By Matt Chaban 5/16/12 4:47pm

Silicon Alley U

This place is teaming with baddies. (Cornell)

The Evil Eye! Israel Boycott Comes to Roosevelt Island As BDS Movement Targets Tech Campus

After they came after our hummus, it was only a time before they came for our mobile app engineers.

Anti-Israeli groups set on depriving New York of two of its most important commodities have moved on from the dowdy old Park Slope Food Co-op to the shiny new Roosevelt Island tech campus. What do both have in common? A commitment to the environment and Israeli imports. Curbed has spotted a new group, New Yorkers Against Cornell-Technion, dead set on stopping the new tech campus, Mayor Bloomberg’s biggest achievement since the smoking ban, because of the affiliations of Cornell’s lesser-known (on these shores) partner.

According to the New Yorkers Against Cornell-Technion’s website, Technion is complicit in every nefarious Israeli deed from the settlements to circumcision. Read More

By Matt Chaban 3:20pm

Co-op't

The boycott's a schmear campaign!

Hizzoner’s Hummus: Mayor Bloomberg Slams Park Slope Food Co-op’s Israel Boycott

Probably the last person anyone would ever expect to shop at the Park Slope Food Co-op has decided to weigh in on the heated controversy roiling the organic aisles of the brownstone bastion. At the ribbon-cutting for Steiner Studios this morning, Mayor Bloomberg was asked for his position on the proposed Israel boycott. Were he to actually don an apron and sort bulk natural supplements for two hours a month, the mayor’s vote would be a resounding “no.”

For those who know the mayor and his non-New York politics, the reasoning is simple. Like fellow pol Chuck Schumer, he is a staunch defender of Israel. (You don’t have to be Jewish to boycott the boycott, either, as Public Advocate Bill DeBlasio did earlier today.) In fact, the mayor encouraged stronger ties with the Land of Milk and Honey. Read More

By Matt Chaban 8/03/11 12:00am

Co-op't

dersh

First They Came for the Penises: Dershowitz Fears BroBos’ Circumcision Boycott

In this week’s issue, The Observer talked to Alan Dershowitz, Harvard law professor and maybe the staunchest defender of Israel on the planet, about a proposal for a boycott of Israeli goods at the Park Slope Food Co-op. In his typically brazen style, Mr. Dershowitz compared pro-boycott co-op members to bear-baiting-hating Puritans and vowed to shut the BroBo institution down if a boycott went through. “You have to fight fire with fire,” he said. Soy veyzmeir, but these were some of his tamer declarations. Read More