Letty Cottin Pogrebin is a board member and past president of Americans for Peace Now.  (originally published in Peter Beinart's ZION SQUARE blog on The Daily Beast, February 14, 2012).

In Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf wrote, "As a woman my country is the whole world."  I used to believe this; I thought divisions of nation, race, class, and faith could be trumped by a universalist vision of gender equality, justice, and peace.

Then came the UN's Decade for Women. In 1975, its first international conference famously produced the "Zionism is racism" resolution.  Five years later, when the second conference saw virulent anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric, threats, and violence, I asked myself, why am I working to liberate women if they're going to turn around and  attack Jews?

Jo-Ann Mort is vice chair of Americans for Peace Now and a frequent Forward contributor. She is CEO of ChangeCommunications, which works with clients in the US, Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

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Picture: "Is this pesto really the enemy?"
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While I am not a member of the Park Slope Food Coop, I can't help but be pulled into the controversy surrounding a prized neighborhood institution as it debates whether or not to take a position on boycotting Israeli food products.