A few days ago there was a dust-up at the Park Slope Food Coop after a member, during a coop meeting, stated that "Jewish supremacism is a problem in this country." Following an outcry, the store's general manager condemned the remark, along with that of a different member who decried "Arab supremacy" in the context of speaking out against October 7 and criticizing the Muslim Brotherhood.
I read that sequence and thought "that's about as satisfactory an outcome as I could hope for." Whatever theoretical or academic justifications one can use to validate either "Jewish supremacism" or "Arab supremacy", if you want to take the temperature down in these sorts of settings you have to clamp down on that sort of thing. If one isn't okay, then the other isn't either. If anything, it is nicely convenient that both phrases were used, as it lets the coop leadership make clear that there position is one of principle, not a backdoor means of showing favoritism to one group at the expense of another.
But I knew my satisfaction would be another's ill-temper, and so it is here. I wasn't surprised, of course, to see that the coop's pro-Palestinian activists were going to the mat for their right to assail "Jewish supremacism." And unfortunately, I also wasn't surprised to see others complain that to condemn the phrase "Arab supremacy" may as well have nullified the condemnation of the phrase "Jewish supremacism".
For coop member Ramon Maislen, who condemned the comments allegedly made by Huarachi last week, Szladek’s email created a false equivalency between the two remarks.
[....]
Maislen said he believed Szladek’s email “completely minimizes what Jewish people are feeling at the coop.”
“I don’t think there’s much coded language around Arab supremacy that I’m aware of,” Maislen said. “So I think it’s very, very disappointing when you see an email go out after such a mask-off moment for the hatred within the anti-Zionist movement, and to have the general coordinators basically, completely, make it some sort of like equality between the two statements.”
On Thursday, Coop4Unity, an anti-BDS coalition at the coop that Maislen serves as an organizer of, issued a press release calling on [coop General Manager Joe] Szladek to “issue an unequivocal condemnation of antisemitism,” arguing that his previous email created a “false moral equivalence that members say dilutes the gravity of what occurred.”
“In his statement, General Manager Szladek cited a separate member’s use of the phrase ‘Arab supremacy’ — offered in the context of referencing October 7th and the Muslim Brotherhood — and presented it as a parallel offense to the ‘Jewish supremacy’ remark that drew crowd applause,” the release read. “Coop4Unity argues this is a false equivalence that obscures rather than addresses what took place.”
Ah yes, "false equivalency" -- a sin most heinous. Except, that is, when one doesn't do it -- for then one is committing the equally grievous sin of being "one-sided". I wrote on this subject five years ago, and it remains resonant today. But unfortunately, I feel as if things have gotten worse rather than better.
And -- morality aside -- this is such a dumb hill to die on. Is it really so important that one be able to rail about "Arab supremacy" that you'll risk undermining a condemnation of people going on about "Jewish supremacism"? Take the win! This whole logic is how you get backed into a corner of being mad at people for saying the JDL is bad, when what one should do is be delighted anytime someone says "JDL is bad" and be ecstatic at the opportunity to negatively polarize your constituency against them and their apologists. The Park Slope group had the opportunity to set the polarity of the debate as "mainstream coop members versus people who are livid that they can't hurl 'supremacist' charges at ethnic minorities", and they squandered it. Again, I think the ethics are bad here, but I'm almost madder at the tactical idiocy of it all.
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