A box of the well-known Lipton brand sat on the shelf of a supermarket in the southern port city of Sidon when attentive customers noticed that the sticker price appeared in Israeli shekels! After an investigation, it was discovered that the tea had been imported from Egypt and the price in shekels was intended for Israeli Arabs.

Shoppers and the Lebanese media were outraged. The supermarket was declared a “victim of the mafia falling into the trap of normalization with the enemy.” The Lebanese Ministry of Economic Affairs sent officials to inspect all imports to Sidon to insure that such a disgrace would not happen again.