The McDonald’s Global Empire Is Tearing Itself Apart Over Israel-Palestine

In the wake of the war between Israel and Hamas, McDonald’s franchises in Israel and across the Middle East have rushed to issue statements, donate money, and clarify their particular politics to patrons. McDonald’s was once held up as an example of the power of globalization and American soft power in particular—a sign that stability had come to a country. But globalization is a funny thing, and McDonald’s today is a many-tentacled entity that morphs to fit the politics of the moment and the regions that franchises operate in.

Over the weekend, a McDonald’s franchise in Israel posted an endorsement of the Israel Defense Forces on Instagram. The franchise said it would donate meals to “all those who are involved in the defense of the state, hospitals, and surrounding areas.” The branch posted pictures of workers preparing the meals.

The response from McDonald’s branches in the rest of the Middle East was swift. In Lebanon, local news outlet Al-Akhbar posted photographs on Twitter of the Lebanese military stationed on a street outside of McDonald’s, Starbucks, and KFC “in anticipation of any attacks that might affect these establishments.”

McDonald’s branches across the Middle East then issued their own statements, stressing that they were independent of the McDonald’s in Israel and had their own policies. Many said they were donating money to Palestinian causes. “McDonald’s Malaysia is aware of the recent discussions on social media regarding McDonald’s Israel,” the statement from Malaysia said. “It is crucial to clarify that the actions being referred to are those of an independent market and do not reflect the values or practices of McDonald’s Malaysia.”

McDonald’s Malaysia stressed that the actions of individual franchise partners aren’t company policy and that McDonald’s Malaysia is a “100% Muslim-owned entity. It also stressed that it donated to charity and, in a separate statement, said it would pay for humanitarian aid in Gaza. McDonald’s franchises in Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kuwait,  and Bahrain all issued similar statements. 

In 1999, Thomas Friedman proposed a simple geopolitical maxim in The Lexus and the Olive Tree. He called it the Golden Arches Theory and it went like this: “No two countries that both have a McDonald's have ever fought a war against each other.” This was, even at the time, naive. The United States had invaded Panama 10 years earlier. Both countries had McDonald’s. The same year Friedman published his book, India and Pakistan (which both have McDonald’s) fought the Kargil War.

“Well, we're a long way from the ‘Golden Arches’ Theory that Tom Friedman made famous. Global brands are in a bind. On the one hand, their customers have diverse views; on the other hand, the whole point of a brand is consistent messaging. That's why brands usually shy away from conflict,” Paul Musgrave, an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told Motherboard.

After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, many western businesses stopped doing business with Russia. That included McDonald’s, the sudden appearance of which in Moscow in the late 1990s was seen as a sign that America had won the Cold War. The McDonald’s corporate franchise may have left Russia, but the restaurant simply rebranded.

“The risks here could be extreme,” Musgrave said. “During the 1960s, for instance, even powerful brands like Coca-Cola were expelled from countries because of the Arab boycott of Israel and firms conducting business with Israel. That lasted for decades. And sometimes even what looks like smart business moves, like Pepsi's entry into the Soviet market in the 1970s, can turn out poorly—the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and crackdown in Poland hurt Pepsi's business in the U.S. So one reason that you see firms adopting such divergent local practices could be that managers just don't know how to respond to the enormously strong feelings this conflict has produced.”

In 2020, something similar happened when Armenia and Azerbaijan went to war over Nagorno-Karabakh. As Musgrave pointed out, local branches of McDonald's issued statements on social media which picked sides.

As the world’s political order becomes ever more fractured and conflicts arise, the world of corporate marketing is certain to get even stranger. 

“I suspect that we'll see these turn to more humanitarian impulses throughout the Arab world—sending money to help those in need is less objectionable in every market,” Musgrave told Motherboard. “But I also do think that brands will have a difficult time ahead as the synthesis of capitalism and American power starts to break down and we see more multipolar economic relationships in which brand value can be a target.”