McDonald’s has a Middle East problem. Revenues are down at stores across the region due to the ongoing boycott of the brand. The reason? The owner of the Israeli franchises responded to Israel’s genocidal attacks on Palestine by offering free food to members of the IDF.
At the time the offer was made, an estimated 3,000 Palestinians had been slaughtered by the IDF. This was in response to the October 7th attack on Israel, which itself resulted from Israel’s ongoing imprisonment, torture, murder, displacement, and forced impoverishment of Palestians.
The offer of free food to soldiers involved in committing atrocities caused outrage around the world, sparking boycotts of the company, and nowhere more than in Muslim majority countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
McDonald’s has now decided to buy all 225 Israeli franchises from their current owner, Alonyal, and bring them in house in an effort to clean up the company’s brand image.
Despite that, McDonald’s doesn’t expect its sales to improve until Israel’s attacks on Palestine die down. “So long as this conflict, this war, is going on … we’re not expecting to see any significant improvement in this,” McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said in a conference call.
Unsurprisingly, McDonald’s response isn’t to divest from Israel, but to ride out the current conflict until people forget about boycotts. This is in stark contrast to its treatment of the Russia Ukraine war, where McDonald’s sold all of its Russian restaurants within months of the invasion.
The difference between the two is that Russia is an enemy of Western states, whose media can be relied upon to villainize Russia and all those who aid it. Meanwhile, Israel is the darling of Western liberals and imperial interests.
McDonald’s has said that it “remains committed to the Israeli market and to ensuring a positive employee and customer experience in the market going forward”, and has promised to keep on all existing staff as it takes over the Israeli stores. And why wouldn’t they? The boycott isn’t happening in Israel.
