The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith today revealed that it has asked the United States Government to take “prompt and forceful action” in support of American firms “faced with blacklisting because they have complied strictly with our country’s established foreign trade policy.”
An “urgent request” for government intervention in the bans against the Ford Motor and Coca-Cola Companies and Radio Corporation of America imposed by the Arab League Boycott Conference was sent this week to Secretary of State Dean Rusk by Dore Schary, ADL’s national chairman. The bans, announced November 20 and 26 in Kuwait, were unanimously adopted by the conference because Ford and Coca-Cola had expressed intentions of entering business relationships with Israel and because RCA is there already.
Mr. Schary noted that the 1965 Amendment to the Export Control Act (the Williams-Javits Act) makes it U.S. policy to oppose inequitable trade restrictions, including boycotts, fostered or imposed by foreign countries against other countries friendly to the United States. Accordingly, the U.S. Department of Commerce specifically asks all American exporters to refuse to comply with restrictive trade practices and boycotts, he said.
The ADL chairman pointed out that there is “constant harassment” by the Arab League of American companies. “The tragedy,” he told Mr. Rusk, “is that the harassment is greatest against those companies which have evidenced a willingness to stand up and be counted in support of U.S. policy.” He said that Ford, RCA and Coca-Cola “have been singled out for Arab punishment as a warning to others who may also be ready to defy boycott demands.” Chrysler and General Motors have moved with Ford in parallel directions toward Israel, and yet have not been similarly ordered banned by the Arab Boycott Committee, he indicated.
Mr. Schary told the Secretary of State that S.E. Knudsen, executive vice-president of General Motors, in a letter to the Anti-Defamation League dated November 3, had stated that his company is “exploring an arrangement” whereby GM would “supply the know-how” to an Israeli GM distributor for the assembly of its cars and trucks in Tel Aviv.
Declaring that the punitive Arab Boycott Committee resolutions against Ford, RCA and Coca-Cola are not binding in their present stage since the Committee “is an advisory rather than an official government body,” he asked the State Department to “head off” implementation before it is too late.
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