Is Boycotting Right?

The first time I heard the word "boycott" was... I honestly can't remember... Maybe because I never cared enough to boycott anything. I started boycotting Starbucks for as long as I remember because of the very widespread "rumor" that the Chairman and CEO, Howard Schultz, is an active Zionist. Now those of you who aren't Muslim will probably jump to the conclusion that I am racist and an anti-semitic. I have got nothing against Jewish people... However, I definitely have something against people who support the siege and war against Palestine. It just happens to be that the active participants in this war are mostly Jewish. 

Ever since the war on Gaza started, I began to think whether boycott was the right thing or not. I did a research for one of my courses and stumbled upon several websites that talk about boycott and companies that are contributing to Israeli economy. Most websites were created by Arabs/Muslims, and I jumped to the conclusion that it was all propaganda. Just when I was about to give up, I came across a Jewish website: schmoozenews.com. It had an article titled "Companies that Support Israel Desrverve our Patronage", which mentioned all the companies that everyone would agree should be boycotted http://schmoozenews.com/letters38.html . The list includes Starbucks, Nokia, 

Nestle', Sara Lee, IBM, Coca Cola, and other companies. The list of things to boycott only

got longer and longer... However I still couldn't find an answer to my question: 

Is boycotting right?

The research addict and curious person that I am, I did more research and came across different

websites that had interesting points. I shall mention one that discourages boycott, and another

that is for boycott.

- "The Placebo Effect of Economic Boycotts" http://www.chowk.com/articles/10515

The article states: "economic boycotts are very blunt weapons and are frankly useless in terms of satisfying the actual objectives, but as I said, they offer some palliative to the chattering classes. [...] So these boycotts are simply placebos and not medicine at all."

- "Boycotts of U.S. Brands Affecting Economy" 

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_sherwood_080121_boycotts_of_u_s__bra.htm

The articles states: "By December, 2004, Jim Lobe could write on AntiWar.Com, a survey by Seattle-based Global Market Insite found “brands closely identified with the U.S., such as Marlboro cigarettes, American Online, McDonald’s, American Airlines, and Exxon-Mobil, are particularly at risk.” " 

I just had to check the credibility of the second article, and I searched for Jim Lobe's quote. I did find the article by Jim Lobe on Antiwar.com titled "War Bad for Business" 

http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=4235 and it does state what the article mentioned. However, who is Jim Lobe? How do we know he's not making this up?? No worries, I researched that too.  http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Lobe

After having read all these articles, do I have an answer to my question? Absolutely! As selfish as this may sound, I think by switching to local products, that would definitelyhelp our economy and will help these local companies grow. We always complain that local products are not good enough. Think about it: how can they improve without enoughfinancing? By switching to local products, you are making a difference because then these companies will have the money to do more research and improve their products. How do youthink all the American companies grew? Again, nothing personal, but it's about time we proved ourselves and stopped depending on the West to give good quality products. For God's sake, most of their companies depend on child labor and it only cost them pennies compared to what they make. Nike for instance has been accused of using child labor. Another reason we should boycott major corporations that care about nothing but money. These include Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, Nike, and so on. Whatever "fundraisers" they pull outtheir sleeves, it is all part of giving themselves a positive humanitarian image.