May
22, 2002 8:45 a.m. De-Westernizing
The
Arab world tries to kick us out.
ack
in the mid-80s I began boycotting McDonald's. My issue was with Joan Kroc
(who had inherited the corporation after the death of her husband Ray
in 1984) and her public support for the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.
I decided that I did not want my lunch money going to that cause, so I
stopped buying her products. I did not expect to bring down the golden
arches single handed — in fact the current split-adjusted value of
the stock is about ten times what it was when I started — but I did
learn the benefits of making a sacrifice for something I believed in.
And it was a sacrifice; McDonald's was the most convenient place
to eat on campus and I consumed Big Macs all the time. But driven by necessity
I discovered a number of local sandwich shops with singularly superior
food, and soon I realized I didn't need McDonald's in my life. Now Sandinismo
is long gone but the boycott persists. Check out the Joan
B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and you will know
why.
What brought this
to mind was the recent meeting of the First Popular Boycott Conference
in Dubai, a two-day gathering that ended on May 14. The conferees called
for a boycott of U.S. products or "any goods which serve the interests
of Zionists." It established the Arab Popular Boycott Committee to
coordinate the action. The boycott is not total, but against "products
manufactured by boycotted firms for which there is a local, Arab or Muslim
alternative product, or products by firms in countries that support the
Arab cause." Just to remind everyone the point of the exercise, the
final communiqué also called for the establishment of a new fund
to support the Palestinian cause, as well as "the inalienable Arab
Palestinian right in the entire land of Palestine and the legitimacy of
the national Palestinian struggle to restore every usurped inch of land
by all the available means." Lebanese Shiite cleric Sayyed Mohammed
Hussein Fadlallah, a spiritual guide to Hezbollah, issued a fatwa
against American goods the next day.
The Arab world is
a $15 billion export market for the U.S., 80% of which goes to Saudi Arabia,
the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt. Arab states had long boycotted Israel,
though this had eased by the 1990s. The current boycott movement began
with the advent of the "second intifada" in September 2000.
The cause was given a push by U.S. military action in response to 9/11
and the recent Israeli counterterrorism operation in the Palestinian Authority.
The Arab Boycott Bureau, established in the 1940s to coordinate anti-Israel
boycotts, claims that American firms in the region have lost $300 million
in the last two months.
In Bahrain, Coca-Cola
is being displaced from store shelves and replaced with Zamzam, an Iranian
beverage named for a holy spring in Mecca, reportedly the world's oldest.
In Saudi Arabia, American restaurants are losing customers to domestic
alternatives such as (no kidding) Saudi Burger and Pizza Sheikh. Bahraini
Burger King restaurants responded to declining sales by setting out donation
boxes draped in Palestinian flags. A poll of Israeli Arabs showed that
their consumption of American products and services is down somewhat —
McDonald's off 39 percent, Coke down 13 percent — but when asked
why, a plurality of respondents cited economic uncertainties for the decrease,
and only 14 percent singled out the Palestinian issue. This indicates
that not all of the purported $300 million decline can be attributed to
raised Arab consciousness.
You might think that
a boycott like this would hurt Arabs more than it would hurt Americans
— don't Arabs own the franchises, don't they hire Arab employees,
aren't they catering to Arab demand? Moreover, aren't the big-ticket items,
the things that might actually get American attention, exempted from the
boycott? An Egyptian writer commented on the "childishness"
of the effort, noting that "there are thousands of other commodities
and products, such as Boeing airplanes, huge electricity generating stations,
cars, buses, not to mention fighter planes, tanks, armored cars, and all
types of anti-missile weapons. But emotional and naive attention is always
focused on Marlboro, Kentucky [Fried Chicken], and Coca Cola."
True, but missing
the point. The target of the boycott is not American companies but Arab
society. The boycott tactic fits neatly into the anti-globalization stream
of thought that motivates many of the Arab reactionary groups like al
Qaeda. American products are one of the more visible manifestations of
this phenomenon, but the true evil as they see it is the growing consumerism
of the Arab world. Abd-al-Halim Qindyl, a Qatari writer, reasons that
"before boycotting the US goods, we should divorce the United States
that is in our minds. If we free ourselves from the United States that
is in our minds, a real change may take place and we can start a painful
economic boycott of the United States in terms of oil, weapons, and Arab
assets." That is, change the way you think. Stop being American-style
consumerists. Stop being creatures of manufactured demand. Stop craving
the life they have told you you need. Get ready for the hardships of true
jihad. Seems like they have gotten hold of an Arabic translation of The
Affluent Society.
Arab consumers may
not be willing to make this kind of sacrifice. They may forgo Western
goods where there are Arab alternatives, but not give up consumption altogether.
And in the final analysis, does it really make a difference from a globalization
standpoint if the pizza being consumed in Doha has an American or a Qatari
name? It is still pizza. A burger is a burger, whether or not it is a
Saudi Burger. The Arab reactionaries cannot stop the westernizing of their
culture simply by switching to domestic knockoffs of Western goods; in
fact, that tactic marks their surrender to it.
As I
have previously argued, the Arab states are ill positioned to engage
in economic warfare with the West. (Only Syria has officially blessed
the boycott, but with no appreciable trade with the U.S. this is hardly
a sacrifice.) This movement is coming on the heels of the Iraqi oil embargo,
and will be about as effective. Time will tell. Meanwhile, in retaliation,
I am adding Zamzam, Pizza Sheikh, and other such products to my boycott
list. Consider this my fatwa to that effect.
— James
S. Robbins is a national-security analyst & NRO contributor.
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ack
in the mid-80s I began boycotting McDonald's. My issue was with Joan Kroc
(who had inherited the corporation after the death of her husband Ray
in 1984) and her public support for the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.
I decided that I did not want my lunch money going to that cause, so I
stopped buying her products. I did not expect to bring down the golden
arches single handed — in fact the current split-adjusted value of
the stock is about ten times what it was when I started — but I did
learn the benefits of making a sacrifice for something I believed in.
And it was a sacrifice; McDonald's was the most convenient place
to eat on campus and I consumed Big Macs all the time. But driven by necessity
I discovered a number of local sandwich shops with singularly superior
food, and soon I realized I didn't need McDonald's in my life. Now Sandinismo
is long gone but the boycott persists. Check out the 
