The Zhirinovskization Of The Local Bodega

I understand what is meant by the caricature. What I don’t get is why sunflower seeds:

A hateful image excavated from the annals of an unfortunate history has found its way on a package of sunflower seeds, of all places.

And the ‘seeds of hate’ were being sold right here in Brooklyn.

On Nov. 21, attorney Jeffrey Meyers got the shock of his shopping life after an otherwise uneventful trip to Net Cost Market, an import food shop located near the Department of Motor Vehicles on West 8th Street.

With a purchase of over $50, the store often gives away a free item. When Meyers returned home, he took a close look at the freebie, which while inside the shop, he assumed was simply an innocuous bag of sunflower seeds.

The package appears to be from another age.

It depicts a bearded, hunched over man with a skullcap, hands clasped, beady eyes, and an oversized nose–the classic, hateful stereotype of a Jew.

Cyrillic letters on one side of the caricature, reminiscent of Shylock from Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” reads “Shalom, from Israel,” while the other side uses a slang phrase roughly translated to mean, “spit them out everywhere.”

. . .

The seeds are produced in the former Soviet Union by a company called Kremlin Kitchen.

Net Cost Market has four locations in Brooklyn, one on Staten Island, and one in Philadelphia. The company promotes itself as the Costco of the ethnic Eastern European market, offering a wide range of imported delicacies.