Boycott (1)

In Egypt

We were sitting around in my parents’ reception area drinking tea after a late lunch. This was still a few weeks before Ramadan but had a similar cozy Ramadan vibe. Salma - a dear friend and a role model in so many ways (I may need an entire post just about Salma) – was trying to convince her 6-year-old to eat chicken as he ran around the house refusing to eat. He went over to her and whispered something in her ear after which she took out her phone, put on Leve Palestina and apologized saying that she’s only indulging him because it’s a Palestine song. They have only been listening to music about Palestine since October, she tells me. I was curious how she has been broaching Palestine with Nadim. Because she’s been suffering from a series of serious health issues following major surgery in November, she tells me her mom was the main driver on this.

Salma’s mom has always been an inspiration to me. Tiny but mighty, she would drag Salma as a kid with her to demonstrations. In 2011, the two of them were shoulder-to-shoulder in demonstrations that turned ugly, and it was often Salma who was urging her mom to stay back, not the other way around. She had a blunt no-nonsense attitude that I greatly admired. The fact that she partook in molding Salma into who she is today made her, too, a role model. And I aspired to be as positive an influence on my own kids. So I was asking Salma for pointers.

As part of that conversation, she told me how in a recent family gathering, he (politely) told off an elder uncle for drinking Coca-Cola and not boycotting. Chapeau to 6-year-old Nadim!

Although the Egyptian government has done close to naught to help stop Israel’s assault on Gaza, Egyptians not knowing what else to do leaned on a tried-and-true civil resistance tactic: boycotting. Boycotting Israel has been the go-to approach since forever, but its effect waned with the 1979 Camp David Accords which effectively neutralized the Egyptian government’s ability to challenge Israel via any means, including boycotting. For example, the government-sponsored Coca-Cola boycott which expelled the company in 1967 came to a screeching halt in 1979. In 2005 though, new life was breathed into it after the official initiation of the Palestinian civil society call for Boycotting, Divesting and Sanctioning Israel – or BDS. Disillusioned by Arab governments ability to stay the course, particularly after the 1993 Oslo Accords, BDS offered an alternative that empowered individuals to take a stand.

There are other boycotting campaigns that seek to shun off anything Israeli. BDS, however, follows a targeted boycotting strategy, one that focuses on a small number of companies and products hoping to amplify the impact of the boycott. The idea is if you make it financially unsustainable - or at least unappealing - for a grocery store, for example, to buy a targeted Israeli product, then the store will stop purchasing it which will put a dent in the said company’s profits. Done enough times this will strain the Israeli economy. The goal is to have enough strain to force the Israeli government to comply with International Law and the Universal principles of Human Rights - both of which recognize the illegality of the Israeli West Bank occupation and Gaza blockade.

This is ABC civil resistance and is explicitly taken out of South Africa’s Anti-Apartheid Movement handbook.

As with anything, Egyptians’ commitment to BDS ebbed and flowed with the cycle of violence against Palestinians. The Egypt BDS movement cresendoed with the Orange case in 2016. A French telecom multinational formerly known as Mobinil in Egypt, Orange had a franchise relationship with Israeli company Partner Communications. Orange supported the Israeli military in various ways, most strikingly by partaking in the Adopt A Soldier project. In 2014, Israel launched a 50-day assault on Gaza (Operation Protective Edge) – the most devastating assault before 2023 – and Orange was seen as complicit. Egyptian civil society together with other campaigns in France, Tunisia, and Morocco began organizing to boycott Orange in 2010. But it wasn’t until the aftermath of Israel’s 2014 assault that things came to a head and the Egypt BDS branch called for a massive Mobinil boycott. December 2014 stats put Mobinil at 33.7 million  subscribers – a sizeable market the loss of which would destabilize the company’s profits.  In 2016, Orange terminated its franchise with the Israeli company.  Though that was denied by Orange, BDS claims this termination as a boycott win.

Things slowly fizzled afterwards, but Israel’s 2023 assault on Gaza triggered an instinctive grassroots’ boycott response. This time it was at a whole new level. Places like McDonald’s and Starbucks – both massively popular in Egypt and historically familiar boycott targets - were ghosted. By November, sales in McDonald’s had dropped by some 70% while Starbucks lost over $11 billion globally. Other popular boycott targets included Coca-Cola and Pepsi, both of which were supplanted by local Egyptian soda brands like Spiro Spathis claiming a 500% increase in sales since October 7^th. These are brands that my parents used to drink when they were kids.  

These now-boycotted sodas had featured prominently in my parent’s household. Now though local alternatives dominated. Same thing happened with bottled water. Instead of Dasani and Nestle water, now Elano, whose logo now included the Egyptian and Palestinian flag, was the water of choice. Same goes for Persil, now substituted with Madar. You walk anywhere and ask for the boycott option and vendors know exactly what you mean and where to point you.

And it went beyond the familiar boycott targets to include essentially everything Western. Boycott apps like No Thanks, Sa7wa, and Belzamesh start popping up. You would put the name of product in the app’s search engine and it would tell you whether it’s a boycott target or not. Their methodology was more expansive than BDS’ though, but that didn’t seem to deter people from following it.  Almost everyone I knew was boycotting - to varying degrees. Salma stuck to the BDS list while Mahi, who I don’t think of as particularly political, essentially boycotted anything Western and was extremely savvy with good Egyptian alternatives ranging from biscuits to deodorants and kids’ leave-in conditioner.

To my pleasant surprise, the kids were amenable to idea of moqat’a (مقاطعة) or boycotting - even before they watched the Libyan boycott video that went viral. And this was no easy task given that I was following the more expansive boycott regime that encompassed most large western companies and thus applied to most of their favorite treats like skittles, m&ms, chipsy. Pizza Hut, our go-to for birthdays in the US and (sometimes) Egypt, is on that list. Amina’s birthday was in early March and she readily accepted that we were no longer getting Pizza Hut for birthdays. The Baladini local alternative we went with was a hit. I was again pleasantly surprised when I overheard Amina sharing with her aunt Erin how we weren’t getting Pizza Hut anymore because it was a boycott target. I did not prompt her to say anything but when she was immersed in it, it spontaneously surfaced in her casual interactions. Which is exactly how I want to raise my kids. As much as I want to (and do) shelter them from the gruesome reaIity of violence, I also don’t want them to passively live in a bubble. And it’s easy to live in a bubble in smalltown Wisconsin.

We just returned to Wisconsin and I am both wary and optimistic of how our boycott regime with all that it stands for is going to fare on this side of the pond. Wary because there isn’t the organic social support that is pervasive in Egypt (and that is by design – stay tuned to a follow up Boycott piece on this). Optimistic because Viroqua has many small local brands that are less likely to be involved in Israel.  I guess we will find out.