It’s what the Nazis did as a prelude to the attempted extermination of the entire Jewish people. As Regula Venske, former president of German PEN, wrote:

“German Fascism did not start with Auschwitz and the gas chambers, nor did it start with Kristallnacht. It started, much earlier, with words and poisoning language, uttered not only by politicians and party propagandists but also by renowned intellectuals and artists, ostracizing and demonizing a group of people … ”

This is not just about what’s happening at local grocery stores. It reflects a broader pattern of antisemitism becoming normalized in spaces that present themselves as inclusive and progressive.

We have seen this trajectory before. It begins with words, boycotts and exclusion, and when that becomes acceptable — even normalized — it can lead to violence against Jews, as we are seeing today in Washington, Boulder, Los Angeles, Harrisburg — and in Pittsburgh.

The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks stated it clearly: Anti-Zionism is the new Antisemitism.

This month in the Jewish cycle of reading the Torah, we are reading the book of Devarim. Devarim means “words.” Words can be words of G-d, they can be words that heal. Or they can be slanderous words that incite violence.

Fortunately, the board of the East End Food Co-op, like the City of Pittsburgh itself, has so far resisted the pressure from a vocal minority to boycott Israeli products. Let’s pray the management of Trader Joe’s does not kowtow to the antisemites. Let’s pray the co-op continues to stand its ground and that the good people of Pittsburgh do not capitulate to the strident voices of the haters. PJC

Simone Shapiro is a Pittsburgh resident and a member-owner of the East End Food Co-op.