On July 15th, two years after the first suggestion was made by a cashier, the Olympia Food Co-op decided to honor the call for boycott of Israeli products. As members of the Co-op and our local community, we feel proud to be part of an organization who puts its mission statement “to encourage economic and social justice” into action. The news of the first US grocery store to honor the boycott has reverberated throughout the world. Statements of support have poured in locally from people like Nomy Lamm and TJ Johnson and globally from Desmond Tutu, Roger Waters, Paul Kivel, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Naomi Klein, and many more. We are aware of the strong emotions that this decision has brought to the surface in our community, and while difficult, we ultimately see this as something positive. We need to address our emotions and our differences that, for so long, have prevented us from acting in response to our complicity in the daily violence against Palestinians. We need to talk about the $940,000 that the City of Olympia gives Israel every year through federal taxes. We need to talk about racism towards Muslims and Arabs. The decision to boycott is just the beginning of a much needed dialogue in our community, a dialogue that can only be possible because of the boycott. The Co-op has listened to the voices of the oppressed and has acted non-violently to end the occupation of Palestine. Please voice your support and thanks to the Co-op for their courageous stand.
- Johan Genberg, Matt Lester, Rochelle Gause, Phan Nguyen, Anna-Marie Murano, Aziz Aladin, David Langstaff, Noah Sochet, Chance Kroll, Kim Chaplin, Amirah Ziada and Andrew Meyer of Olympia BDS
Organizing a united voice against the co-op’s boycott and putting together in plain English why we want the boycott rescinded is the challenge of a coalition group that recently formed called “It’s Our Co-op”.
This has involved sorting through all sorts of conflicting thoughts and feelings about the subject. Historic Israel is a spiritual homeland for Christians, Jews and Muslims. Modern Israel was created as a safe haven for Jewish refugees. Israel today has big problems. Israel’s problems today are sometimes used as a distraction by other countries to hide even bigger problems. How do we face the mistreatment of the Palestinian people and end it? How do we end the occupation and guarantee the survival of Israel? These aren’t light subjects.
Resolving this requires research, honesty, courage and a willingness to face hard stuff. To do this also requires that people of different beliefs come together and reach for genuine dialogue. This dialogue is the heart of what our group is fighting for. That can’t happen until the boycott is rescinded, we step back and agree to make a fresh run at this together.
If you’d like to speak out against the boycott, and I hope you will, but you’re also interested in being part of a united voice, I hope you’ll join our group. I’ve been proud of the work our group has done, but we still have a long way to go. We could use some more help. Please send an email to “its.our.coop@gmail.com” and one of us will send you the latest version of our position statement.
- David Scherer Water
Editor’s note: We plan more coverage of the Olympia Food Co-op boycott of Israel in the next issue of OP&L.
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