PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — When anti-Israel groups threatened a food festival with protests for involving an Israeli food truck, organizers uninvited the vendor, which only escalated the situation. Both parties are looking back and trying to figure out what went wrong.
Eat Up The Borders organizer Cindy Maria Ngo said she’s new to food festival organizing and didn’t know how to handle the threatening comments toward the A Taste of Home event.
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“They were talking about boycotting the event, Sunflower [Philly, a co-organizer], some artists affiliated with Sunflower,” she said.
Ngo admits she made a mistake in uninviting the Moshava Philly food truck.
“The decision doesn’t align with my mission, my beliefs and morals, but it was our decision when you just hear that there’s a protest,” she said. She said she now knows to report such threats to police.
Moshava chef and co-owner Nir Sheynfeld said he saw the anti-Israel comments on social media ahead of the event.
“We were hoping that they’d reassure us that everything’s OK and we got it handled. I mean, that’s what police and security are for,” he said.
Instead, they were kicked out of the event. Ngo said she received so much backlash that she not only canceled the event but temporarily shut down the group’s social media pages.
On Thursday, she released a statement saying she needs to “grow and do better.”
“I mean, I’m not really angry with them,” Sheynfeld admitted. “I understand that their fear was real. … [But] how can you say ‘this is my mission statement’ and then kick us out because someone didn’t want us to be there?”
Congressman Brendan Boyle put out a statement condemning the incident. Moshava did the same.
“[It said] how disappointed we were in [Eat Up The Borders] falling victim to these anti-Semitic and dividing groups,” said Sheynfeld. “I mean, that just creates a worse situation in the future.
“They canceled my food truck out of a relatively small event, and tomorrow, who knows what they’ll do. You’re just empowering those hate groups.”
Over the past couple of days, Ngo said she received a crash course in anti-Semitism and promises to always stand by the vendors. However, if there’s ever further pushback, she said she may change the nature of the festivals.
“We will turn it into a discussion event, a panel with professionals, to discuss what is happening,” she said.
The two groups are now trying to figure out how to reconcile and move forward together.
Moshava co-owner Brandon Ferrio noted the attempt to hurt their business seems to have backfired.
“We just opened up six weeks ago and now our name is out there, definitely,” he said. “We went from about 500 followers to … just over 6,000.”