The Zionist Organization of America has recently issued a boycott on the purchase of Coca-Cola products. Here is a copy of the boycott, and the history behind it:

“Coca-Cola has been occupying and reaping the benefits from stolen property in Egypt — property that was stolen from its Jewish owners, the Bigio family, by the Egyptian government. When the Bigios learned about Coca-Cola’s plan to acquire an interest in their property, they repeatedly asked Coca-Cola to do the right thing and compensate them for their loss. But Coca-Cola has never offered them a penny.

Coca-Cola should be ashamed of its unfair and immoral conduct. The Company holds itself out as “more than a beverage company” — it’s a “corporate citizen of the world” that’s supposed to “act in every instance with honesty, integrity, accountability and respect.” Coca-Cola tells its employees to “never engage in behavior that harms the reputation of the Company. If you wouldn’t want to tell your parents or your children about your action — or wouldn’t want to read about it in a newspaper — don’t do it.”
Reason for boycott? 

When Refael Bigio was a boy, he would run into the Coca-Cola bottling plant on his family’s Egyptian estate and be welcomed by the smell of cola, the clinking of glass and lollipops in the shape of little bottles.

“Because I was the son of the owner, they used to dip it twice in sugar,” the 63-year-old Montreal grandfather said of those treats.

But that collegial, decades-old relationship between the Bigio family and the beverage company would change. Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Mr. Bigio could proceed with his lawsuit against Coca-Cola Co., which he says bought property that had been confiscated from his family by the Egyptian government in 1962.

The lawsuit, one of the first of its kind, could set a precedent in court battles by other Jewish business owners seeking to recover assets seized in the Arab world.

“Coca-Cola knew certainly well that we are the owners of these assets and that we were expropriated because we are Jewish,” Mr. Bigio said yesterday from his office in the borough of Outremont. “I was horrified by their act …. They’ve abused all measures of common decency.”

Nathan Lewin, Mr. Bigio’s high-profile Washington, D.C., lawyer, said Coca- Cola is trespassing on his client’s property and will seek damages of at least $100-million.

In the late 1930s, Mr. Bigio said Coca-Cola leased part of his family’s land in Heliopolis, a suburb of Cairo, and set up a plant. Later, the Bigios started manufacturing bottle caps and serving trays for Coca-Cola.

According to some historians, a surge of pan-Arab nationalism forced about 50,000 Jews to flee Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s. One day in 1962, Mr. Bigio who was being groomed to take over the family business, arrived at the family factory to find the street filled with police officers demanding he turn over the keys.

Penniless, the family fled to France, where they were accepted as refugees before moving to Montreal and establishing a successful agro-industrial enterprise.

In 1980, Egypt’s minister of finance ordered the state insurance company, Misr Insurance, to return the Bigios’ properties to them.

Mr. Bigio had been trying unsuccessfully for years to reclaim his assets through Egytian courts when he heard Coca-Cola was interested in buying the bottling company that ran his family’s old factories. “We approached them in good faith, in a peaceful manner and reminded them of the relationship we had with them,” Mr. Bigio said. He requested compensation, “but they brushed us off.”

In 1994, Coca-Cola purchased a minority stake in the bottler. Crystal Warwell Walker, a spokeswoman for Coca-Cola, said the company has never leased property directly from the Bigios; Coca-Cola does not even own the land, she added.

“If you want to sue on ownership rights, the company doesn’t have them,” she said. The bottling company leases the property from the insurance company, Misr, she said.

She added that the company will agree to deal with the matter through an Egyptian court because U.S. law regarding jurisdiction prevents Misr from being named as a defendant.

Mr. Bigio has been fighting to have his day in a U.S. court for almost a decade. His first lawsuit was dismissed by a New York federal judge for procedural reasons. A court of appeals reversed the ruling, finding that the Bigios are unable to get relief through the Egyptian courts.

Mr. Bigio is buoyed by the Supreme Court’s refusal to consider Coca-Cola’s request to overturn the appeal, as well as by community support.

Last week, the Zionist Organization of America asked its members to boycott Coca-Cola products based on Mr. Bigio’s case. “They should not have helped Egypt benefit from this theft,” said the pro-Israel group’s president, Morton Klein.

Mr. Lewin said the next step will be to request evidence from the company, but he expects further delays by Coca-Cola.

Mr. Bigio said he will not back down. “When you know something is yours in your right and if you fight for it in the proper decorum — at the end justice does prevail.”

(Sources: ZOA / National Post / Canada)