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Will the independence of Kosovo stimulate other disputed countries to ask for their independence? Yes 47.8% No 34.8% Not Sure 17.4% Total Votes: 46

How You, Him and Her Support Israel
By Farah Salka, Staff Writer

Beirut, Lebanon – Whether we were following up on the dirty war crimes launched by Israel on Gaza lately or not, it does not take two informed people to come to the conclusion that this regime has excelled at its role of terrorizing Palestinians. The forms of torture this regime has utilized are so diversified and countless it is hard to recall them all at a glance. Occupying, colonizing, kidnapping, jailing, ethnically cleansing and racially discriminating are just a few actions on a fairly longer list for the Zionist regime. Sixty years have passed under occupation and another sixty will probably follow from what is seen in the horizon.

We Arabs are so fluent at condemning and reproving, yet so halting in action. We watch news about all the bloodshed every hour of the day and then go on with our lives, apathetic towards the rubble in our very own backyards! It really is mesmerizing how we find Starbucks tables crowded with people every time we pass by. The same reaction is reiterated with the crowds hungry for a Burger King meal or a McDonald’s flurry. Are they ignorant of the numbers and facts or is all this just a trivial matter for them? It will be useful to recall some.

Starbucks: Dozens of thousands of Arabs pay for a Starbucks coffee everyday, drink it and throw their cup away without questioning for a second who the peculiar lady on Starbucks’s logo on their own cup represents. This lady is Esther, named for the goddess Ashtar, and is a Persian Jew, considered one of the most heroic women in Jewish history.1 Starbucks’s owner, the infamous chairman of this chain is Howard Shultz, is a publicly active Jewish Zionist. Shultz has received several awards for his support for Israel one of which is “the Israel 50th Anniversary Friend of Zion Tribute Award" awarded to him in 1998 by the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah. What this Jerusalem Fund exactly does is fund Israeli arms fairs chaired by Shaul Mofaz (none other than the butcher of Jenin) in parallel to the Zionist propaganda website (honestreporting.com).2 It is amusing to note that although the famous award given to Schultz was formerly posted pompously on the website of Starbucks, the section of "Awards and Accolades", later on it was bizarrely vanished from the scene, after a boycott had moved along its way in some countries.4 Schultz has been repeatedly praised especially by the Israeli Foreign Ministry for his infinite support to Israel and his PR strategies.3 In addition, he was recorded in a very confrontational talk, blaming Palestinians for terrorism, at the same time when the IDF was slaying Palestinians in Jenin, Nablus and Bethlehem.5 It is noteworthy to point out that Starbucks is not only fond of feeding into Israeli Occupation but they also do their best in feeding other occupations, the American occupation of Afghanistan being one. Starbucks lends a hand to Bush’s war on terror and has opened a Starbucks in Afghanistan for the American soldiers to feel at home.6

Motorolla: It is partly Israeli-owned since Ampal American Israel Corporation has more than 33% of the shares after buying them in 1997.7 Motorolla manages its principal research and development center on Israel, specifically Tel Aviv, where it employs 60 to 100 Israelis.

McDonald’s: The CEO of McDonalds’s is Jack M. Greenberg, an honorary director of the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Metropolitan Chicago.8 McDonald’s headquarters are located outside Chicago and are a key corporate partner of the Jewish United Fund and Jewish Federation.9 One of the issues the Jewish United Fund works on is maintaining ‘American military, economic and diplomatic support for Israel’ and monitoring and responding ‘when necessary’ to media coverage of Israel.10 In the JUF yearly outreach program, American school students are funded to travel to Israel and learn about ‘Israeli history’ (a clean and bloodless one) the Zionist way.11 McDonalds started operating in the Israeli market in 1993 and now owns more than 80 restaurants; by that, employing 3,000 Israelis.12 One difference ought to be noted between McDonald’s and Burger King. When in 1999 a controversial campaign forced Burger King to withdraw its name from a restaurant because it was built on the 1967 Occupied Territories, Padan, the general manager of McDonald’s vowed that he would never open a restaurant on illegal Israel settlements like Burger King did on Maale Adumim.

Coca-Cola: In 2002, Coca Cola purchased Golan Wineries. As its name suggest, Golan Wineries is situated in the Occupied Golan Heights.13 In July 2002, the firm stated that they will be building a second plant in Kirvat Gat which is an Israeli settlement, illegal by international law, on the occupied lands of Faluja and Iraq al-Manshiyya villages, cleansed from their Palestinian inhabitants since 1951.14 The proposed plant was to provide work for 700 Israeli, only Jews.15 It is interesting to note that Coca Cola, furthermore, is one of the key sponsors to the national basketball team of Israel in addition to sponsoring Israeli national marathons, tennis competitions, and such activities.16

IBM:  Primarily, IBM has bought and invested in several Israeli companies’ post 1998.17 Secondly, IBM opened up a development center for research on software and hardware in Haifa, this center being one of only three centers that are not US-based. 1,700 is the number of Israelis that this center is employing. IBM was awarded at the American-Israel Friendship Partners for Democracy Awards Dinner in June 2001 for all the support and assistance it has offered Israel. The dinner was hosted by none other than Ariel Sharon.18

Microsoft: Pertaining to Microsoft, the company’s largest research and development site outside USA is situated right in Israel. In 2002, Microsoft pledged that it will be increasing its existence in Israel by an extra 25% of the initial space.19 Microsoft is known for its wide contributions for Israeli youth initiatives, helping the poor and so on. What it is not very known for is its extensive spending on the welfare of Israeli Defense Force soldiers.20 Examples include training engineering courses in settlements to ‘provide knowledge, tools and training for residents of the confrontation line’21 (the line being with Lebanon) and giving permit to the Israeli military enabling it to teach Microsoft programs free of charge at its IT institute (the Israeli army being the first to be offered such a license).22 Most noteworthy of all is the outrageous advertisements on billboards in Tel Aviv after Jenin’s massacres. The billboards stated, ‘From the depth of our heart – thanks to the IDF’.23

Philip Morris: During a conference in 1996, a ‘National Freedom Award’ was presented for Yitzhak Rabin. The privilege of being the sole sponsor of such an event was provided for none other than Philip Morris.24

Nokia: Similar to Ericsson, Nokia has major research and development centers in Israel, specifically in Rosh Ha’ayin, a land that was like several other lands ethnically purged from its inhabitants in 1948. Lars Wolf, the general manager of the company highlighted the core of their strategy as “really focusing on Israel from all perspectives, because we have an internal project called 'Project Israel’”. Other than the several means Nokia is investing in Israeli businesses, Nokia is part and parcel of the US-Israel Business Exchange Program, a program promoting American investment in Israel.25

Timberland: Jeffey Swartz, the CEO and owner of 70% of stock was quoted in 2002 by the Jerusalem Post pledging to ‘mobilize 100,000 American Jews to be more politically active… and bring 25,000 American Jews to Israel by the end of the summer, helping Israel’s ailing economy’, all this by investing as much as possible and opening more and more Timberland stores in Israel.26

With this glimpse of names and numbers (out of a very wider range), one can have a broad-spectrum idea on how the principal business giants are nurturing Zionism and its state in their own ways. The saying goes that without the USA, there would be no Israel. Very true no doubt. We have to make sure to highlight the fact that without the support of those corporations too, Israel would not be what it is today. Another observation is only transitive. The rivers of money those corporations are flooding to support Israel are coming from a certain source at the end of the day, the customer. I proudly present to you one of the chief buyers: the Lebanese customer, the Saudi customer, the Jordanian, the Egyptian, the Tunisian, the Kuwaiti, and all neighboring Arab sisters and brothers. I do not want to reduce the righteousness of the Palestinian cause so as to limit it to Arabs or Palestinians. It is much more than that, standing for the typical humanitarian case every activist should work for if he/she really believes in the indivisibility and inalienability of human rights for all. However, it is minimal to expect from the Arab masses in order to balance out the apathy (or alliance with the tyrant is more like it) of their ‘Arab politicians’ (kings and princes and baby kings and baby princes) to act in a responsible way towards the Palestinian question.

It is a very simple formula at the end of the day. If you support something, you translate your support into actions, as minimal as you think they might be. Words are not enough, never were, never will be. The classic excuses people usually repeat when explaining why they do not support the act of boycotting are the following:

“An Arab Boycott of Israel will never be enough to have any tangible effect on the long run.”

“There is no logic in boycotting since at the end of the day there will certainly still be several brands and companied we can not run away from.”

“Israel will always remain superior no matter how much you work to change that.”

“Boycotting is unpopular by most of the international community so why bother?”

A case example for every point would suffice to respond to the theory it holds. A thorough observation on the several organizations focused on would indicate an obvious matter; these corporations have only started heavily pouring their funds into Israel post 1993, when the Arab atmosphere proved that it no longer really opposed Israel at the core. This only proves that those big companies do in fact consider the Arab buyer’s opinion before having a major leap in a new Israeli investment. You are paying and your opinion as a customer counts no matter how much you prefer to play down its weight.

Concerning the other argument, it is not a priority to agonize about not being able to boycott everything as a start. If you reach a point where you are convinced with the merit of boycotting, treat the act as a chain-smoker would behave when deciding to stop smoking. Little after little, you can get there. Even if you do not see yourself as capable at this stage of boycotting the long list of Israeli supporters, make sure to know that boycotting what you can will also add value to the whole success of the boycott. Some companies and certain software brands are perceived as practically impossible to boycott. In such cases, one can resort to purchasing them second-hand. At least in such a case, we are confident no new profit enters the company.

Pertaining to Israeli superiority or the claim of it, it is enough to take a glimpse back at the last war against Lebanon in 2006. This is the best example to be provided as proof that ‘Israeli military superiority’ is not necessarily as untouchably superior as we were always taught.  We have witnessed in this war how the famous military dominance is no more than a myth and in the same logic, we should believe that boycotting can prove the Israeli economic superiority a myth too.

The call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions is only one means of expression (in action) that we do not and will not sit along, unmoved, while watching Palestinians under a cruel, illegal and foreign occupation (military and settler)- not to forget the infamous Israeli history of torture and killings on Lebanese land. The UN and the International community have spectacularly failed in getting Israel to comply and be accountable to every international law treaty it has signed pertaining to respect for human rights and rules of war. It is high time for us to find alternative means for forcing Israel to enforce international law.

It is true that boycotting is very much not favored by many sides. Ironic enough, people who oppose a full-fledged boycott of Israel at heart now, have been noted to having been quite encouraging for the past boycott of the apartheid regime in South Africa. So what is the deal here? A boycott to an apartheid regime in South Africa with all the inherent injustices and oppression is justified while a boycott of an apartheid regime in Occupied Palestine with all its inbuilt injustices and subjugation is unwarranted. For scholars (or so called scholars) to oppose one boycotting battle and oppose another is purely hypocritical unless these people in actual fact judge a potential boycott of Israel will have a tangible effect on it academically and economically, their rejection thereby merely stemming from the inherent fear they hold to the imagined dimensions and consequences of such a boycott.

In short, at times when every word of truth on the Zionist regime is faced by the conviction of a label of anti-Semitism (can you even define anti-Semitism for logic’s sake) and every possible action to voice the pain of the silenced oppressed is faced by a certain label of being termed aggressive and fanatic and the like, the act of boycotting remains a feasible leeway (in addition to the aforementioned gratuitous actions of course, not crossing them out). This act- it should be made clear- is no less than a non-violent and educated means for seeking justice by international force and pressure exerted from the international arena, in the hope of achieving what a similar pressure has achieved in the South African case. History has proven to us that such movements can be effective and the second most obvious example after South Africa is in 1989. A recommendation issued by the European Parliament of a possibility of freezing due funds to scientific Israeli-European cooperation unless Israel reopens Palestinian colleges forced Israel to gradually open all what had been closed in Occupied Territories two months afterwards. Effectively, very rare were the instances when Israel showed any move to alter its continuous means of terrorizing Palestinians. Effectively also, all those occasions can be confidently related back to the fact that it had only done so because it was met with pressures and demands from the international community. In 2002, South African Minister for Intelligence Services, Ronnie Kasrils, was found saying in the context of effective boycotting, ‘South Africa is an example of what is possible’. This goes out to all people who are brilliant at claiming the quest for a just day for Palestinians a dream not worth dreaming of. 27

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