Small organic Florentin coop draws online criticism after announcing produce from West Bank ‘not welcome’
A Tel Aviv supermarket coop has decided to ban produce from West Bank settlements, Channel 2 reported.
The South Tel Aviv Organic Cooperative, housed in the city’s southern Florentin neighborhood, announced on its website that “producers from the settlements are not welcome (out of respect for the ideology of some of the coop’s members).”
Some 70 households make up the coop, which is open Fridays from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
The quote cited by Channel 2 on Thursday was not evident on the website by Sunday. But the coop still explained to website visitors that “we try to buy food that grows close to the coop and is not shipped in single-use packaging, to ensure workers’ rights and not to purchase from conglomerates or settlements.”
The coop’s decision to openly boycott settlement goods drew fire on Hebrew-language social media, with Facebook comments ranging from open hostility to one user warning that “banning people based on their views raises the specter of dark periods in history.”
Some users took the opportunity to post advertisements for organic food producers and cooperatives in the West Bank.
For its part, the coop seemed to take pride in the criticism, posting to its Facebook page a Ynet news article about the online censure it faced with the comment: “Consumption with values.”
As reported by The Times of Israel