Coca-Cola: BDS-1000 Forensic Dossier

Entity: The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO) / Central Bottling Company Ltd. (“CBC,” “Coca-Cola Israel”) BRS Score: 520 - Tier C (High) Audit Basis: Military, Digital, Economic, Political domain audits (research current to late June/early July 2026)

Key Findings

• Economic: Coca-Cola’s exclusive Israeli franchisee, the Central Bottling Company (CBC), operates a regional distribution center in the Atarot Settlement Industrial Zone in occupied East Jerusalem and wholly owns Tabor Winery, which sources grapes from vineyards in West Bank and Golan Heights settlements.¹²
• Political: CBC donated NIS 50,000 to the right-wing Im Tirtzu organization in 2015 (publicly disclosed in 2017), and Coca-Cola was designated a boycott target by the BDS National Committee in November 2024, a campaign associated with measurable sales declines in Bangladesh, Egypt, Pakistan and the West Bank.³⁴⁵
• Digital: Coca-Cola and its European/Pacific bottlers use CyberArk - an Israeli-founded identity-security vendor since rebranded “Idira” under new owner Palo Alto Networks - as part of routine enterprise cybersecurity infrastructure, alongside minority investment in Israeli logistics start-up Bringg.⁶⁷
• Not found: No defence-sector contract, military supply agreement, or SIBAT listing was identified for Coca-Cola or CBC; neither entity is named in the UN Special Rapporteur’s 2025 report on corporate military complicity in the occupation, and Coca-Cola does not currently appear on the UN’s settlement-business database.⁸⁹

Target Profile

Key Facts:

• CBC’s Central Beverage Distribution Company subsidiary operates a regional distribution center and cooling houses in the Atarot Settlement Industrial Zone, East Jerusalem, confirmed ongoing as of a February 2025 Who Profits update.¹
• Tabor Winery (92.5% CBC-owned) sources grapes from Alon Shvut (Gush Etzion, West Bank) and from Ortal and Keshet (occupied Syrian Golan), labeling the resulting wine “Product of Israel.”²
• A 2024 Tel Aviv District Court ruling found CBC liable for additional tax on a 12.5% deemed royalty embedded in its concentrate pricing from The Coca-Cola Company - evidence of an arm’s-length, taxable franchise relationship rather than integrated ownership.¹¹
• Coca-Cola/National Beverage Company’s $20–25 million Gaza bottling plant, opened 2016 and employing roughly 250 people directly, was destroyed amid the 2023–2025 war.¹²¹³
• The Coca-Cola Company is not named in the UN Special Rapporteur’s July 2025 report on corporate military complicity in the occupation, and Coca-Cola/CBC does not appear in the current OHCHR settlement-business database.⁸

Executive Summary

The Coca-Cola Company’s documented nexus to Israel/Palestine is almost entirely mediated through a single independent legal entity: the Central Bottling Company (CBC), which has held the exclusive Israeli Coca-Cola franchise since 1967 and is majority-owned by the Wertheim family rather than by The Coca-Cola Company itself.¹¹⁰ The strongest and most consistently documented vectors are economic and political rather than military or digital. CBC’s Atarot Industrial Zone distribution center and its Tabor Winery subsidiary’s settlement-sourced vineyards constitute the clearest, multiply-corroborated evidence of activity tied to occupied territory, appearing in Who Profits, AFSC Investigate, and Al-Haq’s Atarot settlement research.¹²¹⁴⁹ Politically, CBC’s 2015 donation to the nationalist Im Tirtzu organization and the company’s subsequent designation as a BDS National Committee boycott target (November 2024) - with associated, measurable sales declines across Bangladesh, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey and the West Bank - represent the most concrete reputational and commercial consequences documented in the audits.³⁴⁵¹⁵

By contrast, the audits found no evidence supporting a military-supply relationship. No contract, tender, or procurement record links Coca-Cola or CBC to the Israeli Ministry of Defence, the IDF, the Israel Prison Service, or any Israeli defence prime; neither entity appears in the SIBAT defence-export directory or in UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s 2025 report naming more than sixty companies assessed as aiding Israel’s military operations.⁸⁹ A single secondary-source claim that CBC’s Tara Dairy subsidiary directly supplies the IDF, Israel Prison Service, and Israel Police as an “institutional vendor” could not be corroborated in primary form and is contradicted by every civil-society profile reviewed, which instead describes Tara’s institutional customers as hotels, hospitals, and restaurants; this claim is carried here only as an explicitly unverified and unresolved allegation, not as an established fact.¹⁹

The digital domain likewise shows an ordinary commercial-vendor footprint rather than a surveillance or defence-technology nexus. Coca-Cola’s bottlers use CyberArk (an Israeli-founded identity-security firm, now “Idira” under Palo Alto Networks) for enterprise access management, and The Coca-Cola Company has been both an investor in and a client of the Israeli logistics start-up Bringg through its Tel Aviv-based “Bridge” incubation program.⁶¹⁶ No evidence was found of Israeli data-center hosting, Project Nimbus participation, biometric or surveillance-technology deployment tied to Israeli security bodies, or any technology relationship with Israeli defence, intelligence, or law-enforcement agencies.⁸

What is not supported by the evidence is any claim that The Coca-Cola Company directly funds, arms, or provides technology to the Israeli military; that it holds an equity stake in its Israeli franchisee; or that it has taken an affirmative corporate political position on the conflict. The company’s public position - a standing FAQ denying that its “income is transferred to Israel” and stating it does not support any government - has remained essentially unchanged since a 2015 letter to the Anti-Defamation League affirming it does not endorse the BDS movement, alongside the corresponding absence of any comparable declarative statement on the 2023–2025 Gaza war (in contrast to its rapid statements on the 2020 George Floyd protests and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine).¹⁷

Taken together, this evidentiary pattern - negligible military and digital exposure (Military 0.01, Digital 0.15) alongside substantial, well-documented economic and political exposure through the settlement-linked franchisee (Economic 6.96, Political 6.68) - produces a BDS-1000 score of BRS 520, placing Coca-Cola in Tier C (High). The tier is driven almost entirely by the economic domain (V_MAX = 6.96, Atarot/Tabor Winery operations and the franchise profit flow) and reinforced by the political domain (Im Tirtzu donation, BDS listing, boycott impacts), while the military and digital domains contribute negligibly to the aggregate score.

Timeline of Relevant Events

Corporate Overview

The Coca-Cola Company is a Delaware-incorporated, Atlanta-headquartered, NYSE-listed multinational beverage company operating globally through a network of more than 300 independently owned bottling partners.¹ Israel is not a stand-alone reporting segment in Coca-Cola’s SEC filings; it falls within the broader EMEA operating region. Coca-Cola’s presence in the Israeli market is conducted entirely by the Central Bottling Company (CBC, “Coca-Cola Israel”), a privately held Israeli company controlled by the Wertheim family (David Wertheim, ~62.99%; Reuven Becher, Gil Orion and Chen Amir, ~12.33% each; CEO Nir Levinger) under a contractual franchise and concentrate-supply arrangement rather than an equity relationship with The Coca-Cola Company.¹¹⁰ The 2024 Tel Aviv District Court ruling - finding a 12.5% deemed royalty embedded in CBC’s concentrate pricing subject to additional tax - evidences this arm’s-length structure and the flow of franchise fees from CBC (Israel) to The Coca-Cola Company (Atlanta).¹¹

CBC’s subsidiary portfolio spans multiple categories of the Israeli FMCG market: Prigat (juices, distributed in the US via kosher importer Kayco, unaffiliated with The Coca-Cola Company), Tara Dairy (Israel’s second-largest dairy processor, acquired 2004, controlling an estimated 12–14% of the Israeli dairy market), Neviot (water bottling), and Tabor Winery (92.5% CBC-owned).¹ Through its wholly owned Central Beverage Distribution Company subsidiary, CBC operates a regional distribution center and cooling houses in the Atarot Settlement Industrial Zone in occupied East Jerusalem, land the UN and human rights organizations classify as expropriated from Palestinian communities.¹¹⁴ Tabor Winery sources Merlot, Riesling, Cabernet Sauvignon, Marselan and Grenache grapes from vineyards in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc (West Bank) and the Ortal and Keshet settlements (occupied Syrian Golan), labeling the finished wine “Product of Israel.”²

Separately, Coca-Cola’s Palestinian-territory franchise is held by the independently owned National Beverage Company (NBC), led by Zahi Khouri, which operated a $20–25 million Gaza bottling plant (opened 2016, insured in part by a 2020 MIGA political-risk facility) that directly employed roughly 250 people before being destroyed amid the 2023–2025 war.¹²¹³⁸ No corporate or ownership linkage between CBC (Israel) and NBC (Palestinian territories) beyond their shared Coca-Cola franchise relationship has been identified.

Domain Summaries

Military: Military

Mechanism of Involvement

No verified contract, tender, framework agreement, or MOU links The Coca-Cola Company, CBC, or any CBC subsidiary to the Israeli Ministry of Defence, IDF, Israel Prison Service, Border Police, or any other Israeli security body.⁹ The only military-adjacent connections documented are indirect and non-contractual: Israeli soldiers have received Coca-Cola products via “Operation Juha,” a volunteer civilian charity founded in 2015 in memory of a soldier killed by Hezbollah, which the BDS movement has characterized as evidence of products “donated… by various genocide-enabling groups” - a characterization of a formal corporate supply relationship not supported by primary evidence.⁴ CBC’s 2015 donation to Im Tirtzu, an organization partly framed around “protecting the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces from persecution,” is the only documented CBC charitable contribution carrying any military-adjacent framing.³ CBC founder Moshe Wertheim’s personal history includes service in the pre-state Palmach militia and the Mossad prior to acquiring the Coca-Cola franchise in 1967, but no evidence connects this historical biography to any ongoing corporate military relationship.¹⁰

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

The Coca-Cola Company’s public FAQ explicitly states it “does not fund military operations in any country.”¹⁷ Neither Coca-Cola nor CBC appears in Israel’s SIBAT defence-export directory, and neither is named among the more than sixty companies identified in UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s July 2025 report on corporate military complicity in the occupation - a report concentrated on arms manufacturers, surveillance-technology firms, heavy machinery, construction, energy, banking, and logistics companies, none from the beverage sector.⁸ A widely circulated claim that Tara Dairy is a “direct vendor” to an “institutional market” encompassing the IDF, Israel Prison Service, and Israel Police rests on a single secondary source that could not be verified in primary form; every civil-society database reviewed (Who Profits, AFSC Investigate) instead describes Tara’s institutional customer base as hotels, hospitals, and restaurants. This claim is therefore carried here explicitly as unverified and unresolved, not as an established fact.¹⁹

Named Entities and Evidence Map

• Central Bottling Company (CBC) - no documented defence-sector contracts.¹⁹
• Tara Dairy (CBC subsidiary) - institutional customers documented as hotels/hospitals/restaurants; IDF/security-force vendor claim unverified.¹⁹
• Tabor Winery (CBC subsidiary) - settlement-vineyard sourcing (see Economic/Political); no military nexus documented.²
• Moshe Wertheim - founder of CBC; former Palmach/Mossad; no ongoing corporate military relationship documented.¹⁰
• Operation Juha - third-party civilian charity distributing Coca-Cola products to soldiers; not a corporate donation program.⁴
• Im Tirtzu - recipient of a 2015 CBC donation; carries partial military-welfare framing but is not a defence body.³

Digital: Digital

Mechanism of Involvement

Coca-Cola’s bottlers have adopted CyberArk, an Israeli-founded (1999, Petah Tikva) privileged-access-management vendor, for enterprise identity security: Coca-Cola Europacific Partners’ Australia/Pacific/Indonesia unit deployed CyberArk across several hundred admin accounts in 2021, and Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company separately selected CyberArk in June 2024.⁶²⁰ Following Palo Alto Networks’ $25 billion acquisition of CyberArk (July 2025) and its rebranding as “Idira” (May 2026), these deployments now sit within Palo Alto’s broader identity-security stack.⁷²¹²² The Coca-Cola Company was both an investor in and a client of Bringg, a Tel Aviv-founded logistics SaaS platform, participating in its $10 million Series B round in 2017.¹⁶ Coca-Cola Hellenic’s Russia operations and Coca-Cola Amatil have used Trax, an Israeli-founded retail computer-vision company, for shelf-analytics auditing.²³ Anagog, an Israeli location-analytics firm, was admitted to Coca-Cola’s Tel Aviv-based “Bridge” startup program in 2017.²⁴ In 2011, Coca-Cola Israel deployed a one-off “FaceLook” facial-recognition marketing kiosk built on Face.com technology (later acquired by Facebook) at a single consumer event.²⁵

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

No evidence was identified of Coca-Cola, its parent, or its bottlers operating or leasing data-center infrastructure in Israel, participating in Project Nimbus, or providing digital-sovereignty or resilience services to any Israeli state or military body - Coca-Cola’s cloud relationships (Microsoft Azure, AWS, and historically Google Cloud) position it exclusively as a customer, not a vendor, in this ecosystem.²⁶ No direct contract exists between Coca-Cola and Israel’s Ministry of Defence, IDF, or intelligence agencies for IT, communications, or analytics services. Coca-Cola piloted, then declined to sign, a roughly $18 million Palantir contract in 2014 for domestic US sales analytics unrelated to Israeli government data.⁸ The CyberArk/Idira relationship is an identity-access-management function, not a biometric-surveillance or military technology; no evidence was found of Coca-Cola or its bottlers deploying Israeli-origin biometric or computer-vision vendors (e.g., Trigo, BriefCam, AnyVision/Oosto) for loss prevention or access control, nor of predictive-policing or workforce-surveillance tools of Israeli origin anywhere in the company’s operations. The camera embedded in Coca-Cola Freestyle vending machines - subject of a since-withdrawn third-party vendor case study on demographic image capture - was supplied by a US/India-based vendor, not an Israeli one.²⁷

Named Entities and Evidence Map

• CyberArk / Idira (Palo Alto Networks) - enterprise identity-security vendor used by CCEP and CCH; Israeli-founded lineage, now a Palo Alto Networks product.⁶²⁰²²
• Bringg - Israeli logistics SaaS; Coca-Cola both investor and client.¹⁶¹⁹
• Trax - Israeli-founded retail computer-vision vendor used by CCH Russia and Coca-Cola Amatil.²³
• Anagog / Face.com / Cimagine - Bridge-program alumni/one-off marketing vendors; no ongoing surveillance relationship documented.²⁴²⁵
• The Bridge - Coca-Cola’s Tel Aviv startup-commercialization program (2014–), now reported inactive.²⁸¹⁸

Economic: Economic

Mechanism of Involvement

CBC, Coca-Cola’s exclusive Israeli franchisee, operates a regional distribution center and cooling houses in the Atarot Settlement Industrial Zone through its wholly owned Central Beverage Distribution Company subsidiary - land classified by UN bodies and human rights organizations as an Israeli settlement built on expropriated Palestinian land.¹¹⁴ Tabor Winery (92.5% CBC-owned) sources grapes from West Bank (Gush Etzion) and Golan Heights (Ortal, Keshet) settlement vineyards and labels the resulting wine “Product of Israel.”² The primary financial flow in the relationship runs from CBC (Israel) to The Coca-Cola Company (Atlanta) via concentrate/syrup fees and franchise royalties; a 2024 Tel Aviv District Court ruling found a 12.5% deemed royalty rate embedded in CBC’s concentrate pricing, generating additional tax liability described as “hundreds of millions of shekels.”¹¹ CBC is one of the largest FMCG conglomerates in Israel, spanning carbonated beverages, juices (Prigat), dairy (Tara), and water (Neviot).¹ The Coca-Cola Company also holds a minority investment position in Bringg, an Israeli logistics technology firm.¹⁶¹⁹

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

The Coca-Cola Company holds no direct equity stake in CBC, which is a privately held Israeli company controlled by the Wertheim family - the settlement-linked conduct is attributable to an independent franchisee operating under Coca-Cola’s global network of 300-plus independent bottlers, not to the parent company’s own balance sheet, though the parent licenses its trademark and profits via fees.¹ No evidence was found of Israeli state ownership in The Coca-Cola Company or CBC, government-appointed board members, or formal designation of CBC as critical national infrastructure.¹ CBC was itself fined NIS 62.7 million by the Israel Competition Authority in 2017 for antitrust violations, indicating an arm’s-length regulatory relationship rather than state favoritism.¹ Notably, Coca-Cola’s economic engagement is not one-sided: through the independent National Beverage Company franchise, Coca-Cola-branded product was manufactured in Gaza itself from 2016 (a $20–25 million plant employing ~250 people directly, insured in part by a World Bank/MIGA political-risk facility) until its destruction amid the 2023–2025 war.¹²¹³⁸ No public evidence was identified of CBC’s specific banking relationships with Israeli banks financing settlement activity, of Israel-specific sovereign-bond holdings by The Coca-Cola Company, or of a distinct Israel revenue line in SEC filings (Israel is folded into the broader EMEA segment).¹

Named Entities and Evidence Map

• CBC (Wertheim family, ~63% David Wertheim) - franchisee; Atarot distribution center; taxed franchise-royalty relationship with parent.¹¹¹
• Tabor Winery - settlement-sourced wine production; export via international retailers.²
• National Beverage Company / Zahi Khouri - Palestinian-territory franchisee; Gaza plant built, insured, and later destroyed.¹²¹³⁸
• Bringg - Israeli logistics start-up; Coca-Cola investor/client relationship.¹⁶¹⁹
• Prigat / Kayco - juice subsidiary distributed in the US via an unaffiliated kosher importer.¹

Political: Political

Mechanism of Involvement

CBC’s 2015 donation of NIS 50,000 to Im Tirtzu - a right-wing Israeli organization whose conduct a 2013 Israeli court found bore “similarities” to fascism - was made confidentially and disclosed only in 2017 after Israel’s Corporations Authority rejected Im Tirtzu’s request for secrecy.³ Coca-Cola was designated a boycott target by the BDS National Committee in November 2024, citing the Atarot operations and the argument that Coca-Cola contributes to the Israeli state “through taxes” by operating business-as-usual in the region; the UK’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign separately named Coca-Cola and its brand portfolio a strategic boycott target with an April 2025 day of action.⁴ Documented commercial consequences include a roughly 23% Bangladesh sales decline since October 2023, double-digit declines in Egypt, a 22.9% Q3 2024 decline for Coca-Cola İçecek in Pakistan, declining Turkish sales, and a 40%-plus 2024 surge for West Bank rival Chat Cola amid “buy local” sentiment tied to US support for Israel.⁵¹⁵ A June 2024 Coca-Cola Bangladesh advertisement claiming “even Palestine has a Coke factory” - an apparent reference to CBC’s Atarot facility - drew significant backlash and was withdrawn.¹⁵ CEO James Quincey’s only identified public remark on the conflict, at Davos in January 2024, deflected a direct question on whether the company is “pro-Israeli.”¹⁵

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

The Coca-Cola Company’s only standing corporate position is a FAQ stating it “does not support any country, government or policy, political or religious belief” and that claims its income is transferred to Israel are “completely untrue.”¹⁷ In a 2015 letter to the ADL, the company stated it does not endorse the BDS movement, but simultaneously characterized pro-BDS remarks by its own Palestinian franchisee’s head, Zahi Khouri, as his “personal opinions” not reflecting or tacitly supported by the company - evidence the company has sought to avoid taking sides rather than affirmatively aligning with either position.¹⁷ Neither Coca-Cola nor CBC is named in the UN Special Rapporteur’s July 2025 report on corporate military complicity, nor do either appear in the current UN OHCHR settlement-business database, despite 2020 media reports suggesting an earlier, since-unreflected listing.⁸ No public evidence was identified of a direct corporate donation by Coca-Cola or CBC to the IDF, FIDF, or other military-welfare organizations during the 2023–2025 war beyond the pre-existing, third-party-run Operation Juha volunteer initiative; nor of any current Coca-Cola executive holding a personal donation record to Israeli military-welfare or settlement organizations, distinct from the single 2015 CBC corporate donation to Im Tirtzu.³⁴ Coca-Cola’s economic ties to the Palestinian side - via the NBC franchise and its now-destroyed Gaza plant - cut against a narrative of one-sided alignment.¹²¹³

Named Entities and Evidence Map

• Central Bottling Company (CBC) - Im Tirtzu donor (2015); settlement operations at Atarot/Tabor Winery.³¹²
• James Quincey - CEO; only identified public remark on the conflict was a non-committal deflection.¹⁵
• David B. Weinberg - Lead Independent Director since 2015; no documented Israel/Palestine-specific advocacy ties identified.
• BDS National Committee - designated Coca-Cola a priority/organic boycott target (November 2024).⁴
• Palestine Solidarity Campaign (UK) - named Coca-Cola a strategic “Don’t Buy Apartheid” target (April 2025).⁴
• National Beverage Company / Zahi Khouri - Palestinian franchisee whose principal made pro-BDS remarks, publicly disclaimed by The Coca-Cola Company.¹⁷

BDS-1000 Score (V4)

• V_MAX: 6.96 Sum_OTHERS: 6.84
• BRS Score: 520 Tier: C (High)

The Economic domain sets V_MAX at 6.96, driven by CBC’s settlement-zone distribution infrastructure at Atarot and Tabor Winery’s settlement-sourced vineyards - activities with high impact and reasonably direct proximity to occupied-territory operations, tempered only by the fact that these are franchisee (not parent-company) activities. The Political domain contributes a closely comparable 6.68, reflecting the Im Tirtzu donation, formal BDS-target designation, and measurable multi-market boycott effects. The Military and Digital domains are near-zero (0.01 and 0.15 respectively), reflecting the near-total absence of verified defence-contracting or surveillance-technology involvement. The resulting BRS of 520 and Tier C (High) classification are driven almost entirely by the Economic and Political domains, consistent with a scale-free, evidence-only methodology in which Impact × Magnitude/Proximity scoring does not permit unverified military or digital allegations to inflate the aggregate.

Methodology Note

• Scoring is evidence-only, drawn exclusively from the four domain audits (Military, Digital, Economic, Political); no claim outside those audits was introduced into this dossier.
• Each domain score is scale-free: I (Impact) reflects the type of activity documented, M (Magnitude) reflects its documented scale, and P (Proximity) reflects how directly the entity is implicated versus arm’s-length or franchise removal.
• A temporal-mitigation rule applies: divested, destroyed, or exited operations (e.g., the destroyed Gaza NBC plant) are treated as historically documented but not scored as ongoing exposure.
• Entity attribution follows a no-transitive-guilt rule: conduct by CBC, an independently owned franchisee, is documented as CBC’s conduct and is not imputed to The Coca-Cola Company’s own balance sheet or governance absent direct evidence of parent-level control or benefit.
• Settlement-linked commercial operations (Atarot distribution center, Tabor Winery vineyards) are dual-counted across Economic and Political, reflecting both their commercial character and their political/reputational salience to civil-society campaigns.
• Where audits found no corroborating evidence, this dossier uses “No public evidence identified” rather than inferring absence of a relationship from absence of proof, and unverified or unresolved claims (e.g., the Tara Dairy/IDF vendor allegation, the 2020 OHCHR listing discrepancy) are carried explicitly with their audit-assigned caveats rather than presented as established fact.

End Notes