Shouk Co-owner Wourh Friedman speaks out after protests and graffiti forced his DC restaurant chain to close, covering backlash, vandalism, and a mission to bring people together through food.
Shouk, a fast food chain based in Washington, DC, permanently closed its stores this month due to protests and protests from anti-Israel activists.
When featured by the Food Network and the Washington Post for its “shouk burger,” the chain had five stores in the region. The closure comes after two years of protests and a military crackdown in Gaza have crippled business.
A local Palestinian activist group had led a boycott campaign calling the restaurant’s falafel and other menu items “shared cuisine”.
Owner Dennis Friedman, an American Jew who opened the first shouk more than a decade ago with an Israeli co-owner, ran afoul of those charges. He said Shouk’s job was to bring people together.
The Jewish owners of Shouk, the Kosher Food Chain, said harassment and abuse of activists led to a loss of revenue in Washington, Maryland this month. (Laura Chase de formy for the washington post via Getty Images)
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“I disagree with that because Shouk’s intentions were pure, and that’s good,” Friedman told Fox News Digital. “When my business partner came to me, he didn’t ‘make food for Israel.’ He wanted to make plant-based food that reminded him of his childhood and home. That was the core of where we started building the Mediterranean.
He called the shouk “a gathering place for people of all races, colors, and creeds to come together to enjoy food,” that was good for customers and the planet.
He said their Georgetown neighborhood was the first to be targeted, citing its proximity to Georgetown University and what he described as the “Muslim majority” in the area.
A Middle Eastern-style restaurant in Washington, DC recently closed after Palestinian activists stormed the Israeli-owned business. (Justin T. Gellerson for The Washington Post Via Getty Images / Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images / Getty Images)
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While he said that the business is increasing before Oct. 7, the protests soon began to sink their costs.
Friedman said they reached out to local business groups and representatives and security to block outside their stores, calling the experience of harassment by protesters in the last two years “
“We’ve had everything from little kids coming into the store at lunchtime to cry ‘free Palestine’ while their parents get social media,” she said. He said the protests were part of a “highly coordinated” approach and were successful “through hard work by BDs that hurt the shouk.”
“There were posters of Palestinian children of Palestine on the windows or on our seats outside. You know, you know, you know, the destruction of being twisted into things that we don’t know.
The shouk was targeted by the “anti-wobartheid” boycott campaign led by local pro-Palestinian activist groups. (Dennis Friedman)
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Friedman was shown in a 12-year run, he called it an “amazing experience” he could not have imagined “in his wildest dreams.”
He said Shouk was “near and dear to his heart” and that he and Nusbacher tried their best to take care of their employees during the shutdown.
“Most of our employees have been with us since we opened,” she said. “Our profits were very low because we ran the company well, we ran it well, and we ran each other well. And so our employees become part of our family, and they don’t want to leave.”
The chain closed its stores just days before Israel and Hamas were targeted.
A Pro-Palestine activist holds up a sign reading ‘from the river to the sea Palestine will be freed’ during a protest at London 2023. (Mark Kerrison / photos via Getty Images / Getty Images)
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Palestinian DC celebrated the closure as a “BDS Win” in an Instagram post, writing:
“Shouk was one of the main goals of ‘our apartheid? I don’t buy “Boycott initiative of consumers! Much of what they served was Palestinian food that was culturally restricted as they imported Israeli ingredients into their dishes.
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The group urged supporters to continue to reform US and domestic businesses that sell Israeli products.
