Boycott as a "Stance of Existence"

" A Mocking Smile at the face of Titans"

Ever since my eyes fell upon that image; a young Palestinian kid standing defiantly in front of an Israeli tank, hurling stones, I have been haunted by profound thoughts of freedom and independence. 

Just pause and think about it: a fragile stone against a massive iron tank, a child against a trained soldier. It gives me goosebumps.

This image stirs up every ounce of respect and admiration within me. It has become my sanctuary, the vision I turn to in my mind whenever I feel broken or defeated. To feel defeated is a choice, and the desire to resist is equally a choice, even if you are only hurling stones at a tank. But that second choice? That is the choice of a true victor. It is the choice of someone who has reached a deep, unshakeable sense of independence and forced the entire world to acknowledge it.

Fast forward to today, and you can see how this generation, which once threw stones at their enemy, has grown up to shake the very foundations of the Israeli occupation in Palestine. They are making the highest Israeli officials tremble and stutter as they speak at press conferences. That is the miraculous, undeniable power of choice.

I have always wished, from the depths of my soul, that I could tap into that kind of power and impose my will on the world just as they did. How could I possibly lend a hand in their awe-inspiring resistance against the occupation and the desecration of our Islamic holy sites? The answer has always stared me in the face, as crystal clear as day: Boycott.

An absolute economic boycott of anything and everything that supports this distasteful Zionist presence on our Arab lands. But here is the painful kicker: so many people still question what a boycott can actually achieve. They downplay its true importance and wave it away as if it were entirely inconsequential.

That is exactly why I decided it is time to sit down and give this topic the deep attention it deserves. Because truly, if a single child with a stone could create such massive waves, just imagine what an entire community could achieve with a focused, united plan of action.

What does boycotting mean? 

Let us take a step back and look at what exactly we are saying we want to boycott. We want to boycott the foreign companies that offer their products and services on Egyptian and Arab lands, simply because they support and endorse positions that actively harm Arab interests. And now, directly and without a shred of shame, these companies are openly declaring their financial support for the Zionist entity as it slaughters our people in Gaza and Palestine.

These are the entities we used to call "transnational corporations" back in the 90s. However, that term has slowly faded from use, simply because these companies have become ubiquitous, surrounding us in every corner of our daily lives.

What's the tale behind these corporations? 

But the story of these transnational corporations didn't truly begin in the 90s, or even the 50s. They started much earlier, around the late Middle Ages and the dawn of the European Renaissance. Their primary, underlying role was always to sell the "modern European lifestyle" in exchange for the vast wealth of other nations. And as we all know, economics carries a massive political shadow; a political leader can barely function without a businessman standing by to serve his interests. So, let us delve deep into this story from its very beginning...

Titan Corporations 

One of the earliest transcontinental titans was the Hudson's Bay Company, established in the year 1670. Yes, you read that right—over 350 years ago. Its business was the fur trade, operating between the newly discovered North America and the indigenous people, the Native Americans.

The Hudson's Bay Company would buy fur from the Native Americans and sell them European goods in return: clothing, fabrics, blankets, glassware, knives, saws, axes, dishes, pots, and even alcohol. Do you know what else they sold them? Weapons. (Does that sound familiar?) All of these were products the Native Americans could not produce on their own, so they traded their precious fur for them.

Now, where would they get enough fur to keep exchanging for weapons and other goods to better their lives? Exactly. They hunted more and more animals. But the tragedy was that these animals were essentially their primary source of food. As they hunted them at a rate far faster than the animals could reproduce, the herds began to vanish, devastating their main food supply.

With starvation setting in, brutal diseases began to sweep through their tribes. Their entire environment, along with their social, cultural, and economic patterns, was violently changed. They became hopelessly dependent on European products, which morphed into a fundamental part of their traditional and natural lifestyle. This inevitably led to skyrocketing tensions and bitter conflicts between the Native Americans and the Europeans, revealing the dark, real truth behind the weapons they traded for fur.

Just imagine! A simple exchange of fur for some alcohol, pots, and weapons brought absolute disasters down upon the Native Americans!

And here is one final, heartbreaking tidbit. About 368 treaties were signed between the Native Americans and the colonizers, whether European or American, and every single one of them was broken. As a direct result, this entire nation nearly vanished from the pages of history.

Colonial Knowledge Formation: 

In 1672, another monstrous corporation emerged from the shadows: the Royal African Company. Their agenda was chillingly clear-cut: the slave trade. They would snatch slaves from Jamaica and ship them across the ocean to North America. Tragically, even the high-and-mighty elites in Jamaica and other African nations were fully complicit with the slave trade.

The slave trade was sickeningly profitable for the African nations. Initially, the colonizing countries—primarily Britain—supported this by establishing infrastructure like ports, roads, and bridges, supposedly to ease transportation. And so, the illusion was that the country was being "developed." The blood money paid for slaves also helped provide resources, expand agricultural production, and extend trade networks between Europe and African countries. Thus, the economy "flourished."

So, you see, the topic is very old: commit any disaster, wrap it in the lie of economic development and national progress, and the people will blindly follow you.

The cold reality is that the slave trade only led to the massive accumulation of wealth for rulers and leaders, built entirely at the expense of the poor and marginalized. This is a known fact.

Later, in 1711, another terrifyingly important entity was established: The South Sea Company. Its clear, explicit goal was to finance the national debts of Britain using the slave trade. Slaves and goods were endlessly shuttled between Europe, America, and Africa. Though this specific company collapsed after about ten years, the horrific trade itself continued through other giant corporations that took the reins, like the Dutch West India Company and the East India Company.

Economy, Epistemology, and Politics in Shaping the World: 

About a year ago, Cambridge University stood up and officially declared the immense benefits it had reaped from the slave trade, acknowledging the financial support it received from companies like the East India and Royal African. It confessed that it had been established and kept alive through the direct support of these very corporations.

Currently, the university has launched a two-year research initiative, digging deep into its own archives to discover if the slave trade was what actually bought its scientific strength and global status.

But the truly funny and strange thing is that this initiative is asking a much darker question: did the university actively contribute to shaping racist political opinions and supporting the racist beliefs that allowed the slave trade to flourish? Professor Martin Millett, the head of the research team for the initiative, explicitly stated that one of their main goals is to understand exactly how the scholars at the university helped mold public political opinion during that dark era.

Aside from the human rights hurly-burly 

Now, setting human rights aside for a moment, let’s look at the cold math of how the slave trade systematically affected African countries and destroyed them. First, it decimated the population in those African nations and completely warped the demographic structure itself. The slaves being kidnapped and sold were people in their absolute prime—youths and adults up to their forties or fifties. This left behind only helpless children and the elderly, creating a crippling deficit in the labor force.

Therefore, the number of people physically capable of farming and manufacturing drastically plummeted, which consequently destroyed local industry and agriculture. Meanwhile, the leaders, rulers, and the upper classes with financial resources became highly dependent on imports just to acquire basic goods to live. They became entirely reliant on Europe to supply their most fundamental needs.

The social destruction caused by the slave trade and its impact on African countries was even more colossal. It led to the complete shattering of families who lost their loved ones, which caused the entire social structure to disintegrate. This desperation led to skyrocketing skirmishes and bloody conflicts between tribes as they frantically searched for food and sustenance, especially as poverty spread like a plague. These tribal conflicts resulted in the capture of some individuals, who were then sold just to get the money needed to buy European goods to survive.

So, it was a continuous, unending outflow of real, tangible resources from the country, traded away for a handful of temporary consumer products.

Do you finally see the role of these Titans, these transcontinental corporations, in draining a country's resources for their own benefit? They leave the countries they operate in not only drowning in severe poverty, but they also permanently alter their consumption patterns, and their economic and social structures, ensuring they remain hopelessly dependent on them continually.

A New Generation of Corporate Colonialism 

After that era, a new breed of corporations began to emerge. Some were directly and openly extracting resources from vulnerable countries, while others were providing a modern, sophisticated consumer product that was impossibly hard for the importing countries to manufacture themselves.

The first kind were corporations like Standard Oil, founded in 1870 by John Davison Rockefeller (does that sound familiar?). Their main business was exploring for oil in the colonies. This specific company is considered the true forefather of the multinational corporations exactly as we know them in the 20th century. There were other giants too, like British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell, who started exploring and extracting oil from places like Nigeria, Indonesia, and Niger. The second breed kicked off with the Ford Motor Company in the early 20th century, specifically in 1903. They established factories worldwide with the absolute goal of selling the posh, modern American product in global markets.

Gradually, the narrative shifted away from brutal colonization and destruction—like what happened to the Native Americans and Africans—to the polite illusion of seemingly fair and normal trade. But the bitter truth is that it introduced a specific consumer pattern that you cannot replicate, alongside certain behaviors and a culture that makes you continually dependent on it, all in exchange for providing them with your economic resources. So, the core idea is exactly the same, and the business model hasn’t changed much at all; it just put on a disguise.

Local Economies and the Titans 

How does all of this actually affect you? The legend says that these big Titan corporations provide job opportunities for the youth. But the truth is completely different. Let us take a slow, steady look at the matter.

Firstly, offering products or services at such competitive prices completely destroys local industries and services. This happens because these corporations follow the principle of mass production. Simply put, this means their production costs are spread across a massive volume of goods. Thus, the cost to make a single product is incredibly low, making their final price much lower than the local product, whose production is spread across far fewer items, resulting in a higher cost per unit.

This puts local industries under constant, crushing pressure to compete with the cheaper imported product. Naturally, they often fail and disappear completely. At this point, the foreign company monopolizes the market and raises its prices exactly as it pleases.

Moreover, the immense financial power of these companies, coupled with their highly advanced advertising techniques, allows them to brainwash and direct the consumption patterns of the society however they wish.

Their long-term presence allows them to fully control the community's resources—whether that is labor, natural resources, or money. They end up not only controlling the local market, but also dictating the economic policies in the exact way that benefits their interests.

This automatically leads to the transfer of the community's wealth abroad, meaning all your resources and money bleed out of your community and into the countries that own these companies.

In short, these companies act like a giant pipette. Think of it as a massive straw, but operating on a terrifyingly large scale.

The Myth of Youth Jobs 

Now, let us properly address this legend of providing job opportunities for the youth... The harsh truth is that it destroyed the youth’s job opportunities, because it completely eliminated competition within the market. Instead of having three, or thirteen different companies competing within the community, you are left with just one giant company dominating the entire labor market. They hire whoever they want, they determine wage levels exactly as they wish, and they lay off employees whenever they please, knowing full well that the young people have no alternative and no competing company to run to.

And of course, we haven't even talked about the massive cultural impact, or how these companies dictate social behaviors, completely changing the values and priorities within the society.

The Revelation Moment: 

Now it is absolutely clear to us that the role of these companies is a covert, colonial role, aimed eventually at promoting European and American values and controlling global markets. And here comes a very important, shattering moment of revelation: when it endorses the Israeli occupation, even actively supporting it by providing meals and financial backing to the occupying army.

There is no middle ground taken here. There is none of that “all lives are sacred,” Mo Salah kind of nonsense. No... It is a loud, incredibly clear endorsement. And it shows us without a shadow of a doubt that it supports those who support its interests. And that it stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the enemy on one side, sharing one common interest.

These companies step into the light and blatantly tell you to your face that they support our enemy—the enemy who kills our people and desecrates our holiest sanctities. And yet, you still buy from them, letting them operate, continue, and prosper on your land. And you are perfectly okay with continuing to be a willing cog in the very machine that is destroying you from both ends: economically through these companies themselves, and militarily, politically, and religiously as they mock you, desecrate your religious sanctities, and destroy your people in Palestine.

It is exactly like you are killing yourself or committing suicide... spending your own hard-earned money to buy the very knife you will use to stab yourself.

Do you finally see the big picture now? Do you now understand exactly what these companies are doing and what their devastating impact is on me, on you, and on all of us? Did you see these horrific images? Do you like them?

Now come, take my hand, and let us imagine a fictional world—a world after everyone actually boycotted these products and services—and let us see exactly what this world would look like.

Let's Fantasize. Imaginary World: 

First off, all of these Titan corporations would be forced to shut down. Why? Because they bear massive operational costs without generating any revenue or income, which means they are constantly losing resources. If they try to stay open, they will be paying out of their own pockets for electricity, water, labor, and everything else within the country, all from their own reserves.

Now, what happens if they close? It’s all good. The people and the society are still right here, carrying the exact same needs. And since necessity is the mother of invention, other brilliant alternatives will quickly pop up. We have already seen this happening before our eyes, with local and national companies stepping up to the plate with alternative products.

With the people’s unwavering support in boycotting these big companies—which will act as positive externalities in economic terms—the national economy will slowly begin to flourish. More companies capable of meeting the community’s genuine needs will emerge. More companies offering similar products will arise, operating in the same shared market, offering prices at a fair, similar level.

Prices will gradually settle at a real equilibrium point, where both the producer and the consumer reach an optimal economic state and maximize their surpluses.

Job opportunities for the youth will massively increase, and products will diversify to meet the actual, authentic needs of the people. Production methods will evolve, and local industries will slowly build their strength; the community will finally produce its own innovations that reflect its true needs.

Consequently, the real, beautiful identity of the society will emerge, boasting its own products, and its own production and consumption patterns, naturally evolving and diversifying our culture.

Moreover, this environment will train national companies to continuously improve their production methods, reducing their costs and thereby their prices, which deeply increases the likelihood of exporting our national industries. With significantly reduced imports, the country’s trade balance will heal and improve, strengthening the national currency, and elevating the value of the pound against the dollar. The market will belong to and be controlled by multiple national industries, not by a single foreign corporation that represents the colonizer and dictates the market exactly as it pleases.

Do you now see the breathtaking impact of the boycott you once underestimated?

Boycott as a Lifestyle: 

Here, I must firmly say: our entire view of boycotting needs to change from simply being an economic punishment for a political action. Meaning, it shouldn’t only be a tool we pull out when we want to punish a company or country for an offensive political or religious act; it should become a permanent lifestyle. A lifestyle ensuring that we finally step out of this humiliating cycle where someone offends us, we boycott their products for a little while, and then we go right back to using them again. No... It must be a lifestyle that gradually transforms us into a rising power, a fierce competitor that these countries will gradually learn to fear, making them think twice before ever offending us again.

The Real Choice: 

Now, you have both pictures laid out clearly in front of you...

It is completely left up to you to believe that your simple, individual action can lead to all of these massive changes, and that it will be the very first step in a long, beautiful journey with a far better ending than our current situation.

If you are someone who loves to criticize your surroundings and you constantly complain that you don’t like the conditions in the country, here is the one powerful thing that can change everything in the country if you actually commit to it on an individual and simple level.

And always remember, a child standing with a simple stone in his hand had choices...

What is your choice?