Activism and BDS Beat 5 November 2024
A woman carries a sign reading, “Boycott Carrefour, sponsor of the war in Gaza,” at a demonstration against the Israeli genocide, in Toulouse, France, 13 January.
ABACACarrefour has announced that it has ended all its business in Jordan.
Activists are hailing this a victory for a popular boycott of the French multinational retailer that is deeply complicit in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.
“Starting from 4 November, Carrefour will cease all its operations in Jordan and will not continue to operate within the kingdom,” the company announced on Facebook.
“We thank our customers for their support and apologize for any inconvenience this decision may have caused,” Carrefour added.
But the post has received thousands of “likes” and comments, mostly appearing to welcome the move, reflecting the prevailing negative sentiment in Jordan towards any entity seen as aiding or profiting from Israel’s crimes.
Carrefour has recently expanded into Israel in partnership with a local franchisee that is heavily involved in Israel’s settlements in the West Bank.
Israel’s construction of colonies on occupied Palestinian land is a war crime.
“Victory over Carrefour”
“Our heroic Jordanian people achieved victory over Carrefour,” after a two-year campaign that intensified when Israel began its genocide in Gaza a year ago, said BDS Jordan, the activist group that led the boycott of the store, declared.
Palestine’s Boycott Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) hailed the victory as coming “after a large-scale and creative boycott campaign that contributed to huge financial losses and reputational damage” to Majid Al Futtaim Group, “the partner of the French Group Carrefour in most of the Arab region.”
Carrefour in France did not respond to a request for comment from The Electronic Intifada.
There has been a sharp backlash across the region against brands from Western countries that are supporting Israel’s genocide in Palestine.
Both McDonalds and Starbucks are among the major brands that saw sharp declines in their international business as a result of consumer boycotts.
McDonald’s announced the biggest decline in global sales in four years this summer, more than double what forecasters anticipated.
Will Carrefour be pushed out of the region?
While Carrefour is ending its business in Jordan, many of the stores it ran are not closing – including its former flagship store at Amman’s City Mall, and dozens of smaller neighborhood branches.
Rather, the stores will remain open under the name Hypermax, a “brand-new Arab grocery chain,” owned and operated by United Arab Emirates-based Majid Al Futtaim Group.
During a recent visit to Amman, this writer noticed that Carrefour stores in Amman were liquidating their Carrefour-branded products, an early sign of the change that would come.
And an employee who had worked at Carrefour’s City Mall store for 12 years confided that the location had seen a sharp drop in business during the previous year.
By October, Carrefour branding was already being removed from stores in Jordan and some smaller branches had apparently shut down.
Majid Al Futtaim still holds the Carrefour franchise in other countries, including: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan.
Significantly, it also operates Carrefour stores in Lebanon, where Israel has killed more than 3,000 people in an escalating bombardment and attempted invasion of the country.
According to the BNC, boycott activists “have also recorded the closure of Carrefour stores in other countries in the Arab region, which confirms the impact of the broad popular boycott campaign and the significant role it can play in imposing heavy costs on giant companies due to their complicity in Israeli crimes.”
The Electronic Intifada has written to Majid Al Futtaim Group seeking comment as to whether the company is planning to end its relationship with Carrefour in other countries where it holds the franchise.
Deepening complicity in Israeli crimes
While Carrefour has now been pushed out of Jordan, it has rapidly expanded its business in Israel, fueling the popular backlash around the world.
Activists in France escalated their protests after it was reported in October 2023 that Carrefour Israel was donating care packages to Israeli soldiers.
According to BDS France, which backs the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions, Carrefour’s story has shifted: At first, the parent company claimed the support for soldiers was an initiative of its franchisee, Carrefour Israel. But later, Carrefour CEO Alexandre Bompard asserted that “These are donation initiatives by individuals working in our stores.”
However, there is clearly a limit to whatever shame Carrefour feels at its involvement with Israel and its colonial regime.
Carrefour initially entered the Israeli market in 2022 by joining forces with Yenot Bitan, an Israeli supermarket chain that profits from Israel’s illegal settlement colonies in the occupied West Bank.
Yenot Bitan is owned by Electra Consumer Products, part of an Israeli conglomerate deeply involved in the military occupation and colonization of Palestinian land, including providing services and infrastructure to the Israeli army.
In response to the backlash, Carrefour attempted to distance itself from the venture in Israel, misleadingly telling The Electronic Intifada in January 2023 that it “does not operate directly in Israel and has no capital interest in Yenot Bitan.”
Carrefour declined to offer any assurance that it would not operate in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Just months later, on 9 May 2023, Carrefour announced that it was “proud to be opening 50 stores in Israel today.”
At the time, Carrefour proclaimed that it planned to open “a hundred or so additional stores between now and the end of 2024.”
And according to BDS France, Carrefour is indeed surreptitiously selling its goods in stores in Israeli settlements owned by its franchisee, even though these stores are themselves not branded as Carrefour outlets.
But Carrefour’s massive expansion into a genocidal apartheid state appears to have been ill-timed, with the venture incurring “heavy losses” in 2023, according to Israeli business publication Globes.
Palestinian cover for occupation profiteering?
Amid the growing opposition to its profiteering from Israel and its illegal colonies, Carrefour has apparently been trying to whitewash itself using willing Palestinian partners.
In August 2023, Carrefour reportedly agreed with a Palestinian franchisee, Maslamani Group, to open stores in Palestinian cities in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli media emphasized the political motivation: i24 News noted that “opening branches for Palestinian customers would aim, among other things, to ease tensions with Arab countries such as Jordan, Egypt or Lebanon where the French distributor is present, but received a negative reaction to Carrefour’s launch in Israel.”
It may also have been intended as cover for Carrefour to open stores in Israel’s colonial settlements on stolen and militarily occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank.
The BNC immediately called on Maslamani Group to cancel any agreement with Carrefour “due to the French company’s complicity in the gross Israeli violations of the rights of our Palestinian people under international law.”
The BNC warned that if the Maslamani Group went ahead with a deal with Carrefour, “we will be forced to launch broad popular and national boycott campaigns against the group at the local and Arab levels, as we have done before against other Palestinian companies that insisted on contracting with Israeli or international companies involved in Israel’s serious violations of international law.”
It is unclear if and when the Carrefour stores will open in Palestinian cities. In September 2023, Maslamani Group was advertising that it was hiring a purchasing manager “to join our team at Carrefour Supermarket.”
As of this writing, Carrefour is not among the brands that Maslamani Group represents, according to its website. A request for comment has been sent to Maslamani Group.
Carrefour’s withdrawal from Jordan is only encouraging activists to step up the pressure.
The BNC says it continues to “call for a boycott of all stores that carry the Carrefour brand or sell its products, until Majid Al Futtaim Group announces the complete termination of its partnership with the French group across the Arab World.”
“We also call on the Emirati group Al Futtaim to pressure its French partner to end its complicity in Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights,” the Palestinian organization adds.
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