The US giant food chain McDonald’s says its international sales will fall sequentially in the current quarter amid global boycotts over the corporation’s support for the Israeli regime’s months-long genocidal war against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Ian Borden, the chief financial officer of McDonald’s, announced at the UBS Global Consumer and Retail Conference in New York on Thursday that the first-quarter comparable sales in McDonald’s International Developmental Licensed Markets segment will be “slightly lower” than the prior three-month period.
The company widely missed Wall Street estimates for fourth-quarter sales in the segment in February, due to protests and boycott campaigns against several Western brands over their pro-Israel stance in the Gaza war.
McDonald’s and other international brands have been hit by the repercussions of a campaign of anger in the Arab and Western world over their support for Israel’s brutal war on the besieged territory since October last year.
The fast food chain’s Israel franchise offered free food to Israeli occupation forces fighting in Gaza, and provided discounts to service personnel.
McDonald’s franchisee in the occupied territories has also repeatedly donated free meals and drinks to the Israeli occupation army.
In response, the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) supported including the multinational fast food chain on the list of boycott over their “complicity in the genocide and apartheid that Israel is committing against the Palestinians.”
Israel waged its genocidal war on Gaza on October 7 after the Hamas-led Palestinian resistance groups carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
Since the start of the offensive, the Tel Aviv regime has killed 31,490 Palestinians and injured 73,439 others.
The Tel Aviv regime has also imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.
