Literary boycott of Israel – just another sordid violation of US Anti-Boycott Law

(A7) The boycott movement against Israel is just another obnoxious chapter in the sordid history of economic, social and political warfare against the Jews.

BDS (an acronym, meaning Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) is the latest rhetorical term used to obfuscate its nefarious character. Don’t be misled by the attempts to sanitize it as some sort of social awareness program. It’s an insidiously malevolent and antisemitic scheme directed at delegitimizing Israel and undermining it as a haven and homeland for Jews.

BDS seeks only to harm and serves no salutary purpose. It is not about having a state for the so-called Palestinian Arabs. That could have been accomplished years ago by merely saying yes to one of the many proposals made by Israel over the years, including those sponsored by the US. Moreover, ever since the Oslo accords, Hamas controlled Gaza and the PA controlled areas have functioned as proto-states, with their own elected governments and security forces. Indeed, the PA has admitted in UN documents that the so-called occupation (if any) ended in 1994.

BDS does not enhance the lives of those living in the PA and Hamas controlled areas. Indeed, it actually hurts them, because it results in the loss of jobs by the many who are gainfully employed in enterprises that demonstrate peace and harmony is entirely possible.

BDS has not resulted in or improved the prospects for peace; it only hurts everyone, including Palestinian Arabs. More than ninety percent of Palestinian Authority (PA) exports are to Israel and in excess of fifty percent of its imports. If Israel were to respond to BDS in kind, it would have devastating effect on the PA. The specter of BDS also hampers development, because it disincentives those who might otherwise invest in joint enterprises. The blatant hypocrisy of BDS is nauseating. Why not let everyone get along?

To address this harmful practice, Congress passed the Anti-Boycott Law. It covers a variety of circumstances, including those arising out of the notorious original Arab League boycott of Israel and its progeny.

The Law declares it is the policy of the United States to oppose restrictive trade practices or boycotts fostered or imposed by any foreign country against other countries, like Israel, friendly to the US or against US citizens. The use of the terms ‘fostered’ and ‘foreign country’ is cogent. Neither of these terms is precisely defined, unlike, for example, the term ‘foreign state’ which is expressly defined in the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

The legislative history of the Anti-Boycott Law supports a broad interpretation of these words to cover non-government organizations (NGOs) like the Arab League and, hence, the use of these expansive terms. The foreign source must merely foster the unsanctioned boycott to trigger application of the Law; it is not required to control the US person participating in the boycott. The US person need only, with intent to comply with, further, or support an unsanctioned foreign boycott, refuse or agree to refuse to do business with the boycotted country or companies to violate the Law. US persons are defined as all individuals (including foreign nationals), corporations and unincorporated associations that are resident in the US.

This would, therefore, include the ongoing boycott against Israel and its various iterations fostered by Iran or Qatar, directly or indirectly, through the myriad of their agents, proxies, allied NGO’s and other organizations, such as designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations Hamas and PFLP, as well as Samidoun (which was just sanctioned by the US Treasury Department) and the BDS Movement.

It is suggested that the recent literary boycott of Israel promoted by palfest.org (a UK entity), which sponsors the Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest), also comes within the ambit of the US Anti-Boycott Law. It urges writers to boycott Israeli institutions, including publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications. Imagine how the many Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners and others who have published works in Israel or worked with Israeli organizations must feel. Are they now the object of scorn? I hope not, because this new misguided boycott effort cannot be viewed in a vacuum and is unjustified like the other despicable ones that preceded it.

One of the founders of PalFest is the author of books published by Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing and a speaker at conferences in Qatar. She has defended and identified the new literary boycott as a part of the BDS Movement that began approximately twenty years ago. Omar Barghouti, one of the principals of the BDS Movement, was a featured speaker of PalFest earlier this year and called for escalating strategic boycotts of the sort that PalFest is presently pursuing.

The links to Qatar and the BDS Movement are cogent. Both Qatar and the Palestinian Authority are members of the Arab League, which was the original object of the US Anti-Boycott Law. The Arab League and many of its members continue, directly or indirectly, to foster boycotts of Israel and it appears that this new PalFest boycott is just another example of an unsanctioned foreign boycott under US Law.

The BDS Movement is also reportedly associated with Hamas, as well as the Iranian regime, which also foster boycotts against Israel. In 2021, more than sixty groups from the US and Europe teamed up with Iran and Hamas to wage a BDS war against Israel. The Gaza event was called ‘Year to Confront Normalization’ and the related Iranian event, broadcast simultaneously from Teheran, was called ‘Together Against Normalization’. In furtherance of the boycott of Israel by the terrorist Iranian and Hamas regimes, the more than sixty anti-Israel and pro-BDS organizations launched what was called ‘Peoples Against Normalization’ campaign.

The collaborative link to the Iranian regime is probative. It establishes that at the very least Iran is fostering these BDS malevolent efforts in the US.

Since then, in 2023 and this year, the BDS efforts have been redoubled as a part of the pro-Hamas movement on campus and elsewhere. On July 9, 2024, Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haine, issued a statement, which noted:

“In recent weeks, Iranian government actors have sought to opportunistically take advantage of ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza, using a playbook we’ve seen other actors use over the years. We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”

Thus, those US persons cooperating, rather than refusing to participate, in the unsanctioned foreign boycott promoted by PalFest of Israeli institutions, including publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications, are likely violating the US Anti-Boycott Law. I can’t help but wonder about the ignorance or insensitivity of many of these dilettante boycotters, who have joined with abhorrent terrorists in boycotting Israel. Don’t they realize they have become the useful dupes of the terrorist Hamas and Iranian regimes in their efforts to delegitimize and destroy the State of Israel and ethnically cleanse it of Jews?

The Anti-Boycott Law also expressly prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex or national origin. US persons may not treat US citizens overseas any differently from in the US. Imagine the outrage if some US company announced that it would not do business with any non-white person who dared to move into a particular neighborhood because it believed it should be preserved as a white-only enclave. In this regard, consider the approximately five hundred thousand Americans living in Israel (including the approximately sixty thousand reportedly living in Judea and Samaria); they too are entitled to be free of any discrimination under the Law.

The 1924 Anglo-American Convention, pursuant to the US Constitution is US law and assures their right to live there. Oslo II also permits building and living there. The fact that the boycott sponsors incorrectly deem their living in Israel to be a violation of so-called Palestinian Arab rights under international law is irrelevant and indicative of their unlawful intent. They are not entitled unilaterally to make up and then execute their own contrived foreign policy or otherwise discriminate against a US citizen in Israel.

In this regard, it is important to note the outrageous PA law that outright prohibits land sales to Jews. Those breaking the law are subject to harsh penalties that the PA does not shirk from imposing. The boycott is in effect supporting maintaining as Judenrein the areas under the control of the PA and Hamas, as well advocating such a loathsome policy as to the rest of Judea and Samaria (including Jerusalem), generally. Moreover, the BDS Movement’s goal is, G-d forbid, to eliminate Israel entirely.

The PA and Hamas also spew classical antisemitism, incite and glorify terrorism and call for Israel’s destruction. This includes promoting hateful antisemitic rhetoric in the media, as well as, teaching their children in school to hate Jews. The Palestinian National Charter describes the entire Land of Israel, including the land within the ceasefire lines of 1948, as belonging to the Arab people and calls for liberation through armed struggle.

Despite assurances that it would be amended to recognize the State of Israel, this in fact never actually occurred. The Hamas Covenant is overtly antisemitic. It compares Jews to Nazis, asserts Jews were behind World Wars I and II and finds Jewish conspiracies everywhere. It requires an armed Jihad against Israel to eliminate it. Do the writers agreeing to the literary boycott and professors and students at US colleges and universities promoting BDS appreciate that this is what they are actually supporting?

It is also shocking how many misuse explosive legal terms like ‘occupation’, ‘genocide’ & ‘apartheid’ in their agenda driven narrative to libel Israel and in support of unfounded calls for BDS against Israel. Indeed, instead of unequivocally condemning genocidal Hamas for the murders, rapes and other atrocities it committed on October 7, 2023, they abhorrently seek to justify genocidal Hamas’ malignant actions by baselessly accusing Israel of genocide.

The massively funded and premeditated barrage of antisemitic slurs and slogans, including the “genocide” blood libel, is poisonous to the minds of many college students and others. They now suffer from a malady I call the “Goebbels Syndrome”. In essence, Israel has been falsely accused of genocide by genocidal Hamasniks in a moral inversion that channels notorious Nazi propagandist Goebbels’ vile dictums, “Accuse the other of that you are guilty” and “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it”.

Consider too the other less than admirable aspects of Hamas and PA controlled society. It is reported that domestic physical and mental abuse against women in the home is rampant; honor killings regularly occur; there is systemic discrimination against women, both civilly and criminally; women are blatantly mistreated and exploited, including in matters of economic access and inheritance; and there is no equal protection for women under the law. Why is there no hue and cry denouncing these deplorable abuses by Hamas and the PA?

In striking contrast, the Arabs who remained in Israel gained citizenship, equal rights and became an integral part of Israeli society. Why would those in academia and others seek to harm Israel and promote the dystopian nightmare scenario of terrorist Hamas instead? They shouldn’t and it’s why the Anti-Boycott Law should be enforced to protect Israel and US citizens from these misguided and illegal actions by US persons and entities.

The U.S. Department of Commerce oversees enforcement of U.S. law that prohibits individuals and entities from participating in a boycott not approved or sanctioned by the U.S. government. It is important to note that any US person who receives requests or demands that they comply with, further or support the unsanctioned boycott must, by law, report the same to the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Internal Revenue Services (IRS). I can’t help but wonder whether all the people and entities publishing these misguided calls for a literary boycott of Israel and the associations, employers like universities and publishing houses, as well as others promoting the illegal boycott, have made the appropriate filings, including reporting themselves and their employees participating in the unsanctioned foreign boycott.

It should be noted that aside from governmental action, there might also be a private right of action under the Anti-Boycott Law, as discussed in the Abrams v. Baylor case. This would permit the affected US citizens to seek to compel the wrongdoers to comply with the Law and also sue for damages.

BDS is antisemitic and foolish. It’s time to end these BDS initiatives once and for all on the grounds that they are immoral and illegal. Israel is not an apartheid state. It’s a diverse society with freedom of speech, religion and press, as well as, equal protection under law. This is not the case in the areas controlled by Hamas and the PA.

Don’t be misled by the scurrilous claims generated by the propaganda organs of the Iranian Regime and Hamas and their local minions in the US and elsewhere. They are just projecting unto others their own sins. The Bible declares, those who bless Israel are blessed. Israel does so much good; it’s a blessing to the world. Unite to defeat BDS.