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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   26707 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023

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https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Business/companies-starbucks-mcdonalds-face-controversy-amid-israel-hamas/story?id=104219615

Starbucks sued its union, Starbucks Workers United, earlier this month after the labor organization posted a since-deleted message on X, formerly known as Twitter, expressing solidarity with Palestinians. The message from the union triggered calls to boycott Starbucks, when some appeared to mistake the union's position for that of the company.

At McDonald's, an Israel-based franchise announced free food for members of the Israeli military, prompting a consumer backlash and messages from other franchises distancing themselves from the move.

Meanwhile, https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2023/11/14/indonesians-boycott-mcdonalds-starbucks-over-support-for-israel

Indonesians began boycotting McDonald’s and other businesses in mid-October after McDonald’s Israel announced on social media that it had handed out thousands of free meals to the Israeli military amid its war with Hamas.

The boycott comes despite McDonald’s Indonesia, which is owned by PT Rekso Nasional Food, last week announcing that it had “deployed humanitarian assistance valued at IDR [Indonesian rupiahs] 1,5 billion [$96,000]” to support Palestinians.

While McDonald’s is synonymous with the United States, most of its restaurants worldwide are locally owned, and franchisees in numerous Muslim countries have expressed support for Palestinians and pledged money to support relief efforts in Gaza.

So, the Starbucks union posted pro-Palestinian messages on social media, as is their right to do. Starbucks in response distances itself from its union — not even to support Israel, but simply to stay out of it altogether. McDonald’s franchises are independently owned and operated, so McDonald’s in Israel gives free food to the IDF, and McDonald’s in Indonesia and other Muslim countries gives aid to Palestine instead.

And for just doing business as businesses do, https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/propalestine-vandals-who-targeted-starbucks-and-maccas-in-melbourne-dubbed-extremists/news-story/6f6c50b4316aa4426b90702d5ccf1c91?amp

Protesters who vandalised Starbucks and McDonald’s stores in Melbourne during a large pro-Palestine demonstration have been described as “homegrown extremists”.

A Starbucks cafe on Swanston Street in the CBD was covered in stickers and sprayed with red paint yesterday, targeted for the third time in as many weeks.

I mean, I could at least see the Chick-fil-A boycott making sense. You eating at Chick-fil-A benefits the CEO and private owner of the company, so you want to stop giving money to that guy even if that might end up hurting others employed by Chick-fil-A who don’t share such views.

Or the Hogwarts Legacy boycott, where an argument could be made that even pirating the game gives cultural clout to the Harry Potter brand, and therefore you should avoid the game altogether if you dislike JK Rowling enough. I mean, I disagree, but I can at least see where that is coming from. You don’t want to benefit people you dislike, even if it also benefits others who you have nothing against at all.

This, though? This isn’t even hurting “the right people.” What? Am I missing a potential steel man here, or are these protestors not even bothering to pretend like what they’re doing has any rational basis beyond pure tribalism anymore?

I know quite a few Muslims who refuse to drink Starbucks for this reason. There are a lot of collages of Jewish-founded or run businesses that float around on WhatsApp etc in the Arab/Muslim world.

In a deracinated, secularizing world in which the core Islamic territory is increasingly divided in two by the Saudi/Iranian Sunni/Shia proxy conflict, Palestine is literally the sole unifying cause for the global ummah, they can’t really agree on anything else.

This also explains Muslim radicalization about it, it’s the only cause that a traditionalist 75 year old grandfather who prays five times a day and his 21 year old feminist art student granddaughter who doesn’t even wear hijab can agree on with similar zeal. For many Westernized Muslims, a combination of generic POC-‘anticolonial’ activism in general and Palestine advocacy specifically is what being a Muslim means to them.

(That’s not unique to Muslims, of course, plenty of progressive Christians and Jews do similar things, but it is important to remember in these discussions.)

I find it so hard to want to support the the Palestinian cause even if they have legitimate grievances, because their tactics are so deplorable--the deliberate use of violence and martyrdom and their citizens as fodder to invoke sympathy from the Western masses. It's like an extreme version of performance art or theatrics.

I find it so hard to want to support the the Palestinian cause even if they have legitimate grievances, because their tactics are so deplorable

I don't think we should conflate Hamas with all Palestinians.

Take a look at this: https://www.awrad.org/en/article/10719/Wartime-Poll-Results-of-an-Opinion-Poll-Among-Palestinians-in-the-West-Bank-and-Gaza-Strip

See the tables of results. The press release doesn't mention the objectionable bits.

68% of Palestinians "extremely support" the October 7 terror. Only 7% oppose it.

Edit: 68% of those in WB. 59.3% overall. 46.6% in GS for "extremely support".

But for WB + GS overall you have 75% who support or extremely support the terror.

Yeah, 68% in the West Bank. Those in Gaza sit at 46%.

Secondly, the poll in question doesn't appear to differentiate between the violent attack on the 7th and the civilian casualties. This makes it a weighing game for the pollee - how much do they support the fight for independence vs. condemning attacks against innocent Israelis? W/o knowing this, we cannot know what people are saying they support.

Even in Gaza only 21% oppose it. 64% support or strongly support.

I don't think you can say that the attack on 07.10 was both a military attack and a terror attack as two separate things. The killing and capturing of civilians was the main objective. Most of the killed were civilians. They knocked out some military posts to have free rein. And they paraded corpses and hostages in the streets of Gaza and shared videos of the butchery.

The point I'm getting at is that we don't know what the Palestinians think of killing civilians because that policy is inherently bundled with Hamas' actions as a group enacting violence to remove Israel from the land. If a socialist in WW2 were to support the US/UK against the Nazis, your logic would have this person counted as a capitalist since they aren't rejecting the violence.

Secondly, you can find videos of a great many things. For example, a video with dozens or even hundreds of rioters burning a building down in the name of their cause. That video doesn't necessarily tell you what the supporters of the cause think as a whole.

If a socialist in WW2 were to support the US/UK against the Nazis, your logic would have this person counted as a capitalist since they aren't rejecting the violence.

The logic wouldn't say that they are a capitalist, the logic would say that they are a supporter of the kind of violence that the US/UK uses against the Nazis. Likewise, Palestinians are mostly supporters of the kind of violence Hamas uses, which is killing civilians.

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They are currently being bombed, though. That tends to cause people to circle the wagons. At present I very much doubt any Palestinians will say no to anything that sounds even remotely anti-Israeli.

June 2023, 1200+ adults in Gaza Strip: https://www.pcpsr.org/sites/default/files/Poll%2088%20English%20full%20text%20June%202023.pdf

Page 25.

70% support or strongly support killing civilians inside Israel.

Sure?

It's not news to me that the Palestinians hate the Israelis. Even well before October 7, I am confident that it would be suicidal to walk down the street in Gaza City wearing a kippah, or bearing any sign of either Jewish or Israeli identity. The Palestinians have never liked or empathised with the Israelis.

I expect anti-Israeli feeling to have only intensified as a result of October 7 and the aftermath - so these sets of figures don't surprise me.

If it's not news to you, why did you try to argue that the results in the first poll was due to the current retaliatory bombing?

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Well, Hamas does that stuff. Hamas is not that popular among Palestinian civilians, and there are plenty of other peaceful orgs pushing their cause.

Seems to be working quite well unfortunatly. A lot of the low information people around me support Palestine. Somewhat trivial to be pushed to neutral though but it requires 1 on 1 persuasions.

Really? A lot of the low information people around me seem to have settled into ‘Jews control the world anyways, just make your peace with it already, the Palestinians are all terrorists’.

I don’t believe you.

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