JULY 2000, pages 6, 44-45

Special Report

After Illusory “Victory” in First “Battle of Burger King,” Muslims, Arabs Prepare for Second Round

By Richard H. Curtiss

The odds were overwhelming a year ago. Under Arab League auspices more than 250 million Arabs overseas were threatening to boycott the British-owned Burger King company if it did not close down its franchise in Ma’ale Adumim, the largest of the illegal Jewish-only settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. In the United States, leaders of some five million American Jews threatened to boycott Burger King if it yielded to any such threat. But twice as many Muslim and Arab Americans threatened to boycott Burger King if it did not, and on Aug. 19 American Muslims for Jerusalem coordinated demonstrations at Burger King outlets in 12 states and the District of Columbia.

Burger King did the prudent thing. On Aug. 26, 1999, the company’s American branch, which in turn oversees its franchises in Israel, told AMJ it had ordered Rikamor Ltd., Burger King’s Israeli franchise holder, to close down the Ma’ale Adumim outlet.

The Arab League suspended action, and instead put Burger King on a “watch list.” AMJ called off the boycott, and the demonstrators packed up their signs and went home. This magazine hailed the entire affair as a great victory—hopefully the first of many—won by Arabs, Muslims and peace activists on behalf of Middle East peace and respect for international law everywhere.

What no one thought to ask was why the boycott of Burger King by U.S. Jewish organizations never materialized. And what very few people knew for a while was that on Sept. 23, 1999 Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) and other members of Congress sent a letter to Burger King questioning the decision. In his Oct. 4 reply to Ackerman, Burger King president Dennis Malamatinas asked “to discuss this issue with you personally.” In the same letter Malamatinas wrote: “We simply sell Whoppers to make our customers happy.”

In retrospect, it seems the biggest Whopper of all was bought by the Arab League and American Muslims for Jerusalem. So nine months later, on June 15, 2000, AMJ executive director Khalid Turaani held a press conference at the National Press Club building in Washington, DC to announce that his organization would decide within 10 days whether it would have to revive the boycott to get the promised result.

To understand how the boycott was halted by a promise Burger King either never intended to keep, or didn’t have the power to, it’s necessary to review the history. It started with an e-mail from University of Chicago faculty member Ali Abunimah calling attention to the fact that British-owned Diageo Pic’s Burger King Corporation had opened a franchise at Ma’ale Adumim, a Jewish settlement built on land confiscated from Palestinian owners by the Israeli government, and later developed into a settlement for Jews only. The United Nations has ruled that such West Bank settlements violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which lays down the rules for what an occupying power can and cannot do.

Boycott Co-Sponsors

AMJ then learned that although the company is British owned, Israeli-American businessman Meshulam Riklis’s Rikamor company, which controls franchises in Israel, is in turn managed from Burger King’s U.S. headquarters in Miami. As talk began among Arab Americans and the Arab states of what to do to halt the participation by a U.S. company in violations of international law in the West Bank, AMJ picked up co-sponsorship for its boycott from the American Muslim Alliance, American Muslim Council, American Muslim Foundation, Arab American Institute, American Task Force for Palestine, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Muslim Public Affairs Council, National Association of Arab Americans, Palestinian American Congress and Partners for Peace. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) also had protested directly to Burger King.

Then on Aug. 26 Burger King Corporation announced from Miami that it had “cancelled the right of Rikamor, Ltd., its independent franchisee in Israel, to operate a Burger King food court counter in Ma’ale Adumim in the West Bank [because] Rikamor falsely informed Burger King that the food court would be located in Israel. It had been clearly understood between the two companies that Burger King would not approve Rikamor opening restaurants in the West Bank at this sensitive time in the peace process…The cancellation of Rikamor’s right to operate the site as a Burger King franchise…will end any involvement of the Burger King brand in its operation at this time.”

In its May 2000 issue the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs published a three-column photo of the restaurant and its Burger King sign, still on display in Ma’ale Adumim. The magazine also reported that in 1999 Ma’ale Adumim received approval to confiscate another 2,560 acres of land from three neighboring Palestinian villages. As a result the giant settlement now has an area of 47 square kilometers, only 4 square kilometers less than Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest city and commercial capital. The restaurant manager, who identified himself as “Avi from Burger King,” told the Washington Report’s correspondent that his restaurant had never suffered any interruption in business and was “just a regular Burger King.”

Ma’ale Adumim Mayor Benny Kashriel complained to the Washington Report that Arab League protests are misplaced. He said that the Burger King outlet “allows Israeli and Palestinian children to play together [although no Palestinians are allowed to live in Ma’ale Adumim or other Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza] and that 1,200 of the 2,000 employees in Ma’ale Adumim’s industrial park are Arabs [although none of the 100 factories in the industrial park are Arab-owned].”

Quid Pro Quo

Then on June 8 the Israeli daily Ma’ariv reported that Burger King would abandon efforts to close down the Ma’ale Adumim outlet in exchange for an agreement by Rikamor not to open any more outlets in disputed territory.

Later the same day Burger King spokesman Doughty was quoted by Bloomberg news service as denying the Ma’ariv report. “Burger King Corp. has not closed its eyes to the existence of the Ma’ale Adumim restaurant and continues to demand that the Burger King brand name be removed from the restaurant,” Doughty said.

But when AMJ director Khalid Turaani asked Burger King’s Florida headquarters to explain these reports, he found the relationship had changed. After declining for some time to return his calls, Turaani said, when Rob Doughty finally responded, he “would no longer confirm the corporation’s commitment to closing the outlet.”

Turaani got an even bigger surprise when he informally polled officials of the groups that had supported the boycott last August. President James Zogby of the Arab-American Institute, second largest Arab-American group (after the American -Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee—ADC), told Turaani, “I can’t be with you this time.”

On June 13 the program of AAI’s annual gala fund-raiser revealed that Burger King was one of the corporate sponsors of the AAI event, to the tune of $25,000.

Concerned at the crack that had appeared in what had been a united Muslim- and Arab-American front less than a year earlier, Turaani and his deputy director, Fahhim Abdulhadi, flanked at their press conference by executive director Nihad Awad of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), president Eugene Bird of the Council for the National Interest (CNI), and Ms. Jerri Bird, director of Partners for Peace, a Middle East peace activist group, announced cautiously that “within the American Muslim community there is growing consensus over renewing last year’s boycott against Burger King Corporation.” He continued:

“Until recently follow-up conversations between Burger King and AMJ have been productive…Regrettably, AMJ’s last conversation with Burger King found an apparently different position. During that conversation AMJ was informed that the discussion between Rikamor Ltd. and Burger King had moved to ‘international arbitration.’ Burger King vice president Rob Doughty would no longer confirm the corporation’s commitment to closing the outlet. Mr. Doughty also declined to answer any clarifying questions. A subsequent letter to Burger King CEO Dennis Malamatinas has not been answered.”

Turaani noted that his organization fully expected any boycott to be observed abroad as well as in the U.S.* Burger King has some 10,500 restaurants in all 50 U.S. states and 54 countries and international territories in the world. Of these, 46 outlets are in Israel (not counting Ma’ale Adumim). Others in the Middle East include 31 in Kuwait, 6 in the United Arab Emirates, 4 in Oman, 3 in Qatar and 40 in Saudi Arabia, including one in Mecca, center of the annual Islamic pilgrimage.

In answer to a journalist’s questions, representatives of the four organizations at the conference all affirmed they would not accept grants from Burger King in the absence of any settlement of the dispute, two of them adding that they “would be insulted at such an offer.”

Noting that Israel apparently is planning to annex Ma’ale Adumim, which lies between Jerusalem and Jericho, CNI president Eugene Bird said the settlement “has been a thorn in the side of the peace negotiators for a very long time.” He speculated also that the directors of Burger King “are more fearful of the reaction of Jewish Americans than they are of the reactions of Arab Americans.”

Partners for Peace president Jerri Bird noted that the “coinage of the settlement issue has two sides: confiscation of Arab land and destruction of the homes of Palestinians.” Noting that “Burger King is throwing a wrench into the peace negotiations,” she added, “American corporations should be supporting American initiatives for peace.”

Vowing that his organization is “with AMJ and will be with them all the way,” CAIR president Nihad Awad said, “We see it as regrettable that we have to have a press conference to put Burger King on notice that Muslim and Arab Americans are not going to stand by while Israel creates settlements for the exclusive use of Jews on West Bank land. We hope Burger King will reconsider what it is doing, which is helping to isolate both Christians and Muslims living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.”

Participants in the press conference compared the contemplated boycott to the 1980s and 1990s, when Americans and Europeans boycotted companies that did business with South Africa, whose apartheid regime was based upon discrimination in residential areas and in public services, just as is the case in Israel and Israeli-occupied areas. Eventually the combination of United Nations measures and commercial boycotts by people all over the world forced South Africa to revoke its discriminatory laws.

Sponsors of the proposed action against Burger King expressed no doubt they have the combined strength to duplicate this action, no matter how many “whoppers” Burger King sells the American public in the meantime.

*An online poll conducted by arabia.com indicated that of 717 respondents, 76 percent will voluntarily reject Burger King if the boycott is renewed, AMJ announced on June 17 in Washington, DC. The poll can be viewed at <http://www.arabia.com>.

Richard H. Curtiss is the executive director of the Washington Report.