Letter: Is Brooklyn Circa 2026 Becoming Magdeburg, Germany Circa 1933?

Dear editor:

Recently the Brooklyn Park Slope Food Coop banned products from Judea and Samaria where Jews have resided for over 3500 years — except for 19 years (1948-1967) when Jordan in violation of Article 80 of the United Nations Charter illegally occupied the land and ethnically cleansed a Jewish population that had lived there for over 3500 years. 

In June 1967 the Jewish people liberated, recaptured and decolonized Judea, Samaria and the eastern part of Jerusalem allowing those Jews who had been ethnically cleansed to resettle there.

Further Article 80 declares all of what is Israel including Judea and Samaria to be part of the 3500-year-old indigenous reconstituted homeland of the Jewish people.

Also in Brooklyn recently, Cafe Poetica, whose employees appear to wear their red and black Zionophobic armbands proudly, denied accommodations, aka a cup of coffee, to a Jew who believes in the 3500-year-old sole foundational narrative of Judaism, the Return to Zion: what has been Israel since 1948 when it was decolonized for the second time, having been decolonized for the first time in 167 BCE, and having been established as a sovereign Jewish state in 1273 BCE.

Cafe Poetica’s very public Jew hating discrimination is in direct violation of federal and state civil rights laws, a fact that Cafe Poetica whose raison d’etre is Jew-hatred totally ignores.

While there are federal and state laws prohibiting discrimination against Jews and products produced in Israel, the Jew hating proprietors of the Brooklyn Food Coop including the Coop’s members and Cafe Poetica ignore those laws to promote their Hitlerian Jew hatred.

Clearly the Jew hatred the Brooklyn Food Coop and Cafe Poetica is replicating the Jew hatred of Magdeburg, Germany in 1933 where signs proclaiming “Jews Not Served Here (juden unerwunscht)” and “Jews Not Welcome (juden sind hier unerwunscht)” were seen in many establishments who promoted the identical Jew-hating policies as the Brooklyn Food Coop and Cafe Poetica.

Will these racist Jew hating signs soon be plastered across Brooklyn as more Jew hating shop owners encouraged by Mayor Mamdani’s racist Zionophobia — follow the Jew hating example of the Brooklyn Food Coop and Cafe Poetica?

See: “Antisemitism in Cafes Has A Dark History,” Rafael Medoff, NY Post, Calif Edition, 6/23/26.

Richard Sherman
Margate, Florida 
Member of the Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism