No Thanks: The Palestinian Developer Who Turned Family Loss in Gaza into a Global Boycott App

When Ahmed Bashbash received the telephone call telling him that his brother Ibrahim had been killed in Gaza, he was at his software internship in Hungary. He remembers being told what had happened, but he still cannot remember how he got home.

For several days, he struggled to do anything. Ibrahim had been much more than an older brother: he was someone Ahmed turned to whenever life became difficult, a source of financial help, encouragement and reassurance as he built a future abroad.

Bashbash wanted to do something in his memory. His family already carried out charitable work to honour his sister Basma, who had died three years earlier after, he says, failing to obtain permission in time for medical treatment outside Gaza.

The idea that eventually became No Thanks arrived during an ordinary supermarket visit. Trying to avoid products associated with companies on boycott lists, Bashbash found himself repeatedly stopping to research what he was about to buy. Five products took him around half an hour.

He began wondering whether a phone could make the process easier: scan a barcode, identify the product and find out whether its brand appeared on a boycott database.

That question became a project which, Bashbash says, has now reached 14 million downloads. In an interview with Irish comedian and activist Tadhg Hickey on 9 November 2026, he described how the application grew from a personal act of remembrance into an international undertaking supported by volunteers.

He also explained why he refuses to sell it, despite repeated approaches, and how its latest major update is intended to make consumer boycotts easier to organise and sustain.

A life connecting Gaza and Hungary

Bashbash was born and raised in Gaza and moved to Hungary on a scholarship in 2018 to study computer science engineering. He was already living abroad when Basma died in 2020, and remained there when Ibrahim was killed in October 2023.

His memories of Gaza City include playing football in the streets until the daylight faded. He has described struggling to recognise those same places in photographs sent from Gaza after the destruction.

Even the name of his software business, BashSquare, carries a connection to his childhood. A favourite mathematics teacher had jokingly called him “BashSquared”, playing on the repetition in his surname. The nickname eventually became the name of his company.

Although he was building a professional life in Hungary, his family remained closely involved in making that possible.

During the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Bashbash was a student without a job. Ibrahim gave him access to his bank card for an entire month, telling him to use it as though he were receiving a normal salary.

“I wouldn’t be here actually right now without him,” Bashbash said.

He described Ibrahim as someone who treated him almost as a son. Whenever a problem arose in Hungary, he could call his brother and expect help.

That relationship explains something essential about No Thanks. The project grew from a desire to return the care he had received, through work that could continue to benefit others in Ibrahim’s name.

The model already existed within the family. After Basma’s death, they had undertaken charitable activities in her memory during Ramadan, at Eid and whenever circumstances allowed.

Bashbash says she had been ill and needed treatment at a hospital in Jerusalem, but could not secure the necessary permission in time. Her death left the family with a loss that they tried to answer through acts of practical assistance.

When Ibrahim was killed, Ahmed began thinking about what he could do for him, too.

The brother who became trapped in Gaza

Ibrahim had left Gaza as a young man and built a life in Turkey, where he acquired citizenship and married a Turkish woman.

According to Bashbash, he returned to Gaza to help one of their sisters and spend time with the family. The war began while he was there, leaving him unable to return to his wife.

Bashbash said Ibrahim registered with the Turkish embassy and tried to arrange his departure, but those efforts did not secure his evacuation.

On 31 October 2023, Ibrahim went to visit relatives. Bashbash said he was sitting on a balcony with children when Israeli bombing struck the area.

In his account, more than two dozen people were killed, including Ibrahim and other relatives.

Ahmed learned of the death through a telephone call from another brother while he was at the office of Evosoft, where he was undertaking a software development internship.

His recollection of the immediate aftermath is fragmented. He remembers being at work and then being at home, lying face down on his bed, without knowing what to do.

The possibility of charitable work eventually gave him something to focus on. He considered familiar forms of assistance, including providing free water, before the difficulty of navigating a supermarket boycott suggested another way to contribute.

He wanted to take part in the boycott himself, for his country, his people and his brother. Building a tool that other people could use offered a way to extend that effort far beyond his own purchases.

Learning to build the app while building it

Bashbash had software development experience, but mobile applications were outside his specialism. His work had focused on websites and desktop programs.

He began researching how to make the barcode idea function, taking online courses while implementing what he learned on another screen.

He said the first week went into developing the search logic that would identify a product and check whether it belonged on the boycott list. A second week went into the interface and the systems supporting it.

After roughly two weeks, he had a first version, although he is candid about its shortcomings.

“The first version was unusable,” he recalled.

One problem was the way company information had been built into the application. The data was effectively fixed inside it, meaning that changing an entry required a new release of the entire app.

Another difficulty involved matching brand names consistently. Small variations between countries, including whether a name such as Nestlé appeared with an accented letter, could interfere with the search.

These were practical problems with serious consequences for the usefulness of the idea. A boycott scanner depends on recognising products accurately and keeping the information behind its results current.

Bashbash said he initially knew little about the testing processes used before releasing mobile software. He learned through repeated revisions, sometimes submitting several updates in a single day.

“I was sending three updates in a day,” he said.

Eventually, he reached a version he felt people could use. Friends began trying it and responding positively, but he remained reluctant to promote it himself on camera.

A friend suggested TikTok. When he explained that making videos made him nervous, she offered to record one and send it to him to post.

He remembers watching the views rise past half a million and then a million, repeatedly expecting the momentum to stop. He estimates that the video reached around 1.5 million views.

The attention brought people who wanted to contribute their own skills.

From one developer to a volunteer team

As No Thanks became better known, volunteers contacted Bashbash offering to help without payment. Some asked to remain anonymous.

He described people motivated by solidarity with Palestinians and, for some, by their faith and a desire to do something useful without public recognition.

The project now has volunteers working across three areas: investigating companies and brands, managing social media, and developing the software.

Bashbash credits that team with making the latest major update, which he calls V3, possible.

The division of work reflects how much is involved in maintaining an application whose visible action can take only seconds. Behind a barcode scan are questions about product identification, company ownership, the grounds for a boycott and whether the information supporting an entry remains accurate.

There are also limits to what a small team can examine. Bashbash said users regularly email asking for companies to be added or investigated, or questioning why a particular brand is absent.

Those requests helped shape the new version. Instead of requiring every personal concern to pass through the central research team before someone can act on it, the app now allows users to build additional lists for themselves.

The result is a broader system in which the central No Thanks database sits alongside personal choices and campaigns organised by communities.

Personal boycott lists and a shared core

One of V3’s main features is the ability to create a personal boycott list.

A user can add a company or brand they want to avoid, including one that the No Thanks team is still investigating. They can also add a business for reasons that fall outside the central project’s own priorities.

Bashbash said the scanner checks the main No Thanks list, relevant community campaigns the user has joined, and the user’s personal list.

The personal list can be edited, with users adding or removing their own entries. The central database remains under the control of the No Thanks team: users cannot remove its companies from the core list.

That arrangement gives individuals room to make additional choices while retaining the project’s shared recommendations.

It also acknowledges that ethical purchasing decisions can involve more than one concern. Someone may want to participate in a Palestine boycott while also avoiding a company over another issue, or follow a local campaign that has not become part of the main database.

For Bashbash, personalisation is one way to accommodate those differences without requiring his small research team to approve every individual preference.

Why No Thanks now ranks boycott priorities

The new version also makes the app’s levels of boycott priority more explicit.

Bashbash describes level one as covering companies his team regards as the most directly implicated through material or financial relationships, including investment and operations on occupied land.

Level two, in his explanation, covers companies listed because of advocacy or public statements supporting Israel or Zionism, including statements by executives, where the team has not identified the direct financial involvement associated with the first category.

These are the app’s own assessments. The stated reason for a listing remains available to the user, allowing people to examine why a company has been included.

During the interview, Bashbash named Google, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Pepsi, Burger King and Walmart among the businesses he places in the highest priority category. The conversation did not present the supporting evidence for each individual classification.

His explanation for introducing clearer levels was also practical. With more than a thousand companies and brands to consider, he said, people can struggle to find alternatives for everything they use.

He acknowledged particular difficulties around necessary medicines, where a suitable substitute may not be available. His account recognised that people’s circumstances and essential needs can constrain their purchasing choices.

The levels are intended to help users understand which targets the app considers most urgent and decide how far they can extend their own boycott.

Hickey raised a related problem: attending an event supporting Palestine and finding products associated with a boycott campaign being served.

For him, a clearer sense of priority could help people discuss those choices without making participation depend on everyone arriving with the same knowledge.

Bashbash’s approach is to provide the information and make priorities visible, while giving people room to develop their habits over time.

The system belongs to No Thanks. The wider Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement maintains its own strategy, emphasising concentrated pressure on a relatively small number of selected targets and distinguishing between consumer boycotts, supported grassroots campaigns and other forms of pressure.

The app’s larger database, its two levels and its users’ additional lists therefore have their own purposes and criteria.

Community campaigns extending beyond Palestine

V3’s community feature allows people to organise shared boycott lists within the application.

Once a user joins a community, its campaign becomes part of the information checked by the scanner.

Bashbash pointed to Sudan as an existing example. No Thanks had already supported a Sudan boycott campaign in the previous version, and that work has been carried into the new community structure.

He also suggested that users could organise campaigns relating to Congo, Syria or other causes, provided they were compatible with the project’s ethical principles.

This expands the application’s potential role. The same basic function that helps a shopper follow a Palestine boycott can be used to maintain a shared list for another campaign.

There are restrictions on creating communities. Bashbash said the function is available to subscribers at the “partner” tier and above, describing that requirement as a measure to reduce spam and abuse.

Proposed communities also undergo a review.

He was explicit about the scope of that review: the team checks for spam and compatibility with No Thanks’ principles, but does not investigate every company on every proposed community list to establish whether it belongs there.

That distinction matters as the platform grows. A company appearing on a community list may have been included by that community, while an entry in the central database reflects the No Thanks team’s own research and judgement.

The app remains free to download, with some functions subject to subscription requirements. Bashbash presents those restrictions as part of keeping the system manageable and protecting it from misuse.

Threats, abuse and the cost of visibility

The growth of No Thanks has also brought attention that Bashbash describes as threatening and deeply personal.

He said messages have included his address and statements suggesting that the senders could find him.

“We see you, we can get you,” he recalled being told.

Other messages, he said, demanded that he remove the application.

He described abuse directed at Basma and Ibrahim, including comments about their deaths. While insults aimed at him were something he felt able to tolerate, attacks on his siblings prompted him to take down earlier posts and restrict comments.

Bashbash has also alleged that the attention around No Thanks cost him the final weeks of his internship at Evosoft.

His account includes a distinction about the circumstances: the internship was already approaching its scheduled end, and he said the company had told him it lacked the capacity to renew it.

In an earlier interview, he alleged that it was nevertheless terminated prematurely because of the app. The material available for this feature does not include a response from Evosoft to that allegation.

Despite the threats he describes, Bashbash repeatedly returns to the situation facing relatives who remain in Gaza. He said another of his brothers was still there and going hungry.

That comparison shapes how he talks about his own difficulties. Living abroad, he considers himself fortunate relative to family members facing conditions he cannot directly change.

It also helps explain why the pressure has not persuaded him to abandon the project.

Why he says the app will never be sold

Alongside threatening messages, Bashbash said he receives repeated approaches from people wanting to buy No Thanks.

He described receiving several acquisition emails a week and said that, in one instance, his research into a prospective purchaser led him to a company address in Tel Aviv.

He suspects that some approaches are intended to gain control of the app and close it down. The identities and motives of those sending threats, and any connection between threatening messages and acquisition approaches, have not been independently established.

His response to would-be purchasers can be as brief as sending the No Thanks logo.

The refusal, however, extends beyond his suspicions about particular buyers. He said he would not sell the application even to someone who supported Palestine.

“This application will never be sold to anyone,” he said.

He connects that position directly to the purpose for which it was created: an undertaking in memory of his brother and sister, intended to help others.

Bashbash describes No Thanks as having a nonprofit purpose and says he does not want someone else to acquire it as a vehicle for personal profit.

He also expressed a wish for the project eventually to be available as open source, including after his own involvement has ended. That is a statement about its future; the interview does not establish that the current application’s full source code is publicly available.

His stated ambition is continuity, with the tool remaining available to the people who use it.

What 14 million downloads can tell us

Asked how many times No Thanks had been downloaded, Bashbash gave a figure of 14 million.

That is his reported cumulative total. Downloads, regular usage and changes in purchasing behaviour are different measures, and the interview did not provide an independent audit of the combined figure.

The publicly displayed Android listing provides a separate indication of scale, showing at least five million downloads on that platform.

When Hickey asked whether the app was changing consumer behaviour, Bashbash pointed to reviews and emails from people who said they used it regularly, had changed their shopping habits and recommended it to others.

“Read the review of the application,” he said.

Those accounts help explain what keeps him working on the project. He described receiving messages from people who had made No Thanks part of their daily routines and were introducing friends and acquaintances to it.

They provide evidence of individual experiences and reported changes in behaviour. The interview did not quantify revenue lost by particular companies or demonstrate how much of any wider boycott effect could be attributed to the app.

The immediate problem No Thanks addresses is clearer: it reduces the effort required to check a product while shopping.

For someone standing in a supermarket aisle, that can determine whether an intention to boycott becomes a purchasing decision.

Making informed shopping an everyday habit

Bashbash wants No Thanks to become a normal part of shopping for people who care about the conduct of the companies they support.

Hickey described introducing the idea to his three year old, explaining why the family chose to avoid certain businesses. Their discussion centred on making questions about products and corporate behaviour familiar from an early age.

For Bashbash, the starting point is a consumer’s ability to obtain information and act on it.

“It’s our right to know,” he said.

He is already thinking beyond V3. Asked about future versions, he said work on improvements would continue, with each release prompting further questions about what the application could do and how it could help.

He also resisted presenting its growth as an individual achievement. He credited volunteers, supporters and people who provided encouragement when he felt overwhelmed or doubted whether the project was doing enough.

The connection to Ibrahim and Basma remains central. An app that now sits on millions of phones began with a brother trying to find a useful response to bereavement, drawing on the family’s existing practice of helping others in memory of those they had lost.

Its development has turned that private intention into a shared activity: people researching companies, writing software, suggesting improvements and checking products before buying them.

For Bashbash, that work remains unfinished.

“I still can do more,” he said.

Sources and attributions

• “NO THANKS APP CREATOR INFURIATES ISRAEL!”, NOOW LIVE / NOOW Media, interview conducted by Tadhg Hickey, 9 November 2026. The supplied transcript is the principal source for this feature, including Bashbash’s family recollections, account of the app’s development, V3 features, reported 14 million downloads, threats and acquisition approaches. The interview’s identity and date were corroborated through Hickey’s contemporaneous announcement and the outlet’s video listing. Direct quotations were taken from the supplied transcript. teapawt

• “‘Israel killed my brother. My boycott app in his memory now has 11 million users’”, The National, Xander Elliards, reproduced by inkl. Supports the 2018 move to Hungary, Gaza City childhood and origin of the BashSquare name. The accessible reproduction does not display an exact publication date. The chronology corrects the supplied interview introduction’s misleading implication that Bashbash moved to Hungary after his brother’s death. inkl.com

• “Software engineer of Palestinian origin says fired over app calling for boycott of Israeli products”, Anadolu, Sule Ozkan, 18 April 2024. Supports Bashbash’s educational background and earlier account of his brother’s death, and records his allegation that Evosoft ended his internship prematurely because of No Thanks. The employment allegation remains attributed to him. aa.com.tr

• No Thanks on Google Play and No Thanks on Apple’s App Store, developer listings, accessed 11 November 2026. Confirm availability, barcode and manual search functions, and purchases within the app. Google Play displays at least five million Android downloads; this does not independently establish the combined 14 million figure. Apple’s release notes also describe boycott levels, supporting information, alternatives and community lists. Apps on Google Play

• “Guide to BDS Boycott & Pressure Corporate Priority Targeting”, Palestinian BDS National Committee, page dated 6 December 2024, accessed 11 November 2026. Provides the context on targeted boycott strategy and the movement’s separate categories of consumer priorities, supported grassroots boycotts and pressure targets. These should be distinguished from No Thanks’ own classifications and user-created lists.