Coca-Cola POLITICAL

Corporate Communications & Public Stance

The Coca-Cola Company maintains standing FAQ pages asserting that it “does not fund military operations in any country,” disputing claims that its income is transferred to Israel, and stating it does not support any country, government, policy, or political/religious belief ^{1, 2}. No dedicated corporate statement specific to the post-October 2023 Israel-Gaza war was identified from The Coca-Cola Company itself; instead, its Bangladesh franchise ran a mid-2024 advertising campaign referencing a “Palestine” Coke factory, which triggered public backlash and was briefly withdrawn ^{3, 4}. The advertisement had a shopkeeper character assert that Coke is “not at all from ‘that place’” and that “even Palestine has a Coke factory” - a reference that maps to the Atarot facility in occupied East Jerusalem rather than to any Palestinian-controlled plant ³. Asked directly on Bloomberg Television at the World Economic Forum in Davos on 18 January 2024 whether Coca-Cola was a “pro-Israeli” company, CEO James Quincey answered by citing the existence of “an Israeli bottler and a bottler in Gaza” rather than addressing the substance of the question ^{5, 6}. When journalists asked about boycott effects on its Palestinian franchisee in February 2025, The Coca-Cola Company declined to comment ⁷. This contrasts with the company’s posture on other geopolitical crises: CEO James Quincey publicly stated in May 2022 that Coca-Cola’s Russian business could “entirely vanish” if the Ukraine war continued, following the company’s March 2022 suspension of Russian operations, with related changes disclosed in a Form 8-K ^{8, 9}. Similarly, following George Floyd’s death in 2020, Quincey issued a company-wide statement urging support for the Black Lives Matter movement, accompanied by $2.5 million in Coca-Cola Foundation grants to racial-justice organizations ^{10, 11}. Historically, in 1997 the Government of Israel Economic Mission honored Coca-Cola at an “Israel Trade Award Dinner” for its market support and refusal to comply with the Arab League boycott ¹². In 2015, Coca-Cola wrote to the Anti-Defamation League stating it “does not support, endorse or sanction the BDS movement” and had “not supported the use of boycotts, including the Arab League Boycott of Israel,” in response to ADL concerns over statements by the head of its Palestinian licensee ¹³. That correspondence followed a 15 June 2015 threat by the Israeli NGO Shurat HaDin (Israel Law Center) to sue Coca-Cola and its demand that the company terminate its franchise with Zahi Khouri’s National Beverage Company over Khouri’s pro-BDS opinion columns in the Orlando Sentinel and The Hill ¹⁴. Corporate materials describe both the Israeli franchisee (Central Bottling Company) and Palestinian franchisee (National Beverage Company) as standard local bottling arrangements rather than as a distinct geopolitical partnership ^{15, 1}.

Operations in Occupied or Contested Territories

Who Profits reports that Central Bottling Company, the exclusive Coca-Cola franchisee in Israel, operates a regional distribution center and cooling facilities through its Central Beverage Distribution Company subsidiary in the Atarot Settlement Industrial Zone in occupied East Jerusalem ¹⁶. CBC’s own sales-and-distribution website independently lists its Jerusalem branch at HaOtzma Street, Atarot Commercial Center, while Coca-Cola Israel’s company profile identifies Jerusalem as one of its six distribution regions ^{17, 18}. The Institute for Palestine Studies and UK Lawyers for Israel also describe a Coca-Cola/CBC distribution center at Atarot, although the Institute article’s relevant endnote includes Who Profits and UKLFI links to the Institute article; these publications corroborate the location but are not fully independent underlying source chains ^{19, 20}. Atarot is an Israeli industrial settlement established in 1970 on land belonging to Palestinian villages ⁴. Central Bottling Company’s subsidiary, Tabor Winery, sources grapes from vineyards located in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank (Gush Etzion/Alon Shvut) and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights (Ortal, Keshet) ^{16, 21, 22}. Central Bottling Company is majority-owned by David Wertheim (62.99%), with Reuven Becher, Gil Orion, and Chen Amir each holding 12.33%, and is led by CEO Nir Levinger, as of the February 2025 profile ¹⁶. Coca-Cola’s separate Palestinian franchisee, National Beverage Company, operates a $20 million bottling plant in Gaza that opened in 2016, along with additional West Bank facilities, and is excluded from selling into the East Jerusalem market, which is served instead by the Israeli franchisee ^{23, 24, 15, 22}. No public evidence identified confirming the operational status of the Gaza bottling plant during the 2023–2025 conflict. General searches of the UN OHCHR settlement-business database landing page and related press releases did not surface Coca-Cola, Central Bottling Company, or Tabor Winery by name in publicly summarized listings ^{25, 26, 27}. Israeli media reporting in September 2017 had named Coca-Cola among companies on a draft Human Rights Council settlement list then being withheld from publication ²⁸, but when the database was published in February 2020 listing 112 companies, Coca-Cola was not among them; Middle East Monitor appended an editors’ note on 13 February 2020 removing its own earlier reference to the company, stating it “was erroneously included in a previous version of this page” ²⁹. The 26 September 2025 update, which expanded the database to 158 businesses with 68 additions and seven removals, likewise does not name Coca-Cola, Central Bottling Company, or Tabor Winery ³⁰. A 1999 complaint, Abdallah et al. v. The Coca-Cola Company, is catalogued by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre under racial/ethnic discrimination in the food and beverage sector in the United States, but no evidence links it to Israel-Palestine operations ³¹.

BDS Movement formally added Coca-Cola to its priority boycott list in November 2024, endorsed by the Palestinian BDS National Committee and PACBI, citing Atarot operations, Tabor Winery’s settlement vineyard sourcing, and imagery associating Coca-Cola products with Israeli soldiers during military operations ²². That listing argues Coca-Cola contributes to Israel “through business-as-usual and taxes,” and cites as precedent General Mills’ earlier exit from Pillsbury manufacturing in the same Atarot Settlement Industrial Zone, which the BDS campaign claims as a win ²². In Britain, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign made Coca-Cola and its brand portfolio - including Schweppes, Fanta, Sprite, Costa Coffee and Innocent - a named target of its “Don’t Buy Apartheid” campaign, holding roughly 35 supermarket protests and stalls in a day of action on 5 April 2025 and citing Central Bottling Company’s Atarot distribution centre as grounds ^{32, 33}. Grassroots #BoycottCoke campaigns intensified after October 7, 2023, with reported sales declines across Muslim-majority markets ^{34, 4}. Reported figures include an approximately 23 percent sales decline in Bangladesh since the war began in October 2023 ³, and at bottler Coca-Cola İçecek third-quarter 2024 sales declines of 22.9 percent in Pakistan and 12.2 percent in Turkey, which the company attributed to the cumulative impact of inflation combined with spillover from the Middle East conflict ³⁵. In the West Bank, Palestinian consumers substituted Coca-Cola for the local rival “Chat Cola,” whose sales rose over 40% in the West Bank and 25% in Israeli Arab cities in 2024 versus 2023, driven by boycott sentiment tied to U.S. support for Israel, with Ramallah shopkeepers reportedly downgrading Coca-Cola’s shelf placement, confirmed ongoing as of February 2025 ^{7, 36, 37}. National Beverage Company acknowledged the boycott’s effects but attributed part of the impact to broader economic decline and Israeli security restrictions on Palestinian commerce ⁷. Historically, Coca-Cola was subject to a formal Arab League boycott from approximately 1968 to 1991 for establishing Israeli bottling operations after granting bottling rights in 1966, a stance for which Israel’s government honored the company in 1997 ¹².

Internal Governance, Content & Retail Policies

No public evidence identified of HR actions, terminations, or legal disputes involving The Coca-Cola Company’s own employees over pro-Palestinian speech, symbols, or union activity, across news media, legal-complaint aggregators, and labor-dispute trackers reviewed. No public evidence identified regarding platform or editorial content-moderation policy, as this sub-category is not applicable to Coca-Cola’s business as a beverage manufacturer with no owned social or content platform. No public evidence identified of formal regulatory action, such as EU or UK settlement-goods labeling enforcement, specifically naming Coca-Cola products sourced from Atarot or Golan Heights vineyards; Who Profits’ classification of Central Bottling Company as a “Settlement Enterprise” engaged in “Settlement Production” is an NGO designation rather than a regulatory finding ¹⁶.

Brand Heritage & State Partnerships

No public evidence identified of Coca-Cola using military heritage or defense-sector ties in commercial branding. The company’s principal documented institutional tie to the Israeli state is the 1997 Israel Trade Award from the Government of Israel Economic Mission, recognizing Coca-Cola’s market presence and its historical refusal to comply with the Arab League boycott ¹². No public evidence identified of hosted Israeli government officials at Coca-Cola facilities or events, or of sponsorship of a formal “Brand Israel” cultural or public-relations campaign, in the sources reviewed for this audit.

Lobbying, Advocacy, Financing & Logistics

The Coca-Cola Company reported $3,940,000 in U.S. federal lobbying spend in 2023 and $3,480,000 year-to-date in 2025 per OpenSecrets, though the specific legislative issues lobbied were not itemized as Israel-related in the sources reviewed ³⁸. Coca-Cola’s federal PAC contributed $309,000 to federal candidates and raised $568,462 during the 2019–2020 election cycle per OpenSecrets, with no Israel- or Palestine-specific PAC activity identified ³⁹. In 2015, Central Bottling Company (Coca-Cola’s independent Israeli franchisee, not the parent company) donated approximately $13,850–$14,000 (50,000 NIS) to Im Tirtzu, a right-wing, pro-settlement Zionist advocacy organization; the donation became public in May 2017 after Im Tirtzu’s director unsuccessfully sought to keep it confidential through the Israel Corporations Authority, and no public record was found of a statement from Coca-Cola or Central Bottling Company addressing the donation ^{40, 41}. The donation was first reported by Yedioth Ahronoth after the Corporations Authority document refusing Im Tirtzu’s confidentiality request was obtained by Uri Zaki of the left-wing Meretz party; in a 2013 defamation suit Im Tirtzu brought against Israelis who had called it fascist, the judge found the group exhibited “certain principles of fascism” ⁴⁰. On 18 January 2024, over 100,000 IDF soldiers received free Coca-Cola and Bamba snack packages in a distribution organized by a nonprofit founded by youth from a Golan Heights community in memory of a fallen IDF officer, though sources reviewed do not confirm whether Coca-Cola Company, Central Bottling Company, or a third-party retailer supplied the products ⁴². The organiser is “Operation Juha,” a registered nonprofit begun in 2015 by youth of Moshav Yonatan in the Golan Heights together with the family of Maj. Yochai “Juha” Kalengel, killed by Hezbollah anti-tank fire in January 2015; it distributed some 50,000 packs the previous year, and reporting frames it as a volunteer civilian effort rather than a corporate donation programme ⁴². No public evidence identified of Coca-Cola directing corporate infrastructure, logistics, or free services to Israeli state, military, or state-aligned NGO efforts during the 2023–2025 conflict period, across news media, NGO investigation databases, and corporate press releases reviewed.

Corporate Structure & Primary Mission

The Coca-Cola Company is a publicly traded U.S. multinational (NYSE: KO) with a standard commercial charter for beverage manufacturing and franchising; No public evidence identified of a golden-share or state-linked ownership structure, or of a founding mandate tied to advancing any state’s geopolitical goals. Its Israeli operations are conducted entirely through an independent, privately owned franchisee, Central Bottling Company, majority-owned by the Wertheim family, rather than through a Coca-Cola Company-owned subsidiary ¹⁶. Shareholder-proposal activity tracked by the ADL indicates Israel-related human rights proposals have remained a steady feature of Coca-Cola’s proxy landscape, as reflected in the company’s FY2017 Form DEF 14A proxy statement ^{43, 44}.

Executive & Leadership Footprint

No public evidence identified of personal donations, family foundation grants, or fundraising efforts by The Coca-Cola Company’s named C-suite executives, including CEO James Quincey and President/CFO John Murphy, directed at Israeli parastatal, settlement, or military-welfare organizations. Beyond the Davos exchange of 18 January 2024 described above, which is the only identified on-the-record remark by Quincey touching the conflict ^{5, 6}, No public evidence identified of Quincey or other named Coca-Cola Company executives making public statements, op-eds, or social media posts specifically addressing the Israel-Gaza conflict, in contrast to Quincey’s documented, on-the-record public statements on the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022 and racial justice/Black Lives Matter in 2020 ^{8, 10}. The Im Tirtzu donation and the Atarot and Tabor Winery settlement-linked activity are attributable to Central Bottling Company’s independent Israeli ownership rather than to The Coca-Cola Company’s own named executives or board ^{16, 40, 41}. No public evidence identified of personal statements, board memberships, or advocacy-group affiliations by Central Bottling Company’s named owners (David Wertheim, Reuven Becher, Gil Orion, Chen Amir) or CEO Nir Levinger regarding pro-Israel or settlement organizations, beyond the 2015 corporate donation to Im Tirtzu. Board member David B. Weinberg, a Coca-Cola director since 2015 and Lead Independent Director since 27 July 2024, is Chairman and CEO of Judd Enterprises, Inc. and President of Digital Bandwidth LLC, and sits on the investment committee of Northwestern University’s Board of Trustees, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the International Council of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School ⁴⁵. Joel Neuman, then of The Coca-Cola Company, was elected chairman of the America-Israel Chamber of Commerce, Southeast Region, for the 2013–2014 term, an executive-level rather than board-level affiliation ⁴⁶. Beyond that historical chamber role, No public evidence identified of Coca-Cola Company board members holding personal board seats, leadership, or advisory roles in organizations such as CFI, AIPAC, FIDF, or JNF, across news media, organizational leadership pages, and board-affiliation searches reviewed.