The Arab economic boycott against Israel has dwindled into little more than a publicity campaign so ineffectual that its threats are being ignored by leading American and European companies, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith reported today.
Arnold Forster, general counsel of the ADL, made public a selective list of 70 major American business firms currently operating in Israel despite the threat of Arab economic reprisals. Among them are 15 of the top corporations in the United States, including Westinghouse, IBM, RCA, Monsanto, International Paper, Republic Steel, General Tire, National Cash Register, and Inland Steel.
The list supplemented a special ADL report which examines the efforts and results from 1946 to the present–of Arab League threats to blacklist all business organizations unwilling to terminate commercial dealings with Israel. The survey was undertaken by ADL in the belief that the “facts about the Arab boycott may dispel illusions for an effective efficient boycott machine.”
The report points out that the Arab Boycott Committee often makes threats even when it knows such sanctions cannot be realized, for the benefit merely of the resulting publicity and propaganda. It lists instances of boycott failure to illustrate its assertion.
The Anti Defamation League study summarizes formal and unofficial protests by European governments–including those of The Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland and France–which have denounced the boycott. It stresses that since 1956, the United States Congress and both political parties have expressed their disapproval of the Arab boycott threats. The ADL report also quotes from a letter by Assistant Secretary of State Frederick G. Dutton in which he said his department “will not recognize or condone the boycott.”
The ADL report calls for stronger U. S. Government resistance to the Arab Boycott Committee and sees hope in the recent proposal by Sen. Harrison A. Williams of New Jersey to amend the Export Control Act. The proposed amendment would prohibit “the furnishing of any information or the signing of agreements by domestic concerns engaged in export… which have the effect of furthering restrictive trade practices… by any foreign country against another country friendly to the United States.”
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