Andy Shallal, the founder and CEO of the restaurant and bookstore chain Busboys and Poets, has spent two decades building the Washington-area chain into a hub for progressive politics and anti-Israel advocacy. 

Now, that activism is literally on the menu.

The chain’s newest drink is a $14 cocktail called “Free Palestine,” which is made of Tito’s vodka and watermelon, and was offered for free earlier this month to the first 100 customers who filmed and posted a promotional video of themselves saying the slogan. 

The drink launch follows a series of events that the restaurant has hosted featuring speakers hostile to Israel, even as Shallal says he has spent decades promoting dialogue between Arabs and Jews. The restaurant’s 2024 Palestine Week event series featured Linda Sarsour, a controversial Palestinian activist with a history of antisemitic and anti-Israel stances. 

Busboys and Poets operates eight locations throughout the Washington metropolitan area. Its 14th Street location has a mural painted on the wall showing a group of left-wing leaders and activists sitting at a table together; one of the legs of the table has the words “Long Live the Intifada” painted on top of it, and another says “From the River to the Sea, free Palestine.”

Jewish patrons say the new drink signals the latest shift that makes them feel unwelcome in the restaurant. The slogan “Free Palestine” carries particular weight in the Washington area, where federal prosecutors allege the man accused of killing Israeli Embassy staffers Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim outside the Capital Jewish Museum in May 2025 shouted the phrase after the shooting. 

“That is not simply putting a political message on a menu,” Jacob Silver, a local political commentator writing for a Montgomery County Republican club blog, wrote. “It is a script. It is a social-media campaign. And in Washington, of all places, Busboys and Poets should understand why some Jewish customers are going to find it deeply offensive.”

Shallal, the Iraqi American owner, defended the “Free Palestine” cocktail in a Facebook post, publishing a letter from a longtime customer who asked him to remove the drink and said she would stop dining there. 

The customer wrote that she associates the slogan with violence and efforts to destroy Israel, said she sees rising harassment of Jews as tied to the “Free Palestine” movement and called the “discrimination against a minority” inconsistent with the inclusive values she believed the restaurant intends to represent. 

In his reply, Shallal said the name was meant as a gesture of solidarity with Palestinians, comparing it to the Black Lives Matter movement and arguing that highlighting one group’s suffering does not diminish another’s. He said he did not intend to alienate neighbors and pointed to his history of Arab-Jewish dialogue work, including co-founding the Peace Cafe with a Jewish colleague.

Shallal also described being treated in a demeaning way at checkpoints and at the airport during two trips to Israel and the West Bank, saying he was pulled aside and had his camera confiscated. 

He did not specifically address the customer’s request to remove the drink from the menu.