The Commerce Department has accused Safeway Stores Inc., the nation’s largest food chain, of 449 violations of the U.S. law against participating in the Arab boycott of Israeli products.
Safeway is accused of having excluded boycotted firms from a list of suppliers, which it used to offer products for sale to two supermarkets in Saudi Arabia and one in Kuwait.
The complaint also charges that Safeway required one of its wholesale suppliers to submit names of its manufacturers for boycott clearance.
The charges carry a fine of more than $4 million, $10,000 for each violation. If they are upheld by a Commerce Department administrative law judge it will constitute the largest fine ever levied for violation of the anti-boycott law. “We believe the charges are preposterous,” said Felicia del Campo, a spokeswoman for Safeway Stores based in Oakland, California. “And we will vigorously defend ourselves against these charges because we have done everything possible to comply with the U.S. anti-boycott law. We certainly had no intention of being a party to an Arab boycott of Israeli products.”
Del Campo said that Safeway does not own the Arab stores, but has entered into a “technical agreement” with native companies licensing them to use the chain’s name and give them advice. She said the stores simply provided the local companies with a list of manufacturers of American products offering to sell them. “The (claim) that we constituted an agreement is an absurd charge,” she said.
The Arab boycott of Israel increased substantially in the late 1970’s and the U.S. adopted two laws to counteract the participation of U.S. firms in the boycott.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
