McDonald's
McDonald's Corporation is a major corporate partner of the Jewish United Fund and Jewish Federation. According to the Jewish United Fund, through its Israel Commission it "works to maintain American military, economic and diplomatic support for Israel; monitors and, when necessary, responds to media coverage of Israel". The Jewish United Fund also runs "Fun-filled Summer Family Missions to Israel" where families get to "visit an army base and meet with Israeli soldiers" and "visit our sister city, Kiryat Gat and see the important work we are doing there". Kiryat Gat is built on stolen Palestinian land - the lands of the villages of Iraq Al Manshiya and Al-Faluja whose residents were ethnically cleansed in 1949 in contravention of International Law. Through its "Partnership to Israel" programme, the Jewish United Fund provides $1.3 million annually to help further settlement and development of Kiryat Gat. The Jewish Federation, through its Israel Action Network is tasked to fight "efforts to boycott Israeli products" and "campaigns, such as equating Israel with apartheid South Africa".
Another way McDonald's supports the Jewish United Fund is by running a partnership scheme whereby they will match any donation an employee make to the Jewish United Fund with its own equal size donation.
McDonald's first restaurant in the Middle East was in Israel, opened in 1993, since then it has 160 restaurants in Israel (1996) with a 60% market share, employing around 4000 Israelis. Since April 2009 McDonald's has also opened 15 branches of McCafe chain in Israel, with plans to open 10 new branches every year.
McDonalds discriminates against its Arab workers, in 2004 it sacked an Arab worker in Israel because she was caught speaking arabic to another Arab employee. Arabic, along with Hebrew, is the official language of Israel spoken by 20% of the population.
According to the American Jewish Committee (AJC), whose Executive Director "regularly meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu", McDonald's in July 2001 immediately pulled an advertising campaign in Egypt when the ADC contacted them to complaint that the singer featured in the advert had in the past performed a song critical of Israel. Within 24 hours of the complaint, the advert was cancelled and according to the Egyptian franchise of McDonald's "all copies of the tapes were whisked 'back to the main offices'"!
