Only in Israel could the location of a fast food burger hangout be a “shot heard ‘round the world” that could set off a new Arab uprising.
Or maybe Israel will be the source of a “Peace Burger.”
Burger Ranch has decided to set up a branch in Ariel after McDonald’s Israel, whose franchise is owned by a Peace Now founder Omri Padan, announced it would maintain its policy of boycotting Judea and Samaria.
“Ariel is a major city in Israel, and there is no reason for us not to have a branch there,” Eli Orgad, an owner of Burger Ranch, was quoted as saying in the Israeli newspaper Maariv. “I will open anywhere that the state of Israel has decided that its citizens are located.”
Take that, Omri Padan. Since Jews have no right to live in Judea and Samaria, he reasons, he is not going give them the right to eat McDonald’s burgers. If they want a Big Mac, let’em go to Tel Aviv, the “real Israel” although a much smaller sandwich.
When Padan was general manager of a textile company, he informed the directors that he would quit if they dared set up a plant in Judea and Samaria, even though it would provide employment to Palestinian Authority Arabs.
The Burger Ranch move to Ariel is a double whammy for Ronald McDonald.
Yigal Delmonti, deputy director of the Yesha Council of Jewish Communities of Judea and Samaria suggested that Israelis boycott the golden arches.
Minister of the Economy Naftali Bennett promised “to come and eat the first hamburger at the [Burger Ranch] branch on the day it opens, which is expected to be next year, when a new mall in Ariel is completed.
By that time, the European Union may have gone bankrupt, which would mean the Palestinian Authority no longer would exist. Or Hezbollah may have fired rockets into northern Israel, overshooting their target and wiping out some Arab villages in Samaria.
Or maybe Abbas will have succeeded in winning official membership in the United Nations, making the Palestinian Authority a full partner in the world’s most prestigious anti-American NGO.
Or maybe the Boycott Israel movement will have collapsed. It has failed to convince people to stop eating at McDonald’s even though it is religiously observant of maintaining a distance of at least a stone’s throw from Judea and Samaria.
“McDonald’s Corporation is a major corporate partner of the Jewish United Fund and Jewish Federation,” according to one Boycott Israel site. “The Jewish United Fund also runs ‘Fun-filled Summer Family Missions to Israel’ where families get to ‘visit an army base and meet with Israeli soldiers’ and ‘visit our sister city, Kiryat Gat and see the important work we are doing there.’ Kiryat Gat is built on stolen Palestinian land – the lands of the villages of Iraq Al Manshiya and Al-Faluja whose residents were ethnically cleansed in 1949 in contravention of International Law….
“McDonald’s first restaurant in the Middle East was in Israel, opened in 1993.”
So if the Boycott Movement cannot keep people from eating Big Macs, presumably it won’t be able to keep them out of Burger Ranch.
And what if Burger Ranch serves up a new item on the menu, something like a Peace Burger?
Take two rolls, one baked in Jenin and the other in the Jewish area of Hevron. Spread hummus generously and add two slices of ground meat, one of them in the design of Abbas’ face and the other an image of Netanyahu,
Take two pieces of Gush Katif lettuce and place them between the slices of meat and then put in a third slice, a cutout of John Kerry’s face.
Now, after the proper blessing for peace, eat the whole thing and be done with all of them.
Then we can have some peace and go back to arguing about where Obama was born.