Baladna: Palestine Society of Columbus calls for a boycott of Cameron Mitchell Restaurants

Late last week, Baladna: Palestine Society of Columbus, posted a social media call asking the community to boycott Cameron Mitchell Restaurants (CMR), citing as a reason the local restaurant group’s recent sponsorship of a fundraising event hosted by Friends of the IDF – Ohio, the local chapter of a nonprofit authorized to collect charitable donations in the United States for current and former soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces.

“In light of the past three years of accelerated genocide against Palestinians, supporting a foreign armed force which imprisons and bombs civilians, and launches pogroms against Palestinians is indefensible,” Baladna wrote on Instagram and Facebook. “Baladna calls on its community members to speak out against the normalization of the genocide being waged against Palestinians, and to support restaurants who are not involved in whitewashing crimes against humanity.”

In addition to the social media post, Baladna also sent a letter to CMR asking the group to rescind its support for Friends of the IDF and to abstain from supporting future events, according to Baladna member Yezen Abusharkh. Baladna also asked CMR to consider a donation to a charity benefiting Palestinians wounded in the ongoing genocide being carried out by Israel with U.S. support. As of Monday evening, Abushark said, CMR had not responded to the group’s letter, and a PR firm associated with the restaurant group did not reply to multiple requests for comment from Matter News.

Abusharkh said Baladna became aware of CMR’s involvement with the Friends of the IDF – Ohio Bourbon & Bubbles fundraiser via posts that began to circulate online in places such as Reddit, where one user posted a screenshot taken from the Friends of IDF – Ohio Instagram page that included a caption in which the group thanked CMR for being a “Chief of Staff sponsor” and hailed the company’s “generosity and partnership” in making the event possible. (Friends of IDF – Ohio did not immediately reply to an email requesting comment.)

“This was not some abstract support for Zionism or Israel, but this is going right to the heart of the matter, where they’re collecting money for members of the Israel Defense Force – the actual military perpetrating the war crimes we’ve been watching really our whole lives, but particularly these last few years,” Abusharkh said. “So, for us as a board, given that this was happening with a business right here in our backyard, we felt it was our responsibility to take action and make the public aware.”

Founded in 1981, Friends of the IDF raises funds to support the health and well-being of active and retired Israeli soldiers and their families, though Abusharkh draws a distinction between the nonprofit and similarly positioned U.S. charities such as Wounded Warrior Project, which supports American veterans and their families. “And regardless of how people feel about the wars the U.S. engages in, it makes sense to want to take care of American soldiers, and there’s a rationality in that,” he said. “But Friends of the IDF is an American group that is basically sending material support to military members from a different country, and they’re supporting the building of recreational centers in the occupied West Bank, for example.”

Since making the boycott call, Abusharkh said Baladna has been contacted directly by multiple CML workers, who overwhelmingly expressed their support for the campaign. “There’s even interest among the Cameron Mitchell workers in taking some kind of action,” Abusharkhh said. “And, honestly, that didn’t surprise me at all as someone who knows a lot of service industry workers here in Columbus. Restaurant workers tend to be working class people who don’t identify with this bizarre, parasitic relationship where we’re funneling money into this mercenary project in the Middle East.” 

Abusharkh acknowledged that Baladna board members struggled with their decision to call for a boycott, not wanting to financially harm the workers employed by CML or the independent businesses housed in the CML owned and operated Budd Dairy Food Hall, including Zaki Mediterranean Grill, a stall founded and run by a pair of Palestinian American brothers. (Multiple Budd Dairy businesses did not reply to a request for comment from Matter News.)

“Our intent isn’t to target these small businesses that are paying rent to Cameron Mitchell Restaurants,” Abusharkh said. “And I understand the question put to us, and I understand it’s something we’re still working through. But we also have to consider, why is … a restaurant conglomerate engaged in one of the most controversial, divisive political issues of our time at the expense of their own workers, at the expense of their own business? … How does that contribute to their mission statement?”

The boycott call landed almost simultaneously with a new report in which Colonel Nochi Mendel, the former IDF commander who ordered the April 2024 attack that killed seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid workers in Gaza, said he was “not sorry” for his decision to strike the aid convoy. In the interview with an Australian broadcaster, Mendel claimed without evidence there was an “intermingling between the WCK and Hamas operatives” the night of the attack and described WCK as “not really an organization you can say is innocent and completely clean” – statements that drew a strong rebuke from chef and WCK founder José Andrés.

Baladna made note of the killing of the WCK workers in its boycott call, and Abushark said “the timing feels kind of perverse” with the IDF being back in the news for striking the food relief nonprofit at the same time a Columbus restaurant group’s support for the IDF surfaced publicly. 

“But the reality of it is, given the scale of the atrocity in Gaza and the West Bank, at this point there is no un-perverse timing,” Abusharkh said. “There is no week where you think, ‘Oh, this is a good week to come out in support of the IDF.’ I mean, that doesn’t exist anymore – to the extent that it ever really did.”