Andy Warhol believed that the greatness of America lay in how the richest consumers bought exactly the same things as the poorest. ‘You can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and, just think, you can drink Coke too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking.’ The Spectator’s Rory Sutherland says that it’s the only drink that if a retailer doesn’t sell it, from an African beach shack to a Michelin-starred restaurant, it’s their fault, not yours.
Some places do choose not to serve it, though. There is a clubman’s tale of two members of the Cavalry Club who asked if there was any Coca-Cola on the premises. The wine waiter drew himself up to his full height and said: ‘For drinking purposes, sir?’
There is a certain sort of coffee shop, too, that avoids Coca-Cola. The sort where, if you ask for a flat white, they reply: ‘Dairy or oat milk?’ The sort where they haven’t got round to plastering the walls, and no two chairs are the same. The sort where they will not stock the second most popular drink in the world after water, and will instead suggest that you are at fault for supposing they might.
They may offer in its place something called ‘Curiosity Cola’, a herbal infusion in a glass bottle like something from a Victorian apothecary. My son dismisses this as ‘woker cola’. No one is as anti-woke as an 11-year-old boy. Except perhaps my wife, who is Jewish, and stormed home last week when she realised that our local coffee shop – which is very much of a certain sort – is now stocking Gaza Cola.
Gaza Cola is, as it says on the can, Palestinian-owned; the Palestinian’s name is Osama Qashoo, a British citizen. It is a private company of which he is the only shareholder. Gaza Cola’s website, however, says it is a product of Palestine House, a community centre in High Holborn founded by Mr Qashoo, although the drink is made in Poland.
When you ring up Palestine House, they will tell you that it is a community interest company – that is, one that is regulated to ensure it operates for community benefit and not for private profit – but refuse to tell you the name of the community interest company. They say that it will be revealed if you sign up for ‘keffiyeh membership’ of Palestine House. I did; it wasn’t. Nevertheless, they have promised that all profits will go to Palestine. There should be a lot of profits – it sold half a million cans in its first year of trading – and it won’t have to pay too much in remuneration, as there is only one director (Mr Qashoo).
Mr Qashoo spotted a gap in the market created by the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, of which he is a strong supporter. The movement decided to boycott Coca-Cola last year. Coca-Cola, they argue, has a distribution centre in the Atarot industrial zone – part of the post-1967 settlements on the West Bank, which are against international law. Atarot was set up by Jewish developers in 1912, and was overwhelmingly Jewish until the West Bank was cleansed of those of Jewish ethnicity in 1948. There are other companies in the West Bank that people are not boycotting – but there’s no potential for virtue-signalling in avoiding Airbnb when you’re away from home and no one can see you.
The BDS website says that boycotting Coca-Cola meets its careful selection criteria: Israeli soldiers have been pictured, they say, with Coke cans ‘donated by genocide-enabling groups’. The group they link to is a charity founded in memory of Major Juha Kalengel who, before he was killed by a Hezbollah rocket, used to cheer up his men with Coke and bamba. Bamba is a puffed corn snack, like a non-cheesy Wotsits, which only an Israeli could possibly enjoy, so BDS haven’t bothered boycotting that. Kalengel’s father distributes Coke and bamba on the anniversary of his death, so that his memory may be a blessing.
The boycott is, BDS adds, demanded by activists in Gaza. They share a video from the Quds News Network, complaining about Coke cans left in Gaza City by IDF soldiers. Settler colonialists, war criminals, litterbugs.
Despite my wife’s boycott of the local coffee shop, I thought I ought to try this new pop, the wokest cola. I went to buy two cans: £3.20 each. They’re only 250ml, three-quarters of the size of a Coke can. The can is, to be fair, a thing of beauty: the red of the Palestinian flag becomes the red of the logo, with the name in white calligraphy which is both Arabic and very reminiscent of the writing on Coca-Cola cans. It is topped with a stylised keffiyeh. Warhol would have loved it.
My son took one sip and refused to take another. It’s not unpleasant, but it is flatter and more bitter than the Real Thing™. I probably won’t buy it again – but I wouldn’t call that a boycott, exactly.
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