Boycott!

"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 Yasser Arafat and 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 the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon's, reoccupation of West Bank 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 spokesman, 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 protesters, who include both Palestinians and Muslim groups at Ein Shams University in Egypt and the American University of Cairo, have a much wider list of companies they wish to punishfor allegedly supporting Israel, not only in the Middle East but in the United States itself.

They include AOL Time Warner, Disney, Estée Lauder, Nokia, Revlon, Marks & Spencer, Selfridges and IBM. Students at Dubai University and in the Syrian capital, Damascus, are now also liaising over their boycott plans."

Fisk on Boycott