Mecca-Cola, which features a picture of the Dome of the Rock on its front and which donates 10% of its profits to "the children of Palestine," has just arrived in Israel, although it will be sold only in Arab townships. Says Ha'aretz, in a rather puzzling statement: "A new front was opened yesterday in the Arab-Israeli conflict: a political cola."
Have they forgotten that cola has always been political in the Middle East? Coca Cola conspicuously avoided the Israeli market until the mid 1960s, when they were faced with the prospect of a boycott by American Jews back home. They then opened a Tel Aviv bottling plant and were boycotted in Arab countries until the early 1990s. Pepsi, on the other hand, observed the Arab boycott and refused to do business in Israel until 1992. I still remember my first (and to date, practically only) taste of Pepsi in Israel.
So, I don't think you can say Mecca-Cola drinkers represent a 'new front.' Although perhaps they give new meaning to the term, "pop-ular uprising"...
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