The Starbucks conspiracy theory: how a coffee chain was libelled by anti-Zionists

By Damian Thompson Religion Last updated: January 14th, 2009

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For the last couple of weeks, internet conspiracy theorists have been spreading a story that Starbucks is funding the Israeli attacks on Gaza. The story is based on lies and a hoax – but it found a ready audience in protestors who trashed a Starbucks outlet in Kensington High Street, opposite the Israeli embassy.

Brendan O'Neill, editor of Spiked, today published a thorough debunkingof the Starbucks conspiracy theory. It makes fascinating reading:

For the past two weeks, internet discussion forums and mobile phone networks have been bombarded with the following message: ‘Starbucks and McDonald’s are donating their next two weeks of earned revenue to Israel. Please BOYCOTT them and forward this message to everyone you know.’ Other versions of the message say Starbucks and McDonald’s are ‘donating their next two weeks of earned revenue to the Israeli military’.

All nonsense, but try telling that to the morons of the anti-war Left. O'Neill continues:

The rumour has stuck faster to Starbucks than it has to the other corporations. Some point out that the individuals who smashed up Starbucks on Kensington High Street were a ‘violent minority’, yet the anti-Starbucks sentiment was a central part of Saturday’s 50,000-strong demonstration. At the rally in Hyde Park earlier in the day, the rapper Lowkey, one of the invited speakers, was wildly cheered when he attacked companies – including Starbucks – that have ‘Zionist’ links: ‘You say you know about the Zionist lobby, but you put money in their pockets every time you’re buying their coffee.’ A combination of internet rumour, text messages that spread like wildfire, and condemnation of ‘Zionist coffee’ from a platform shared by Bianca Jagger, Annie Lennox and Lauren Booth (sister-in-law to Tony Blair) may have rattled and riled the protesters into believing that Starbucks is part of the Israeli war machine. No wonder they later smashed up one of its shops.

However, it is completely untrue that Starbucks funds the Israeli military. In response to the social-networking conspiracy-mongering, Starbucks released a statement saying that the ‘rumours that Starbucks Coffee Company… supports Israel are unequivocally false’.

Aha, say the morons, but we have proof – a letter from Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz:

Many of the claims about ‘Zionist coffee’ and a link between Starbucks and the Israeli military spring from a letter allegedly written by CEO Howard Schultz. Dated 11 July 2006, and titled ‘A Thank You To All Starbucks Customers’, Schultz apparently said that ‘with every cup you drink at Starbucks you are helping with a noble cause’: ensuring the ‘continued viability and prospering of the Jewish State’. Schultz seems to say that the $5 billion donated by America to Israel every year is ‘no way near enough to pay for all the weaponry, bulldozers and security fences needed to protect innocent Israeli citizens from anti-Semitic Muslim terrorism. Corporate sponsorships are essential [too]’. Schultz thanks Starbucks customers for helping him to raise ‘hundreds of millions of dollars each year’ to support the state of Israel. This seemingly Starbucks-damning letter has been on the internet for two-and-a-half years, and it now underpins much of the current anti-Starbucks, pro-Gaza protesting. It has appeared on anti-war websites; it has been cited as evidence by those spreading the ‘Boycott Starbucks’ SMS; Daily Egypt, an English-language paper in Cairo, says that ‘Egyptians and Arabs [have been] circulating emails’ containing the Schultz letter.

I bet they have. But the Muslim world isn't big on fact-checking, in my experience, and they've been suckered again, as O'Neill reports:

However, the ‘Schultz letter’ is a hoax; worse than that, it’s a piece of satire that has been accepted by some people as fact. The letter was written, not by Schultz, but by Andrew Winkler, an Australian-based ‘anti-Zionist media activist’ of German origin. It was published as a parody of Schultz, and clearly advertised as a parody, on the anti-Zionist website ZioPedia on 11 July 2006. Winkler later wrote: ‘The Howard Schultz spoof letter has caused quite a bit of a stir… Howard Schultz never wrote that letter, I did.’ Yet now it has become something like a modern, internet-shared version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion: a hoax document supposedly written by a Jew which is cited by some people as evidence of Zionist wickedness.

So there you have it. Anti-war liberals can go back into Starbucks and talk bollocks to each other over their extra-drizzle soy caramel macchiatos, safe in the knowledge that not a penny of it is going to Israel. They might even want to stick an extra shot in their drink, because fulminating against Zionism is so terribly tiring…