Mobil Rescinds Boycott of Israeli Products; Plans Ads in Jewish Newspapers

The Mobil Oil Corp. has rescinded all instructions to suppliers of its tanker fleet to refrain from furnishing the ships with products of Israeli or Jewish manufacture, The dramatic reversal of a policy that was widely regarded as capitulation to the Arab boycott of Israel, was disclosed today by Arnold Forster, chairman of the Anti-Boycott Committee of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Forster said that in an exchange of correspondence with Herman J. Schmidt, executive vice president of Mobil, the company declared that “effective immediately,” suppliers’ “only considerations in supplying products to our ships are that these products meet our traditionally high requirements of quality, availability and reasonableness of cost,” In other words Mobil told Forster, its ship chandlers are now authorized to purchase Israeli or Jewish made products. Forster said the new instructions have been sent to all of the company’s suppliers. In addition, Mobil will take advertisements in some 100 Jewish publications explaining that “There is no Mobil ‘Boycott.’ There Never Was.”

That there was a boycott was disclosed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency which reported last Feb. 3 that a Mobil spokesman in New York had conceded the accuracy of reports that Israeli or Jewish products were barred from its tankers calling at Libyan ports because the vessels would be subject to stiff fines or seizure by Libyan authorities if they were discovered. The spokesman admitted at the time that instructions banning the products were contained in letters sent to ship chandlers by Mobil Shipping, a British subsidiary of the oil company. Also affected by the ban were non-Israeli products bearing trademarks that the Libyans might regard as similar to a Star of David. Protests by pro-Israel circles in London caused Mobil to revise the letter to eliminate allegedly offensive references to products of “Jewish origin.” But on Feb. 18, Rawleigh Warner Jr. chairman of the Mobil board and the company’s chief executive officer indicated that the ban still applied to tankers calling at Libya because “when a company does business in a particular country it either must conform to the laws of that country or it must cease doing business in that country.”

Warner’s explanation was contained in a letter to Hedley Donovan, editor-in-chief of Time magazine denying a story in Time’s Feb. I issue which implied that Mobil was complying with a “world wide boycott of Israeli products” Mobil made a copy of the letter available to the JTA in advance of publication in Time. The Mobil board chairman stated in it that his company “observed only those boycotts which are the expressed policy of the U.S. government; we do not comply with a world-wide boycott of Israeli goods and never have.” The specific charge against Mobil however was not that it complied with a world-wide boycott but that it instructed its chandlers to keep Israeli products off its ships calling at Libya. Forster said the Anti-Boycott Committee of the Presidents Conference held a series of meetings with Mobil representatives which resulted in the reversal of the company’s supplies policy.