Who Won the Battles of Burger King and Walt Disney Productions?

By Richard H. Curtiss

The battle of Burger King, the threat of an Arab and Arab-American boycott of the Walt Disney Corporation, and three related skirmishes in the U.S. all broke out quickly this fall and dropped out of the media almost as abruptly. Both, or all, parties claimed at least limited victories. But who really won?

It depends upon whom you ask. But first, let’s review what happened.

Burger King: It started with an e-mail from Palestinian-American teacher Ali Abunimah of Chicago, a one-man truth squad who scans U.S. media reporting on Israel and Palestine and, when he spots misrepresentations or distortions, fires off brief, well-written and factual corrections of the record. One of his e-mail messages called attention to the fact that British-owned Burger King’s Israeli franchise, which is managed from its U.S. headquarters in Miami, had opened an outlet in Ma’ale Adumim, the largest Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

But six U.S. presidents have called Jewish settlements in the occupied territories “obstacles to peace.” The United Nations has ruled that the entire Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, Golan—all territories acquired by war—is contrary to international law. And, of course, Jewish settlements in all of those places violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which lays down rules governing what an occupying power can and cannot do.

Spearheaded by the newly created American Muslims for Jerusalem (AMJ), a coalition of 10 national organizations organized protests outside Burger King franchises in 11 states and the District of Columbia on Aug. 19, calling for a nation-wide boycott of Burger King. But even before the demonstrations, a coalition of U.S. Jewish groups had threatened a counter-boycott if Burger King gave in to the demonstrators.

On the day of the demonstrations, however, Burger King’s Miami headquarters capitulated to the Muslim- and Arab-led protesters, saying it would revoke the Ma’ale Adumim franchise.

So was it a clear victory for the Muslim- and Arab-American groups? Obviously. The only problem is that as of the end of October the Burger King franchise in the apartheid settlement of Ma’ale Adumim was still open, and hadn’t even painted over the sign!

The battle has now moved to the Israeli courts, according to ACJ’s Khalid Turaani, with the Israeli Burger King management demanding that the Ma’ale Adumim sign come down and the franchise-holder refusing.

Disney World: The dispute started when word got out that an $8 million exhibit on Jerusalem toward which the Israeli Foreign Ministry had contributed $1.8 million, and through which all visitors would pass as they exited the temporary “millennium village” at Disney-owned Epcott Center in Orlando, Florida, depicted Jerusalem as the capital of Israel without any reference to its contested status. The reaction was remarkable, overseas and over here, and, if not coordinated, was as effective as if it had been.

Disney provided a filmed “virtual” tour of the pavilion.

UAE Minister of Information and Culture Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, son of the president of the United Arab Emirates, threatened a boycott of Disney products, and called upon the 22 member nations of the League of Arab States to do the same. (Don’t smile at the thought of a boycott by the UAE. Some of its member emirates serve not only as a principal point of entry for foreign goods into Iran, but also as a major point of entry for American goods into Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union. Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah have huge international airports through which thousands of visitors from the east enter weekly to buy, and buy and buy. Meanwhile small freighters come and go daily between the UAE and Iranian ports. A UAE boycott alone could cost Disney an estimated $100 million a year. A boycott by the entire Arab League would put the entertainment giant deeply into the red until it could scale down by firing a lot of American employees.)

At the same time, Muslim- and Arab- American groups asked Disney what was in the Jerusalem pavilion.

After playing hard-to-get for a few days, Disney provided a filmed “virtual” tour of the pavilion for representatives of the U.S. groups and the Arab League’s Washington ambassador, Khaled Abdulla.

They registered their objections to some wording on the exhibits and Disney representatives thanked them for their input.

From there on, things got murky. Having received communications from its Washington ambassador, Arab League foreign ministers voted not to boycott Disney, saying the measures promised by Disney were positive. Since the decision was made before it could be ascertained that the recommendations had been carried out, there was word-of-mouth suspicion that the decision might have been influenced by the fact that one of Saudi Arabia’s richest entrepreneurs, Prince Walid Ibn Talal, owns almost a half-interest in the Euro Disney theme park just outside Paris. On the other hand, the UAE’s Sheikh Abdallah thanked Prince Waleed for his efforts to change the company’s stand.

Then representatives of the Muslim- and Arab-American groups were invited to see the Jerusalem pavilion just before the Oct. 1 opening to inspect for themselves the changes that had been made. There was only one overt reference to Jerusalem as a capital. A narrator says: “King David made Jerusalem the first capital of their (the Jews’) nation.” A Disney spokesman, Bill Warren, refused to say exactly what changes had been made. “Things are always changed,” he said. “We never talk about the process of creating the magic of any of our rides or exhibits.”

In separate statements, representatives of the major Arab-American and Muslim groups professed themselves mollified, although in the words of president Hala Maksoud of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), “We have not yet gotten all that we wanted.” So there would be no boycott. But at least one of the Muslim groups, the AMJ, which had spearheaded the Burger King demonstrations, said it would demonstrate at the Disney Millennium Village opening and hand out leaflets to visitors acquainting them with the illegality of Israeli actions in Jerusalem. The AMJ did not call for a boycott, however.

Meanwhile Israel acted as if it had won. At an Israeli Foreign Ministry preview for American Jewish activists, an Israeli official praised Disney for not caving in to “political blackmail.” An Israeli official also told a reporter from Agence France Presse that only one sentence, referring specifically to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, was deleted from the film.

Privately, it was clear that leaders of pro-Israel organizations were deeply disturbed at the action taken by U.S. Arab and Muslim leaders, whom the Israelis have long written off as incapable of either effective or concerted action.

In fact the same Muslim- and Arab-American leaders racked up other uncontested victories. The Ben and Jerry ice cream company ordered its Israeli outlet to stop using water originating in the Syrian-owned but Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The Sprint long-distance telephone company also agreed to remove a photo of the Dome of the Rock at the Haram al-Sharif, Islam’s third holiest site, from a promotion for long-distance calls to Israel. And CNN removed from its millennium Web site language saying that Israel had “reclaimed” Jerusalem.

Since then the Israeli daily Ha’aretz has carried a lengthy article on coordination of plans between the Israeli government and leaders of American Jewish organizations to counter what they considered the most serious threat to Israeli policies ever to surface within the U.S. However, the first pro-Israeli counter-effort by B’nai B’rith’s Anti-Defamation League was worse than ludicrous.

ADL violations of U.S. laws in the recent past include illegal surveillance and collection of information on U.S. citizens, and then apparently allowing at least some of it to find its way to foreign intelligence agencies, including, but not necessarily limited to, those of apartheid South Africa and Israel’s Shin Bet, both of which have operated death squads in the past.

That made ADL’s most recent ploy doubly ironic, as it tried to cloak itself in a menacing mantle of legality. It asked the U.S. government to look into whether, by threatening a boycott, some Arab-American or Muslim-American groups were violating U.S. anti-boycott legislation. Then ADL turned around and told the press that the U.S. government is investigating such actions. (This would imply that Americans, like the writer, and presumably many readers of this magazine, who do not knowingly purchase goods made in Israel, have been violating U.S. law all these years; and that if these same U.S. citizens voluntarily avoid purchasing goods at stores that sell Israeli goods, that, too, would be a violation of U.S. laws. Neither action violates any laws anywhere.)

The press release, perhaps the grossest act of intimidation to date in the sordid history of the ADL, America’s best-funded hate group, brought a denial from Dexter Price, director of the office of anti-boycott compliance at the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Export Administration, who said: “The anti-boycott regulations enforced by the Commerce Department apply to boycotts imposed by foreign countries against Israel and other countries friendly to the United States. If a U.S. company shuts down its operations in Israeli settlements in the occupied territories solely in response to a boycott call or pressure by American Muslims or any other group of U.S.-based consumers, the Commerce anti-boycott regulations would not apply.” (See report on p. 104 of this issue.)

Based upon the hysterical and heavy-handed reaction of ADL, and the reported consternation in Israel, the Arab and Muslim Americans won the first battles. But questions remain in the minds of the public.

Are the Arab states overseas boycotting Disney? No.

Are Arab Americans and Muslim Americans boycotting Disney? No.

And who exactly is or isn’t, or should be, boycotting Burger King? Not Arab- and Muslim Americans at present.

One thing that the Arab- and Muslim- American organizations proposed is that the Disney Corporation make room in its Millennium Village, which also contains exhibits on Saudi Arabia and Morocco, for an exhibit on Palestine. The matter is being negotiated between the Arab League and Disney. Meanwhile Arab League Ambassador Abdallah reports that some material for such an exhibit from the Palestinian Authority already has arrived in his Washington office. But Disney’s answer has not. Stay tuned.

Therefore, even though the U.S. Arab and Muslim groups seem to have won all of this year’s initial skirmishes, it will take careful, and thoughtful, follow-up to ensure that they deploy their full potential to win the longer-term economic and public relations war. That victory, in turn, is an essential first step on the long road to a real and lasting Middle East peace.

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