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Posted on 06/14/2002 6:18:32 AM PDT by dead
ACROSS FIVE Arab states a new and closely co-ordinated campaign to boycott American goods is being launched, with Starbucks coffee shops their primary target, but with Nestle, Coca-Cola, Johnson and Johnson and Burger King outlets also on the list.
In Beirut today, activists will be handing out leaflets outside the city's four Starbucks coffee shops, detailing the pro-Israeli and anti-Arafat sentiments of its chief executive, Howard Shultz, and claiming that he is "an active Zionist." In 1998, Mr Shultz was awarded the "Israeli 50th Anniversary Tribute Award" from the Jerusalem Fund of Aish Ha-Torah which is strongly critical of Yassir Arafat and which insists that the occupied Palestinian territories should be described only as "disputed".
In a speech to Jewish Americans in Seattle earlier this year - at the height of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's re-occupation of West Bank Palestinian towns, Starbucks' top man condemned Palestinian "inaction" and announced that "the Palestinians aren't doing their job - they're not stopping terrorism." Gideon Meir, an Israeli foreign ministry public relations official complimented Mr Shultz for helping American students to hear "Israeli presentations on the Middle East crisis."
Starbucks operates in six other Arab countries - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates - but the boycott protestors, who include both Palestinians and Islamic groups at Ein Shams University in Egypt and the American University of Cairo, have a much wider list of companies they wish to target for allegedly supporting Israel, not only in the Middle East but in the United States itself. They include AOL Time Warner, Disney, Estee Lauder, Nokia, Revlon, Marks and Spencer, Selfridges and IBM. Students at Dubai University and in Damascus are now also liaising over their boycott plans.
"At first, it was very frustrating getting even the four boycott groups in Lebanon to work together," Amira Solh, one of the Lebanese activists, says. "We had difficulty in defining whether we should target American goods or those companies that have direct relations with Israel. We really only got going the first time the Israelis laid siege to Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah. Lebanon boycotts all Israeli goods, so we started asking, 'but what about those companies which help Israel directly?' Most Arab countries have fallen into a capitalist world that accepts American companies with close links to Israel. What we are now initiating is an economic war."
Burger King incurred Arab anger more than two years ago when it opened an outlet in an illegal Jewish settlement on the occupied West Bank. The company initially decided to close its restaurant and then - after pro-Israeli lobby pressure back in the United States - apparently allowed it to reopen under a different franchise. Nestle has bought a 50.1pc controlling shareholding in the Israeli Osem company, allowing Nestle to sell its products in Israel - they include Nescafe, Perrier, Carnation, Libby's, Smarties and KitKat - a deal which, in the words of one Israeli journalist, "provides Osem with a worldwide distribution and advertising infrastructure." Osem-Nestle made a profit of $7.5m, according to its recent four-monthly report to investors.
In Lebanon, Coca Cola, which runs a plant in the country, has attempted to deflect Arab criticism by pointing out that it does not manufacture Coca Cola in Israel and sells only imported bottles of its products, including Fanta and Sprite, in the Jewish State. Israel has praised the company for refusing to abide by the original Arab League boycott. In what was widely seen as an attempt to soften the mood of protestors here, the Coca Cola company in Lebanon has suddenly embarked on a programme of planting new cedar trees - Lebanon's national emblem - near the Christian town of Jezzine south of Beirut.
In antiquity, Lebanon was carpeted with immense forests of cedar. Starbucks, which has 4,709 retail locations around the world, has been trying to damp down its pro-Israeli image, telling protestors who have written to the company that its chief executive, Howard Shultz, who is himself Jewish, "does not believe the terrorism (sic) is representative of the Palestinian people." When he spoke recently to his local synagogue, Starbucks says, "Howard was speaking as a private citizen and did not interview with the media regarding this subject." Another Starbucks response says that the company "is deeply saddened by the current events in the Middle East" and quotes a statement by Mr Shultz: "I deeply regret that my speech in Seattle was misinterpreted to be anti-Palestinian," he says. "My position has always been pro-peace and for the two nations to co-exist peacefully. I am deeply saddened by the current events in the Middle East."
Arab students believe that the real fears of American executives are focused not on individual losses in the Arab world but on the danger that Arab protests against their products will be picked up by Palestinian sympathisers in Europe and even in America itself, where much more serious economic harm could be inflicted on the companies. Mr Shultz, who is not known to have condemned the building of illegal Israeli settlements on occupied land, spearheaded Starbucks' entry into the Israeli market last year with its first two coffee shops in Tel Aviv. By the end of this year, Starbucks plan to have a total of 20 coffee houses operating throughout Israel. The major shareholder in Starbucks Israel is the Israeli-based Delek company which has headquarters in Nashville, Tenessee.
Mr Shultz is a regular visitor to Israel and was one of many personalities who have been brought to Jerusalem as a guest of the Theodor Herzl mission - co-sponsored by the mayor of Jerusalem - at whose gala dinner is held an award ceremony of the Friends of Zion to honour those "who have played key roles in promoting close alliance between the United States and Israel and in the struggle to free Soviet Jewry."
Others who have travelled on the Theodor Herzl mission include Baroness Thatcher, US Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, the former - and very right-wing - US Ambassador to the UN Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Jewish Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and former US Governor John Ridge - now the head of America's so-called "Homeland Security." Independent News Service.
Howard Shultz, who is himself Jewish, "does not believe the terrorism (sic) is representative of the Palestinian people."
Fisk is such a silly boob. Check out the (sic) after “terrorism”!
Your description of this war is dead on, from a certain point of view. After all, trying to bring the Arab World kicking and screaming out of the Twelfth Century is a hard task for anyone. Meantime, this piece is yet another thinly disguised anti-Semitic rant from Great Britain's answer to Julius Streicher, Robert Fisk.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
A "settlement" called "Maale Adumim." It is located adjacent to Jerusalem. IOW, what we in the USA usually call a "suburb."
It's an old American tradition....turnabout is fair play.
Leni
LOL! That's a good idea.
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