In March 2022, the French Group Carrefour announced a franchise partnership with Electra Consumer Products (ECP) and ECP’s retail subsidiary Yenot Bitan, both active in the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise. Carrefour is a French retailer with more than 3,400 stores worldwide. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July 2024 ruled that Israel’s entire military occupation of and very presence in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, including its settlement enterprise in the occupied Palestinian territory, is illegal. Any support or recognition of it is prohibited.
ECP is a publicly listed Israeli company majority owned by Elco Ltd., a holding company. In 2021, ECP acquired a majority stake in retailer Yenot Bitan. Yenot Bitan has dozens of stores in apartheid Israel and eight stores in illegal West Bank settlements, including Ariel and Ma’ale Adumim. In 2022, Yenot Bitan stores already had access to Carrefour-branded products, and later, they obtained permission to manufacture some Carrefour products in Israel and market them under the Carrefour brand.
The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) has called on supporters of the rights of the Indigenous Palestinian people worldwide to boycott the Carrefour Group until it: (1) ends its franchise agreement with Israel’s Electra Consumer Products and its subsidiary Yenot Bitant and (2) stops all sales of products from illegal Israeli settlements in the thousands of supermarkets and convenience stores it operates around the world.
During Israel’s genocidal war against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza that started in October 2023, Carrefour Group’s subsidiary, Carrefour-Israel, has supported Israeli soldiers partaking in the unfolding genocide with gifts of personal packages.
Carrefour has attempted to distance itself from responsibility. However, the company is complicit in Israel’s crimes as long as its business is directly or indirectly aiding and abetting apartheid, genocide, and human rights violations. Continuing business as usual with a state despite the known risk of genocide following the ICJ’s findings in January 2024 and the unlawful occupation and apartheid as ruled by the ICJ in July 2024 make Carrefour Group complicit in those crimes.
Additionally, Carrefour Israel has suffered substantial financial losses since its inception, raising serious doubts about the viability of its operations and business model. Given Israel’s steadily declining economy, Carrefour’s investment in Israel is not just unethical and illegal; it is also financially reckless.
The company's financial troubles serve as a stark warning to those considering investments in Israeli apartheid.
Until Carrefour takes concrete steps to end its complicity with Israeli apartheid and illegal military occupation and respects the rights of the Palestinian people, the campaign against the company will continue to grow and gain strength.
People across the world are standing in solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. They will not rest until they end the complicity of states, corporations, and institutions in Israel’s crimes and gross human rights violations. Let’s escalate our #BoycottCarrefour campaign until it ends its shameful complicity with Israel’s regime of settler colonialism, apartheid, and now genocide!
WHY?
Israel can only maintain its regime of settler colonialism and apartheid over the Palestinian people through support from governments, companies and institutions that need to be held accountable for their role in entrenching a decades-old criminal regime of injustice and oppression. Therefore, ending all such complicity with Israel’s genocidal regime is more urgent than ever.
The France-based multinational retailer, Carrefour Group, has more than 3,400 stores worldwide. It is involved in war crimes committed by the Israeli regime of settler colonialism, apartheid and military occupation over the Palestinian people.
The partnership signed by the Carrefour Group with Electra Consumer products and its retail subsidiary Yenot Bitan is directly linked to the provision of services supporting the existence and maintenance of settlements and the companies’ illegal use of pillaged Palestinian natural resources for business purposes.
Israeli settlements are illegal land grabs that form an integral part of Israel’s illegal occupation infrastructure, pushing Indigenous Palestinian families off their land, robbing Palestinians of natural resources, and denying Palestinians their right to self-determination, as affirmed by the ICJ in July 2024.
Despite assuring its shareholders that it had not opened stores in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT), Who Profits and DBIO 2025 report documents the company operating a Carrefour branch in a shopping center located in a “demilitarized zone” outside the Green Line in the occupied West Bank in the city of Maccabim (Modi'in-Maccabim-Re'ut), and a Carrefour branch in the settlement neighborhood of Neve Ya’akov in occupied East Jerusalem.
Yenot Bitan has dozens of stores in apartheid Israel. According to Who Profits and DBIO 2025 report, the company operates Yenot Bitan stores in the settlements of Ariel, Alfei Menashe and Ma’ale Adumim in the occupied West Bank, and 'Mehadrin Market' branches in the settlements of Beit El and Modi’in Illit in the occupied West Bank.
In Carrefour Israel’s promotional map, the company openly supports apartheid Israel's claim of sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian and Syrian territories, in defiance of international law.
Israel’s settlements constitute a war crime under international law. They contribute to serious human rights abuses and are a direct cause for restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement, access to natural resources and ability to build homes and conduct business. Together with Israel’s illegal wall, military checkpoints and settlers-only roads, the settlements form part of Israel's occupation and apartheid infrastructure that systematically obstruct every aspect of Indigenous Palestinian life, including the cultivation of our lands.
UN Security Council Resolution 2334 (2016) reconfirmed the illegality of Israeli settlements, denouncing them as “flagrant violations” of international law.
Following the ICJ’s historic ruling in July 2024, finding Israel guilty of apartheid against Palestinians and maintaining an illegal occupation and annexation of Palestinian territory, ending the complicity of states, corporations and institutions with apartheid Israel is not just a moral obligation but also a definitive legal one.
Electra Consumer Products and its “sister-company” Electra Group are both owned by the Israeli-based international holding Elco Ltd. Electra Consumer Products and its several subsidiaries and brands, including Yenot Bitan (an Israeli supermarket chain), are directly involved in a number of projects fostering Israel's illegal settlements enterprise. Electra Group is listed in the UN database of businesses involved in Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise.
In April 2022, the company entered into an exclusive franchise agreement with French multinational corporation Carrefour Group to operate the Group’s stores and market Carrefour brands under the name Carrefour Israel. In February 2024, the franchise agreement period was extended for an additional 7 years. By June 2024, the company had operated 97 Carrefour branches in Israel.
During Israel’s genocidal assault against Palestinians in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip, and its use of starvation as a weapon of war, Carrefour-Israel has supported Israeli soldiers partaking in the unfolding genocide with gifts of personal packages. This has made Carrefour directly complicit in supporting Israel’s commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Gaza.
The Carrefour supermarket in Jerusalem’s Ramat Beit Hakerem announced in October 2023 a fundraiser for soldiers and hung a sign calling donations “for our brave soldiers” as they were actively involved in the unfolding genocide.
According to Who Profits and the DBIO 2025 report, Carrefour Israel provides food and beverage services to the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli military coordination body that administers the occupied West Bank and Gaza. In 2024 alone, the company supplied COGAT with food and beverages worth NIS 33,705 (over $10,000). This servicing of COGAT is part of a wider pattern, in which the company directly services Israeli state institutions, including the Defense Ministry.
The International Court of Justice’s finding in January 2024 that Israel is plausibly perpetrating genocide against Palestinians in Gaza triggered an irrefutable legal obligation for corpotations to end complicity in Israel’s genocidal actions and to prevent genocide as much as they can.
On May 9th 2023, the same day that the Israeli government decided to launch a new assault on Gaza, resulting in the death of 33 Palestinians including children, Carrefour group opened 50 branches to serve customers in apartheid Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Minister of Economy visited one of Carrefour’s future sites and thanked Carrefour for this move.
Nir Barkat, Israel's minister of the economy, has promoted Carrefour’s ability to create parallel import channels and lower the cost of basic products.
By working with this genocidal government, Carrefour is directly supporting Israel’s far-right, racist, fundamentalist government, helping it to save itself from the economic crisis while it escalates its genocide, ethnic cleansing, home demolitions, destruction of infrastructure, denial of basic rights, and mass arrests against Indigenous Palestinians.
ISRAELI HIGH-TECH INVOLVED IN HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
Carrefour Israel has been listed by Who Profits, AFSC Investigate, and the DBIO report, and was included in the 2025 UN Special Rapporteur report. It is among the retail supermarket chains that operate directly inside Israeli colonies, sustaining their settlement economy, enabling expansion, and participating in apartheid through discriminatory service delivery.
According to the Don’t Buy Into Occupation 2023 report, Carrefour Israel established a partnership with six Israeli high-tech start-ups in May 2023 on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, among others.
Among these Israeli tech companies is the lighting infrastructure and security company Juganu, which is active in the illegal settlements of Har Homa and Beitar Illit.
Moreover, one of these startups is AI21 Labs, whose investors in Pitango are described as “veterans of the elite technology unit of Israel’s IDF.” AI21 Lab’s CEO was nominated to head the Israeli government’s Subcommittee on Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Technologies (a non-paid job) in June of 2023.
In August 2022, Electra Retail Ltd., a subsidiary of Electra Consumer Products, partnered with the Israeli bank Hapoalim in a collaboration to form a customer club based on non-bank credit cards, with the cooperation of Israel Credit Cards Ltd. (CAL). The new service will benefit customers of the Electra Consumer Products group's distribution chains, and the core of the customer club will include Carrefour.
Bank Hapoalim is listed in the UN database among other Israeli banks that are complicit in Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise. According to Who Profits, Bank Hapoalim has been extensively involved in financing construction projects in illegal Israeli settlements and settlement infrastructure.
This collaboration deepens the French group’s complicity in enabling apartheid and profiting from Israeli settlements on stolen Palestinian and Syrian land–a war crime under international law.
Carrefour Israel has reported a significant operating loss in the first quarter of 2023, resulting in securing NIS 148 million in loans from four major Israeli banks to support its branch conversion plan.
TAKE ACTION, Write/email Carrefour Group and make it visible
Join the #BoycottCarrefour campaign and stop buying products in Carrefour supermarkets and convenience stores around the globe. Make your boycott visible or audible! Share it—along with this call—on social media to educate others.
Since the #BoycottCarrefour call was launched, the BDS movement has called on supporters to write to their local Carrefour branches. Write to/email your local Carrefour supermarket or convenience store expressing your concerns and pressuring the store management to write to their parent company. (You can download this template)
GET INSPIRED BY PARTNERS & LOCAL ACTIONS
Across different regions, from Jordan to the Spanish state, and from Morocco to Greece, Republica Dominica, Senegal, Brazil, and beyond, our partners have employed classic and innovative tactics to amplify the impact of the #BoycottCarrefour Campaign. Here’s how you can take inspiration and apply these strategies locally:
From Sau Paulo to Rabat to Brussels, many partners have organized protests in front of or inside Carrefour stores to raise awareness about the campaign’s cause. These direct actions have significantly increased pressure on the French group and its partners while also drawing more attention from customers and building awareness.
In several neighborhoods in Jordan, local popular committees have been formed to bring the #BoycottCarrefour campaign directly to the people. An example of local community mobilization is the Jordanian partners organizing friendly competitions between regions to see which area can be the most active in boycotting Carrefour. They also launched a design competition for the best boycott poster, encouraging creativity and engagement.
Across the Arab world, individuals and communities are committing to boycott Carrefour, from a customer pledge to sending letters of protest to Carrefour’s partners urging them to act or sever ties. Pledges are also part of friendly competitions, strengthening collective efforts and regional unity.
Do you know a major business customer, a supplier, or an investor in Carrefour? Reach out to them and ask them to join the thousands of customers and importers who have communicated to Carrefour that they will no longer have ties with it. Explain our campaign's objectives and demands, and let us together broaden our impact!
