Rabia Mayet | rabiamayet@radioislam.co.za

14 August 2025

3-minute read

Following the tragic loss of his siblings, Ahmed Bashbash felt compelled to take action for the people of Gaza, his homeland. He created No Thanks: a free, non-profit boycotting app designed to help users identify and avoid products linked to companies or entities that support or fund the oppression of Palestinians.

At the start of the genocide almost two years ago, Ahmed was at a supermarket when he began to think about which products to boycott and which not to. It hit him that if there was an all-in-one app to register all such products, it would make it easier for shoppers globally.

Ahmad lost his sister Bismah in 2020 and has been involved in doing charity work on her behalf every Ramadhaan. Shortly after the genocide began, Ahmed’s brother was killed. On October 31^st, 2023, Ibrahim Bashbash had been invited to a relative’s house in Gaza, in a safe area, when he was killed while drinking tea on the balcony along with his cousin’s husband and her 2 sons. 20 others were also killed on that day.

At that time, Ahmed was still a student studying computer science engineering, and he decided to design the app categorising items that are on the boycott list as a charity for his brother and to help the people of Gaza,

Initially, having no knowledge of app design, Ahmed approached a website that already had a similar concept set up, but when he received no response, he wasn’t deterred and thought to do it himself. Listing products available in Palestine, Ahmed quickly extended the list to well-known products and brands. The app is highly user-friendly and includes features like categorized boycott lists, searchable databases, and regular product updates. No Thanks now has volunteers to investigate brands, companies and products to keep their database updated.

In a pushback from Zionist entities, there were numerous threats and attempts to make No Thanks fail. Employing DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service), where an attack is launched from many sources to block an app, 7 million requests were made in one hour to make the application fail the first time. Within two days, Ahmed had the app up and running again by transferring data and putting measures in place to protect it from crashing. Within a month, they had another DDoS attack, this time with 2 billion requests to make the app fail, but “alhamdulillah,” says Ahmed, this time it didn’t fail.

By now, No Thanks have had12 million downloads and have 5-6 million active users monthly. At the beginning, the app took time to gain traction and become more accurate, but feedback from users made it clear that “they liked the idea,” are willing to contribute to it, and find the application “amazing”.

“The most important lesson to learn is actually to do something,” says Ahmed. Although he had to learn the language to build apps, and while he found that task daunting and “almost impossible to do” in the beginning, Ahmed persevered. Talking about Gaza is the minimum, he stated, but “if you have a talent in something” or an idea that you can implement to help the people of Gaza and Palestine, then go ahead and do it. And if you cannot do it yourself, find someone to do it for you, because, as Ahmed says, we cannot “just stand and watch,” as Gaza is destroyed.

Listen to the full interview with Ahmed Bashbash and Ml Sulaimaan Ravat.