Anti-boycott Laws Seen As Effective in the U.s., France

Legislation introduced in recent years to fight the Arab boycott in the U.S. and in France is beginning to “bite,” according to Israeli officials who monitor the anti-boycott efforts around the world. At the same time, there has been a noticeable drop in the zeal with which some Arab countries, especially Egypt, are applying the boycott.

A boycott council meeting scheduled by the Arab League eight months ago has still not taken place, and the belief here is that the repeated postponements reflect a fear of feuding between the Arab member-states.

For the first time ever, an Israeli official, Dan Halpem of the Treasury, has been asked to give evidence before a select committee of the British House of Lords which is examining anti-boycott draft legislation submitted by Liberal Peer Lord Byers. Halpem, a deputy director-general at the Treasury, heads a team which monitors the effects of the boycott worldwide, and the efforts in various countries to fight against it. A Parliamentary commission in Holland has also been set up to study possible anti-boycott legislation.

In the U.S., say Israeli monitors, anti-boycott laws are now fully functioning and the Department of Commerce has a department of some 70 people charged with enforcing them. The tax authorities have also channeled manpower into supervising those aspects of the legislation which pertain to tax benefits (one main sanction against companies which infringe the anti-boycott laws is the loss of overseas tax benefits.)

One recent regulation went as far as to forbid commercial concerns from declaring that they have no relationship (of parent or partner of subsidiary) with any other company that is on the Arab boycott blacklist.

In France, too, the Israeli monitors say, the anti-boycott laws are largely effective–save for the controversial exemption which the government gave to its concern which insures overseas trade ventures exemption. An appeal against this exemption is shortly to be heard before the French Supreme Court.

A number of European statesmen have indicated that they would like to see action on the European Economic Community (EEC) level against the boycott. EEC agreements with Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and other Arab countries contain specific anti-boycott provisions and in the Israeli view an infringement, if and when one occurred and was reported, ought to force the EEC Commission to take action.

ARGUMENTS AND COUNTER-ARGUMENTS

the Israeli officials say that they and other anti-boycott forces around the world have successfully countered the arguments often voiced in world chanceries that action against the boycott should be part of overall Mideast diplomacy and that an end to the boycott must in practice await a Mideast settlement.

the counter-argument is that while this might apply to “primary boycotts”–by Arab states of Israel directly–it can hardly apply to the “secondary and tertiary boycotts” which discriminate against companies and individuals not otherwise involved in the Mideast and not otherwise identified with Israel. The basis of action against the boycott, through legislation and otherwise, the Israeli officials say, has been a realization in many Western countries that this is an internal and commercial issue–not an external political one.