Registry · RMLI

Does Rami Levy support Israel?

Rami Levy Hashikma Marketing

Support documentedupdated 2026-09-25

Yes — Rami Levy has documented support for Israel on record, including $2,593,000 in donations. Every claim below links to its source.

Filed under: Retail & supermarket chains · Companies that support Israel

Background

Rami Levy is unusual among Israeli retailers in that the man and the company are hard to separate: he founded the chain, controls about 40% of it, and is personally identified with an argument that commerce in the West Bank builds co-existence — a position that has both earned him Palestinian customers at his settlement-area stores and made him a boycott target for the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian activists. On the record we document, corporate actions and personal positions are kept apart: the ILS 1.5 million donated to soldiers and bereaved families in October 2023, the ILS 8 million reported for 2024 and the one-shekel mobile packages for soldiers are company acts, while the co-existence argument and the 'settler' dispute with Ramallah are his own. The chain's own annual reports book that war-time giving as corporate donation expense — about ILS 9.5 million in 2023 and ILS 8.1 million in 2024, against ILS 6.5 million in 2022 — but they report annual totals only, with no weekly breakdown and no named recipients, which is why the October 2023 figure still rests on its single news source. One war-time initiative drew criticism at home rather than abroad: in December 2023 hostage families complained to TheMarker that the chain's sale of soldier-themed dog tags diverted revenue from their own campaign. The group also majority-owns the Cofix coffee chain, which is covered separately.

Ynetnews TheMarker (Hebrew) — hostage families criticise dog-tag sales Calcalist (Hebrew) — TA-125 corporate donations Rami Levy Hashikma Marketing — 2023 periodic report (Hebrew), board of directors' report §1.5.5 and war-response measures

Timeline of documented support

197419811988199520022009201620231976 — Operations in Israel: State of Israel (taxes, employment, consumer-price impact)Operations in Israel19762018 — Operations in Israel: Israeli settlement economy in the West Bank and East JerusalemOperations in Israel20182019-03 — Public statement: Not applicable — personal public position of founder Rami LevyPublic statement2019-032023-10 — Donation: IDF soldiers and bereaved Israeli familiesDonation2023-102023-12 — In-kind support: Serving IDF soldiersIn-kind support2023-122024 — Donation: Community causes in Israel during the war (aggregate annual corporate donations; no recipient breakdown disclosed)Donation20242025-09 — Operations in Israel: Israeli settlement economy in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the occupied Golan (per UN and Who Profits documentation)Operations in Israel2025-09

Documented support

TypeDateAmountRecipientSources
Operations in Israel1976—State of Israel (taxes, employment, consumer-price impact)
Rami Levy Hashikma Marketing is Israel's third-largest supermarket chain, built by Rami Levy from a wholesale operation he started in Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market in the 1970s into a discount chain that reshaped Israeli grocery prices. It is listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (RMLI) with annual revenue in the $1-5 billion range, and Rami Levy himself is the controlling shareholder with about 39.9%. The group also controls the Good Pharm pharmacy chain, the Beit Haperot produce chain, an MVNO mobile business (Rami Levy Communications, running on Pelephone infrastructure) and — since July 2018 — a 50.01% controlling stake in the Israeli discount coffee chain Cofix. Attribution note: Cofix is a separate listed company with its own page here; its actions are its own.
Donation2023-10-12$379,000IDF soldiers and bereaved Israeli families
The Rami Levy chain announced on 12 October 2023 that it had donated more than ILS 1.5 million since the start of that week to support bereaved families and IDF soldiers — upwards of about $380,000 at the 12 October 2023 rate of 3.96 shekels to the dollar, and a floor rather than a total, because the source gives no upper bound. Alongside the cash, the chain launched a digital wallet feature letting customers fund and send shopping baskets remotely to recipients in the south and north without transporting goods themselves. Attributed to Rami Levy Hashikma Marketing corporate, not to a foundation, employees or a franchisee. The ILS 1.5 million first-week figure rests on ICE alone and is cited that way: the company's own 2023 periodic report, linked under Background, names donations and assistance to the families of the fallen of the IDF and the security forces among its war-response measures and puts its 2023 donation expense at about ILS 9.5 million against about ILS 6.5 million in 2022, but it carries no weekly or monthly breakdown, so it corroborates the actor and the recipients and is not a source for this figure.
One source
In-kind support2023-12—Serving IDF soldiers
Between 3 and 31 December 2023 Rami Levy Communications, the group's mobile arm, gave serving soldiers a full mobile package — 50 GB of data, 2,000 minutes and 2,000 SMS — for ILS 1 for a year, against presentation of a soldier's ID at any of its 40 branches from Kiryat Shmona to Eilat; parents could collect it on a soldier's behalf. The company said a business's obligation was 'to provide them maximum support as a token of appreciation.' The chain ran parallel drives donating phone chargers, power banks, cases and snack packages to soldiers. Attributed to Rami Levy Communications, a subsidiary of the group.
One source
Donation2024$2,214,000Community causes in Israel during the war (aggregate annual corporate donations; no recipient breakdown disclosed)
Rami Levy Hashikma Marketing's 2024 periodic report states, in the board of directors' report under 'donation to the community', that the company donated approximately ILS 8,074.5 thousand during the reporting year — about ILS 8.07 million, roughly $2.2 million at the Bank of Israel rate of 3.647 shekels to the dollar on 31 December 2024. The administrative and general expenses note in the same report puts the group's 2024 donation expense at ILS 8,124 thousand, against ILS 9,454 thousand in 2023 and ILS 6,544 thousand in 2022. Calcalist's survey of giving by Tel Aviv-125 index companies, published 19 May 2025, reported the figure as ILS 8 million and as the highest share of profit in the survey, about 3% of net income — which the filing puts at ILS 259.3 million for 2024, up 26.4% on 2023. Calcalist says outright where its numbers came from — “כך עולה מניתוח של הדוחות הכספיים של החברות במדד” (“this emerges from an analysis of the financial statements of the companies in the index”) — so the newspaper and the periodic report are one underlying witness rather than two: the filing is the primary record, Calcalist is a reading of it, and this figure is therefore not treated here as independently corroborated. Corporate figure, not a foundation, employees or a franchisee; the report gives an annual community-giving total with no breakdown by recipient, and the dollar value is a conversion, not a reported amount.
Operations in Israel2018—Israeli settlement economy in the West Bank and East Jerusalem
Rami Levy runs supermarkets inside Israeli settlements and settlement industrial zones in the occupied West Bank — including Mishor Adumim, Sha'ar Binyamin, Beitar Illit, Gush Etzion, Ariel and Modi'in Illit — plus branches in the Ramot neighbourhood and Atarot industrial zone in East Jerusalem, and delivers online to more than 40 settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the occupied Golan. In 2018 the group opened a 25,000-square-metre shopping mall with some 50 businesses in the Atarot industrial zone, marketed as a joint Israeli-Palestinian mall, after winning a 2011 tender for a mall in Ariel. Its Good Pharm, Cofix and Beit Haperot subsidiaries also operate outlets there. The chain's West Bank stores draw large numbers of Palestinian shoppers because of their low prices, which is why Palestinian activists and the Palestinian Authority have urged a boycott of them.
Operations in Israel2025-09-26—Israeli settlement economy in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the occupied Golan (per UN and Who Profits documentation)
The UN Human Rights Council settlement-business database mandated by resolution 31/36 (OHCHR report A/HRC/60/19, dated 26 September 2025) lists two entities of the group in Annex I ('currently involved') — Rami Levi Chain Stores Hashikma Marketing 2006 Ltd. (No. 126, the retail parent, matching this company's own trade name and TASE ticker RMLI) and its wholly owned subsidiary Rami Levy Hashikma Marketing Communication Ltd. (No. 127, the group's mobile/telecom arm) — both under listed activities (e) 'the provision of services and utilities supporting the maintenance and existence of settlements, including transport' and (g) 'the use of natural resources, in particular water and land, for business purposes.' Neither entry carries a footnote marking a prior name (unlike some other Annex I entries), and neither appears in Annex II (enterprises removed after review), so both stand as current listings. Who Profits, an advocacy research centre, independently documents (company profile, current to 25 December 2023) that the telecom subsidiary itself operates branches inside three settlement industrial zones — Atarot and Sha'ar Binyamin (West Bank/East Jerusalem) and Shilat, beyond the Green Line — and that a further subsidiary, the 40%-owned Hashikma N.G.N International Communications 015 Ltd., holds an Israeli Civil Administration licence to provide Bezeq telecom services in the West Bank; Who Profits cites no separate underlying document for these specific details beyond its own company research. This corroborates, with added subsidiary-level detail, the settlement store operations already documented above.
Public statement2019-03-02—Not applicable — personal public position of founder Rami Levy
Rami Levy personally — the founder and controlling shareholder, speaking for himself rather than issuing a corporate policy — argues for economic co-existence through commerce in the West Bank: he says he serves customers and hires staff without distinguishing between Jews and Palestinians, and he promoted the Atarot mall as a joint Israeli-Palestinian project. That position puts him in direct conflict with the Palestinian Authority's settlement-boycott policy: in March 2019 Ynetnews reported that Mahmoud Abbas refused to include him in a meeting with the Breaking the Impasse business delegation, with organisers stating 'he is a settler.' Attribution note: this is Levy's personal stance, distinct from the company's documented donations; separately, a 2020 class-action request alleged the chain discriminated by not delivering to the Palestinian neighbourhood of Beit Hanina while serving nearby settlement neighbourhoods.
Donations total$2,593,000

Frequently asked questions

Did Rami Levy donate money to Israel or Israeli causes?

Yes. Documented donations total $2,593,000, including $2,214,000 to Community causes in Israel during the war (aggregate annual corporate donations; no recipient breakdown disclosed). Each donation is listed on this page with its date and source.

How much has Rami Levy given?

Documented donations total $2,593,000. The largest single recorded item is $2,214,000 to Community causes in Israel during the war (aggregate annual corporate donations; no recipient breakdown disclosed) (2024).

Where does this information come from?

Every record on this page links to its source — news reports, official company statements, tax filings, or government records. 11 distinct sources are cited for Rami Levy. Our methodology page explains the full verification process.

Sources & citations

Record last updated: 2026-09-25

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