Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) in Pakistan: Symbolic Resistance or Strategic Action?
Since the unilateral breaking of the temporary truce and the resumption of Israeli aggression in Gaza, calls for BDS have intensified once again all over the world, including in Pakistan. Things took a worse turn when branches of KFC (an American brand) were vandalized and attacked by individuals across the country. Pakistanis are once again strongly calling for a boycott of companies, specifically McDonald’s, KFC, and products associated with PepsiCo. While BDS is an international movement led by the Palestinian BDS National Committee, the boycott in Pakistan is often more emotional than strategic. Thus, it is crucial to understand what BDS is and how and why it is significant, both economically and politically.
Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) is a Palestinian-led movement initiated by over 165 Palestinian civil society organizations in 2005. It was inspired by the work of anti-apartheid political workers in South Africa, who were successful in dismantling the apartheid regime by using various tactics, including mass mobilization around the world for cultural and economic boycotts of the regime. It is a decentralized movement, allowing supporters a certain degree of independence in choosing which brands to boycott. However, since the current wave of genocide, organizers of BDS have urged the public to focus on certain brands to avoid exhaustion and be more effective.
It comprise 3 aspects:
Boycott, which demands that all companies, banks, and academic institutions affiliated directly with Israel (owned by Israelis) be boycotted to directly hurt the economy.
Divestment calls for pressuring international brands and academic institutions with investments in the West Bank and Israel to be boycotted, so that they may be compelled to withdraw their investments, leading to capital flight from the Israeli economy. The recent student movement in the USA and Europe is one of the largest organizing efforts in this regard.
The third aspect is Sanctions, where supporters of the movement are urged to pressure their governments and other business and economic institutions to impose sanctions (blocking trade, freezing assets, etc.).
With regard to Pakistan, a country that has not recognized Israel and has no formal relations with the state organizing for the BDS movement becomes tricky. Pakistan cannot impose any sanctions on Israel as there are no trade relations, and divestment is also virtually impossible since no Pakistani company has investments in Israel. In the presence of this void, and amid increasing desperation and hopelessness in the Muslim world over the inability to stop the massacre in Gaza, boycott becomes the only way to resist the violent colonial apartheid regime. Thus, calls for it become passionate, sometimes violent, and deeply emotional. But in this scenario, we often forget why we are boycotting in the first place: to hurt the Israeli economy specifically so that it cannot continue its genocide.
The economic consequences of the boycott in Pakistan are very limited. To understand this, we need to understand how brands like KFC and McDonald’s actually operate. Parent companies like McDonald’s do not operate in Pakistan directly; instead, they grant franchise licenses to individuals who run branches and pay royalties to the parent company. For example, if you buy a burger for Rs. 1,000, about Rs. 600 goes toward operational costs (acquiring buildings, paying salaries, and purchasing materials), Rs. 100–150 toward taxes, Rs. 150–200 toward profits for the franchise owners, and only Rs. 50–70 goes to the parent company. It’s also important to note that companies like McDonald’s and KFC (USA) or Nestlé (Switzerland) are not Israeli-owned. Rather, they have investments in Israel or own some Israeli companies. This makes our boycott even less impactful economically, as the money going from Pakistan to these companies is not only negligible but also does not directly hurt the Israeli economy—and in some cases may even be more harmful to our own.
But then why should we still boycott? The answer lies again in the manifesto of BDS and in understanding how capital operates. The boycott, although negligible in immediate economic impact, symbolizes resistance against the colonial apartheid regime of Israel. Israel is not just an ethno-state waging war on Palestinians—it is an imperial outpost in the Middle East. It not only protects the interests of imperial nations like the USA and Western corporations but also acts as a safe haven for Western capitalist investment. Investment in research and development in Israel leads to the creation of more sophisticated weapons and spyware, which are then used against the Global South and oppressed peoples worldwide. Companies like Caterpillar and HP directly provide tools and support to the IDF for the displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. This is why BDS becomes much more than just an economic boycott. It symbolizes resistance against colonialism, builds solidarity with other liberation movements, and names corporations—exposing how they not only prioritize profit over people but are also directly involved in sustaining oppressive structures.
It builds soft power by disrupting the normalization of genocide and the flow of imperial capital into Israel. Countries like the USA are actively criminalizing BDS because it disrupts the free flow of capital and empowers consumers to question their buying patterns—something that is antithetical to their economic model. So, when we as Pakistanis boycott these brands, we must not think only in economic terms but as part of a broader resistance against a system that sees us merely as consumers of their products and culture—easily influenced and discarded. And BDS has not been merely symbolic; it has had real-time effects on the Israeli economy, as seen in the case of Veolia, a French company that withdrew from the West Bank after losing $20 billion in contracts globally, or the closure of the Soda Stream factory.
Thus, here in Pakistan, we must understand why we are boycotting and how all of this ties into global structures of oppression, rather than just torching buildings—which only harms our cause and goes against the purpose and goal of BDS.
The views and opinions expressed in this article/paper are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Spine Times.
Qazi Muhammad Shahryar
The writer holds a bachelor's degree in Public Health from Punjab University and is currently pursuing an MPhil in Public Policy at FCCU.
