ongress Fights Back Against UN’s Anti-Israel Blacklist With ‘Anti-Boycott Act’
“I
will bless those who bless you And curse him that curses you; And all
the families of the earth Shall bless themselves by you.” Genesis 12:3 (The Israel Bible™)
image: https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/congress-flag.png
InComposite image: The Capitol building in Washington DC with the Israeli flag. (Breaking Israel News/Kevin McCoy/ Wiki Commons)
response to United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) efforts to
undermine Israel’s legitimacy through their Boycott, Divestment, and
Sanctions (BDS) Act of 2017, the U.S. Congress and Senate have
introduced a bipartisan bill, the “Israel Anti-Boycott Act,” that would
protect U.S. companies targeted by the international boycotts and punish
those who comply with them.
Earlier
this March, the UNHRC voted in favor (32 nations in favor and 15
abstentions) of the BDS Act of 2017, which entails creating a
“blacklist” of companies enabling or benefitting from the growth of
Israeli settlements. Blacklisted
companies under the BDS Act of 2017, the full list of which will be
published this December, include major American corporations like
Coca-Cola, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Airbnb, and TripAdvisor.
The
UN blacklist treads in the footsteps of the broader BDS movement, which
was established in 2005 in an attempt to economically undermine
Israel’s sovereignty. The stated goal of the BDS movement, according to
its founders, is to “end international support for Israel’s oppression
of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law.”
response to the UN’s blacklist, Representative Peter J. Roskam (R-IL)
and Senators Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced
the Israel Anti-Boycott Act (H.R. 1697 and S.720). The US Act has seen overwhelming support, with 49 senators and 253 House members
co-sponsoring it to date. The bill was initiated in the context of a
strong U.S.-Israel alliance celebrating the U.S. government’s proud
history of protecting the Jewish State from economic warfare.
The
U.S. Israel Anti-Boycott Act would bolster the 40-year-old American
policy of challenging boycotts against its allies and highlight U.S.
support for Israel as its strongest ally in the Middle East. In the
past, Congress has successfully tackled foreign boycotts against Israel.
In 2015, former U.S. President Barack Obama passed the Trade Promotion
Authority (TPA), which instructed American negotiators to take an
anti-BDS position in ongoing free trade negotiations with the EU.
The
Israel Anti-Boycott Act also underscores the importance of direct talks
between the Israelis and Palestinians, as the unilateral adoption of
the UN blacklist could further destabilize any attempts to bring
Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiations for direct peace
negotiations.
In
practice, the pro-Israel bill would apply existing U.S. anti-boycott
laws to international organizations like the UN and European Union,
which often single out American companies doing business in Judea and
Samaria, hoping to pressure them into boycotting Israel.
Nikki
Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, criticized the United
Nations support for the BDS Act of 2017, saying, “Blacklisting
companies without even looking at their employment practices or their
contributions to local empowerment, but rather based entirely on their
location in areas of conflict, is contrary to the laws of international
trade and to any reasonable definition of human rights.
“It is an attempt to provide an international stamp of approval to the anti-Semitic BDS movement. It must be rejected.”
consider the BDS movement to be anti-Semitic because it holds Israel,
as the sole Jewish state, to a different standard than other countries.
While human rights violations run rampant in Syria, North Korea, Yemen,
Russia, Sudan, and Iran, the UN singles out Israel as the greatest
violator of health rights, Palestinian sites, women’s rights, Middle
Eastern peace, and human rights.
Israeli
ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Eviatar Manor, calls the
HRC “obsessive compulsive” on Israel, as the international organization
lambasts Israel while it overlooks abuses against millions worldwide.
Economic
warfare against Israel is not new for the UNHRC. This past spring, the
UNHCR voted on 41 resolutions, 12 of which dealt with human rights
violations around the world, and five of which were focused on Israel.
One of the resolutions passed mandated a boycott of Israeli settlements
and called upon members to “distinguish, in their relevant dealings,
between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories
occupied since 1967.”
If
American companies were to comply with the UN’s BDS Act of 2017 by
boycotting firms on the blacklist, they could risk harming Israelis,
Palestinians, and even their own domestic economy. In 2015, over 500
Palestinian workers were left unemployed after the SodaStream factory
was relocated from the West Bank to southern Israel because of pressure
from the BDS movement.
Last year, Israel was the United States’ 22nd largest trade partner, trading over $40 billion annually. According to Aaron Menenbeg of The Tower,
out of the twenty countries with which the U.S. has trade agreements,
Israel is the eighth-largest supporter of American jobs and Israeli
exports generate the highest amount of export dollars per job. If
American companies were to adopt the UN blacklist, the robust
U.S.-Israel economic ties would be risked, undermining the American
economy at large.
If the
Israel Anti-Boycott Act passes in the U.S. Senate and House, it will
then be sent to the U.S. president to be enacted into law.
No comments:
Post a Comment