How Israeli high tech gets sold to countries that have no diplomatic relations with Israel
Greetings from home - I returned to Israel this evening after an 18-day business trip.
This evening I was told about a company in Israel that is white labeling (which means removing all signs of who the real manufacturer is) for sale to a hostile (i.e. Muslim) country. This is not uncommon. On the very first initial public offering on which I worked when I made aliya, one of the items we had to get permission not to disclose was the fact that the company was about to make a large sale in Malaysia. How does it happen? Jonathan Ferziger and Peter Waldman explain.
Trade and collaboration in technology and intelligence are
flourishing between Israel and a host of Arab states, even if the people
and companies involved rarely talk about it publicly. When a London
think tank recently disinvited Bar from speaking on a panel, explaining
that a senior Saudi official was also coming and it wasn’t possible to
have them appear together, Bar told the organizers that he and the Saudi
gentleman had in fact been planning to have lunch together at a
Moroccan restaurant nearby before walking over to the event together.
“They were out-Saudi-ing the Saudis,” he says.
Peace hasn’t come
to the Middle East. This isn’t beating swords into plowshares but a
logical coalescence of interests based on shared fears: of an Iranian
bomb, jihadi terror, popular insurgency, and an American retreat from
the region. IntuView has Israeli export licenses and the full support of
its government to help any country facing threats from Iran and
militant Islamic groups. “If it’s a country which is not hostile to
Israel that we can help, we’ll do it,” Bar says. Only Syria, Lebanon,
Iran, and Iraq are off-limits.
Interesting. Three of those four countries are also on the list of countries whose nationals are currently barred (or not barred depending upon whom you ask) from entering the United States under Donald Trump's executive order.
The Saudis and other oil-rich Arab states are only too happy to pay for
the help. “The Arab boycott?” Bar says. “It doesn’t exist.”
Hey - don't tell the Democrats that. They think the Arab boycott exists and will continue to exist until we have 'peace' with the 'Palestinians.' Reality says otherwise.
On the other hand, the Saudis like to hide reality:
Saudi officials declined to speak on the record about possible ties
to Israel. Questions e-mailed to the kingdom’s interior ministry and its
embassy in Washington for this article were unanswered. A source in
Riyadh, insisting on anonymity, e-mailed a statement denying any trade
links between Israel and Saudi Arabia:
“In regard to
defense systems technology, Saudi Arabia has never dealt with Israel in
this field or any other field. Moreover, common sense tells us that in
order for Saudi Arabia to get any weapon systems, they have to be bought
under trade agreements made with friendly countries that manufacture
those systems with official and approved export trade certificates from
their governments. It is also certain that Israel is not among the
countries that have commercial relations with the Kingdom.”
The
Arab embargo of Israel, nominally in force since the Jewish state’s
founding in 1948, necessitates that all business between Israel and most
Arab states remain strictly off the books, cloaked by intermediaries in
other countries. But the volume and range of Israeli activity in at
least six Gulf countries is getting hard to hide. One Israeli
entrepreneur set up companies in Europe and the U.S. that installed more
than $6 billion in security infrastructure for the United Arab
Emirates, using Israeli engineers. The same companies then pitched Saudi
Arabia to manage overcrowding in Mecca. Other Israeli businesses are
working in the Gulf, through front companies, on desalination,
infrastructure protection, cybersecurity, and intelligence gathering.
How to boycott Israel and Jews (in Arabic! with English subtitles)
So you want to boycott Israel and Jewish products? Here are instructions in Arabic (with English subtitles) for how to do it from Watch Mr. Rashid, a charismatic Moroccan Christian preacher. A scene you will not want to miss!
These evil, poisonous (not really) persimmons were confiscated from a Saudi market in a small town along the border with Jordan. The reason? They come from Israelthe Zionist entity.
The Qurayyat Municipality is on alert after its team confiscated from
the local fruit market 140 kg of kakis (the Japanese persimmons) that
had Israeli stickers, a section of the Arabic press reported on Tuesday.
The head of the municipality’s environment health department, Abdulaziz
Al-Musaed, said the municipality acted on information that the
Israeli-produced fruit was being sold in the market.
“The municipality team conducted a surprise inspection after the closing
hours of the fruit market and confiscated the fruit boxes that
originated from Israel,” he said. He added the municipality has notified
the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
“The Saudi Food and Drug Authority was also notified. It inspected the
fruit and confirmed that such fruit is not allowed in the Kingdom,” he
added.
Al-Musaed noted that all shops were warned against dealing with fruit vendors who do not know the origin of the produce.
The head of Qurayyat Municipality, Ali Al-Shammari, said the local
authority does not know how such fruit entered the country, especially
as it carried a sticker stating its origin. A source at the Ministry of
Commerce and Industry said communications are ongoing with concerned
bodies to find out how the fruit entered the country and whether it was a
single shipment or several.
I wonder.... Do the Saudis use cell phones? Laptop computers with Intel inside? Baby monitors? Ingestible cameras? Should we tell them? Hmmm....
The ITF’s announcement is a welcome and courageous one for three
reasons. Firstly, by correctly depicting the Tunisian decision as based
upon “prejudice,” it rejects wholesale all the justifications and
rationalizations for the boycott of Israel and Israelis advanced by the
Arab League Central Boycott Office and its contemporary echo, the
anti-Semitic “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) movement, which
portrays the boycott of Israel as the twenty-first century incarnation
of the movement to boycott apartheid South Africa.
Secondly, the announcement shifts the costs of a boycott away from
the Israelis onto the boycotting countries themselves. Those countries
that continue insisting on a boycott of Israeli athletes now have a
choice: either drop this primitive bigotry, or accept that through your
actions, it is your own professional sports representatives that will be
punished.
Lastly, the ITF decision should properly be read as establishing a
precedent that can equally apply in other sports. At an international
swimming competition in Dubai last month, the Israeli team was
grudgingly allowed to participate, but scoreboards at the event, as well
as television broadcasts, were banned from mentioning the word
“Israel.” Gratifyingly, the success of the Israeli swimmers at the tournament meant that the policy of pretending that the team was not present became untenable.
Nonetheless, there should be consequences to these actions. As well
as ejecting boycotting countries from competitions, international
sporting authorities should also ban countries that still advocate the
boycott of Israel – like Qatar, which will host the 2022 soccer World
Cup – from hosting such prestigious events. Thanks to the ITF, that
outcome is now one step closer.
Well, yeah. But we're still a long way from - for example - the Olympics banning countries who refuse to allow their athletes to compete with Israelis.
Following the Mavi Marmara incident in 2010, NATO member
Turkey adamantly opposed Israeli involvement – “even the most innocent” – in any
NATO programs, he said. These programs included joint exercises, intelligence
exchanges, and research and technological development programs.
“We were
hoping that after the arrangement between [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu
and [Prime Minister Tayyip Recep] Erdogan in the spring, Turkey would pull back
a little and allow some of the programs,” he said. “But there is
nothing.”
By not allowing Israel’s participation in NATO programs, he
added, Turkey was blocking participation with other Mediterranean countries,
because Israel and other nations in the region – Jordan, Egypt, Morocco,
Mauritania and Algeria – took part in NATO projects as a bloc.
“We can’t
cooperate with any of them, because the programs are all blocked, nothing can go
through,” he said.
Lampridis said he was surprised by the continued
Turkish opposition, especially since practical cooperation between Turkey and
Israel was taking place on a daily basis, “like where Turkey has an advantage,
of course, and Israel is demonstrating goodwill.”
For example, since
Turkish goods can no longer be transported overland through Syria to the Persian
Gulf, every week hundreds of Turkish trucks arrive via ferry to the Haifa Port
where they then proceed across the country to the Jordan border crossings,
carrying millions of dollars worth of goods to Jordan and onward to the
Gulf.
...
The Greek ambassador also took Erdogan to task for blaming Jews and Israel for
the unrest over the summer in Turkey and for the overthrow of Egyptian president
Mohamed Morsi.
“You just don’t say such things,” he said.
Asked if
he thought Erdogan was an anti-Semite, he replied, “Even if he is, is it the
position a prime minister takes? He can do it privately if he wants. You don’t
do it openly and expose a whole country – a country that has never been
anti-Semitic in the past, to tell the truth, especially under the Ottoman
Empire, when it was a haven for Jews. Other countries were not, Turkey was.
What’s wrong with the guy? It really beats me.”
I wonder why it doesn't violate the Arab boycott to have goods transported through Israel.
It figures: New International Olympic Committee chief heads group that helps comply with Arab boycott of Israel
Given the Nazi history of the International Olympic Committee, no one should be surprised that the Committee's new chairman also chairs a German-based organization that helps companies to guarantee that their products do not contain anything from Israel. Note: Not 'just' from the 'territories,' which would be noxious enough, but from Israel.
Thomas Bach, a German who was elected Tuesday at an IOC session in
Buenos Aires, is chairman of Ghorfa, the Arab-German Chamber of Commerce
and Industry, which was set up in the 1970s by Arab countries to
boycott trade with Israel.
“It betrays the principles of sportsmanship and fair play for the IOC
to be headed by someone who actively participates in ongoing Israel
boycott campaign measures,” said Deidre Berger, director of the American
Jewish Committee Berlin Ramer Institute.
Ghorfa helps German
companies ensure that products meet the import requirements of Arab
governments, some of which ban products and services from Israel.
The
group continues to issue certificates of German origin for trade with
Arab countries. Its earlier practice of certificates verifying that no
product parts were produced in Israel stopped in the early 1990s when
Germany enacted trade regulations forbidding the use of certificates of
origin to enable de facto trade boycotts, according to the AJC.
Part of the problem is that we Jews are too polite to call someone an anti-Semite. Recall, for example, Alex Giladi.
Bach’s candidacy came under criticism in Germany in past weeks for its
strong support by Arab leaders. But Charlotte Knobloch, president of the
Jewish Community of Bavaria and former head of the Central Council of
Jews in Germany, said in a statement that Bach “stands for central
values such as tolerance, fairness — sportsmanship in the best sense of
the word — and cosmopolitanism.”
Two Kuwaiti MP's have gone on television in recent weeks to defend their government's purchase of equipment for their security forces from the State of Israel. These kinds of deals were always made in the background, but for them to be acknowledged openly by the legislators of a Muslim country on television is really quite shocking.
Notice the dig at how little the Arab world to defend Kuwait against Iraq during the lead-up to and during the First Gulf War.
Olympic teams told to 'stay home' if they won't compete with everyone
Officials of the International Olympic Committee have told countries and athletes who do not plan to compete with certain other countries to stay at home.
The IOC comment came after an Algerian kayaker withdrew from a World Cup last month in which an Israeli was entered.
Without commenting specifically on that incident, the IOC condemned such a “hypothetical scenario” at the London Olympics.
"Refusing to participate in an Olympic event because of a fellow athlete/team’s religion or nationality, would not only be unsporting behavior but a serious breach of the IOC’s code of ethics, the principles of the Olympic Charter and the athletes oath," IOC spokeswoman Emmanuelle Moreau said in a statement.
Iran was criticized after some of its athletes withdrew from events against Israelis at the 2004 Athens and 2008 Beijing Olympics.
"If an athlete/team is unable to come to the games in spirit of friendship and fair play, then they should stay at home," Moreau said. "There can be no discrimination for any reason between participants at the Olympic Games."
Any athlete from an Arab Muslim country who competes and loses will never be seen again, so I can guarantee you that any athlete from an Arab Muslim country who is slated to compete with an Israeli will suddenly become 'sick' and withdraw from the competition, just as has always happened in the past.
In Dubai, they have their priorities. It is far more important to keep Jews - or at least Israelis - out of the country than it is to save lives. And so, at the last minute, 12 Jewish and Arab Israeli cardiologists have been banned from attending a conference of over 12,000 cardiologists that is taking place in the island paradise this week. What's worse, the tourist industry will not refund more than $500 - if that - from the more than $3,000 apiece that the Israeli cardiologists paid to attend.
Only a couple of Israelis – one from the Rabin Medical Center and the other from Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center – who had been invited to lecture at the conference were allowed to attend and did so.
The Jerusalem Post learned on Tuesday that the would-be participants – Jews and Arabs – paid $3,000 each for their flights, visas, hotels and attendance at the conference.
Dr. Abed Khaskia of the cardiology department at Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba said he was told that only if someone else occupied his room would he get $500 back but that he would not be reimbursed for the rest of the money. He blamed the Geneva-based World Heart Federation, which he said had promised to send a visa two weeks before the event, for the problem.
There was no discrimination between Jewish and Arab Israelis, said Prof. Chaim Lotan, head of cardiology at Hadassah University Medical Center, who had been involved in negotiations with the federation but did not attend because the Israel Heart Society had its own conference here during the same week.
Lotan told the Post that he was promised the federation would do all it could to ensure that all Israelis – participants as well as lecturers – be given a visa to enter Dubai.
“Those who actually did attend did not have an easy time,” Lotan said. “They weren’t allowed to leave the hotel, and their visas were held during their visit. Apparently, the government of Dubai did not want Israelis there.”
Arabs boycotting Adidas and other sponsors over Jeruasalem Marathon sponsorship
A year ago, the Jerusalem Marathon changed its route in order to avoid any areas liberated by Israel in 1967, and a threatened boycott against the Marathon's principle sponsor, Adidas. This year, the Marathon was too successful for the Arabs' taste. The youth and sports ministers of all Arab countries, led by 'our friends the Saudis,' have announced a boycott of Adidas and of all other sponsors of the Jerusalem Marathon.
“All companies that have sponsored the marathon of Jerusalem, including Adidas, will be boycotted,” said Saudi Prince Nawaf bin Faisal, chairman of the Arab youth and sports council of ministers, after a meeting in Jeddah.
Prince Nawaf told a press conference the ministers also agreed to organize a separate marathon next year to coincide with the annual Jerusalem event.
That event will take place under the title “Jerusalem is Ours” in cities throughout the Arab world next March.
“Israel is trying to misguide public opinion into believing that Jerusalem is its capital and that is a violation of all U.N. resolutions,” added Nawaf.
Around 15,000 runners participated in the Mar. 16 International Jerusalem Marathon, which sparked controversy because part of the route passed through Arab east Jerusalem.
Funny, that's not why Prince Nawaf said that they are boycotting, is it? Note that Prince Nawaf didn't say anything about 'Arab east Jerusalem.' He said "Israel is trying to misguide public opinion into believing that Jerusalem is its capital." It sounds like they're objecting to Jerusalem being Israel's capital - just like the HusseinObama administration.
For those of you who want to see the Marathon route (yes, it did go briefly into the Old City, onto the Mount of Olives and onto Mount Scopus, although the latter was actually an Israeli enclave from 1948-67), let's go to the videotape.
The mile translations in that video are off (if you noticed, they made 42 kilometers, but only 25 miles - a marathon is 26.2 miles), but if you noticed that hill at the 15.65 mile mark in the video, I used to use that hill for sprints when I was trying (pretty unsuccessfully) to get back into shape about ten years ago.
Luckily, since the Arabs are going to make many marathons, they probably won't have much of an effect on ours. Maybe I should start training again (longtime readers may recall that I used to be a marathoner, about 20 years and 60 pounds ago).... Nah, this one has too many hills and is too hard to run. Tiberias would probably be easier.
The Western Left may be boycotting Israel, but the 'Palestinians' are not. A 'Palestinian' who conducted a study as part of his Master's degree thesis has discovered that 'Palestinian' businessmen invested $2.5 billion in Israel and in the Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria... in 2010 alone. This is from a 'Palestinian' site.
The study was conducted by Issa Smeirat, 43, as part of his M.A Degree. This is the first study of its kind, and its results surprised Palestinian and Israeli officials, Israeli Daily, Haaretz, reported.
...
According to the study, 16.000 Palestinian businessmen from the West Bank, who hold permanent permits from Israel to enter the country and conduct businesses, established businesses and firms in Israel and its settlements in the occupied territories. This includes establishing several factories and companies that has numerous branches, all paying taxes to Israel.
Smeirat also studied the motives that pushed those Palestinian investors to invest in Israel and its illegal settlements, especially since the issue is very sensitive and more Palestinian organizations, activists and officials are calling for boycotting Israel and its settlement products.
Talking to Haaretz, the researcher said that the sensitivity of this issue prevents the publishing of the identities of the investors, adding that while conducting his research, the Palestinian National Economy Ministry in the West Bank, the same ministry that launched the campaign to boycott settlement products, stated that the Paris Agreement does not prohibit investing in settlements.
He was referring to the Protocol on Economic Relations, which came as an annex to the Gaza-Jericho Agreement, the first peace agreement signed between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization on May 4, 1994.
The agreement incorporated the relations between the two parties, and was then incorporated and suppressed by Oslo 2 Agreement, and became known as the Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip of 24 and 28 September 1995.
The study of Smeirat was presented by the end of last summer at the Al-Quds University. He obtained detailed information from Palestinian Commerce and Industry Offices about Palestinian investors in Israel and its settlements.
...
His study revealed that most of the investors are fluent in Hebrew, and more than half of them are 40 years old or older. This shows that those businessmen worked in Israel before it closed its borders to the Palestinians in the early nineties.
Approximately %23 of them worked as laborers in Israel before they established their firms and businesses, and only %0.5 of them do not speak Hebrew.
...
The researcher said that he believes that the main motive that encourages Palestinian investors to invest in Israel and its settlements is attributed to the limited capacity of Palestinian investments, especially since Israel controls %60 of the occupied West Bank, and also controls all natural resources, especially water, in addition to Israel’s restrictions on the freedom of movement of the people and the goods, especially since its controls all border terminals in the West Bank, and closed Israeli markets to Palestinian products.
The Israeli restrictions caused a sharp increase in production costs in the West Bank comparing to production costs in Israel.
...
Palestinian investments, according to Smeirat, are around 7 Billion U.S. Dollars; approximately $5 Billion of these investments are not in Israel and its settlements, as they are mainly invested abroad, either in projects or stocks, an issue that poses a significant challenge to investment opportunities in the West Bank.
He believes because he wants to stay alive and his name has been disclosed. I suspect strongly that the real reasons those investors invest in Israel rather than in the 'Palestinian Authority' are the skills and technologies available in Israel and the (relatively) lower level of corruption and required bribes in Israel.
That last paragraph seems inconsistent with the report itself which said that $2.5 billion was invested in Israel in 2010 alone.
The new anti-boycott legislation, an alternative view
Elihu Stone and I go back more than 50 years. He sent me this essay about the anti-boycott legislation that was passed on Monday by the Knesset.
The Anti-Boycott legislation recently enacted by the Knesset has brought a firestorm of criticism from many claiming that such legislation is inherently undemocratic. Please allow me to present an alternative viewpoint:
Declaring that boycotts, per se, are illegal might be anti-democratic. However the subject legislation does not criminalize boycotts. Rather, the legislation provides a balance, allowing those who wish not to deal with Israel, even indirectly, to act as they see fit - so long as they do not interfere with otherwise binding contracts by calling for the economic destruction and international sanction of others who think differently than they do.
A careful reading of the legislation shows that it merely provides the possibility of defense - via an appropriate civil cause of action- for those whom the BDS (Boycott- Divestment- Sanction) supporters mean to strangle economically - and, arguably, undemocratically. Adherence to democratic principles does not demand - nor should it compel - any democratic institution to aid and abet all actions of those who effectively deny it the right to self defense, and actively advocate for its dissolution by any means short of armed assault. Moreover, those who would squash others by economic means should hardly be heard to complain when their intended victim chooses to withhold its economic support (in the form of tax breaks, etc.) from them. Israel's refusal to support its detractors in their declared efforts to undermine Israel's economy and blacklist all of its academic and cultural institutions is eminently reasonable - and, albeit long in coming, presents no unfair surprise to those who have consistently exploited democratic rhetoric and institutions in the service of most undemocratic ends.
Any fair assessment of the Anti-Boycott legislation must take into consideration the relevant history and context. the BDS Movement is hardly a being sui generis, springing spontaneously from thin air. Those with a sense of regional history will recall the Arab boycotts of Jewish and Zionist interests which began well before 1948 when the modern state of Israel was recognized by the U.N. Indeed, the Arab League boycott of Israel remains in effect today, administered by the Damascus-based Central Boycott Office (CBO), a specialized bureau of the League. The Arab Boycott - as does the BDS boycott - targets not only Israel and her institutions, but also companies that do business in or with Israel. A fair read of the BDS Movement's website reveals that ultimate goal of that movement, too, is the dismantling of the Jewish state - continuing the assault on her initiated by Arab armies in 1948 - via economic means.
Anti-Boycott legislation is hardly unprecedented in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In 1977, the United States Congress passed laws making it illegal for U.S. companies and individuals to cooperate with the Arab boycott against Israel and authorizing the imposition of not only civil but also criminal penalties against U.S. violators. The legislation that Israel has enacted is far less onerous for its opponents than the U.S legislation is for its opponents. On the other hand, the BDS Movement's boycott constitutes at least as great a threat to Israel, any who associate with her and to the very notion of free trade as the original Arab Boycott. Israel's legislation appropriately withholds Israeli governmental support from those who work toward Israel's destruction by economic means and provides a mechanism for Israel's constituency to defend themselves from (now) tortious interference with third-party contracts, premised solely on their connection to Israel, its institutions or areas under its control.
A majority of the Israeli Knesset has now agreed that Israel will no longer be complicit in engineering her own demise. The legislature has asserted its right to re-level the economic playing field and provide Israel's professors, farmers, merchants, entrepreneurs, hospitals and cultural institutions with some mechanism for defending themselves against the tyranny of those who would concentrate their economic might to wreak havoc upon them by precluding any association and commerce with them due only to some connection with the State of Israel, any of its institutions, or an area under its control (the Disputed Territories).
The wording of the Anti-Boycott measure might be improved upon; the Israeli courts (which the BDS boycott as institutions of Israel) will undoubtedly be called upon to interpret its scope and meaning, over time. However, this bill, crafted to allow the possibility of recourse - via legal challenge of those who call trans-nationally for trampling the economic, cultural and academic the freedom of Israelis and Israel's trade partners - serves to promote and maintain democratic ideals, such as freedom of association, economic substantive due process and - yes - the free exchange of ideas.
Indeed. Now, if only the Israeli Supreme Court would see it that way.
Bank Leumi may yet find itself the subject of a boycott by the religious Zionist community, after it turned down an offer by supermarket magnate Rami Levy to buy the interest of a bankrupt developer in a Jerusalem housing project. The project is only one third complete, and Bank Leumi's action may put two thirds of the project in the hands of a 'Palestinian' businessman. The other third of the project has been sold to religious Jews.
In light of the Bank Leumi rejection, Palestinian Authority semi-resident Bashir Al-Masri, represented by the same lawyer who advised Ariel Sharon during the Disengagement, Dov Weisglass, has redoubled his efforts to buy the lands of Nof Tzion.
Located to the east of Talpiyot and south of the Old City, the neighborhood was originally planned as a luxury project for wealthy apartment-seekers from abroad. When this did not pan out, the project was saved by the religious-Zionist public, for which its strategic spot, in terms of both Jewish-Arab demographics and a panoramic view of the Temple Mount and the Old City, increased its attractiveness. Thus, a new religious-Zionist neighborhood arose in eastern Jerusalem.
The first phase of the project was completed several years ago, and much has been written about the 90 families' satisfaction with their new neighbors and surroundings. However, they are now greatly apprehensive that if the project falls into Arab hands, the 180 planned units of Stages II and III of the project will not only not be built, but also that their own homes will become an unsafe and unviable Jewish enclave surrounded by Arab homes.
They have therefore threatened to take Bank Leumi – the guarantor of the project – and the Digal development company to court for backing down on their much-touted plans to ensure that the project is for the national-religious public.
Bank Leumi has rejected Levy’s offer, saying that it prefers to break up Digal altogether and sell its assets – including the land of Nof Tzion – to the highest bidder. This once again leaves the field open to Al-Masri. Al-Masri has also taken another step, seeking to buy out the shares of Digal.
A letter of intent to boycott Bank Leumi has already been signed by top rabbis in the religious-Zionist camp.
If Bank Leumi is boycotted over this project, it could find itself boycotted in the US as well.
I have previously written about the Nof Zion project here.
Have you filed your taxes yet? Don't forget Form 5713
Please note the first line on this IRS tax form:
The instructions sound slightly better. The form is called an "International Boycott Report." It is not used to report income related to boycotts in which the US participates (for example, Cuba), but only relating to boycotts that the US has declared illegal (for example, Israel).
Here are some more pieces of the instructions:
I'll bet you were as shocked as I was when you saw that form. But the truth is that it's a form that's meant to deprive companies that comply with the Arab boycott of Israel of their tax benefits. And since most sizable companies use accountants who have to sign their tax returns, there's at least some chance they're complying with this.
A cable from the US Embassy in Damascus that was exposed by Wikileaks reveals that Steven Spielberg's movies were banned by the Arab League after he donated $1,000,000 to Israel during the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
The cable reportedly detailed a confidential briefing the U.S. received from Muhammad al-Ajami, the head of Syria's regional office for the boycott of Israel, in which the U.S. was informed of a meeting of the Arab League's Central Boycott Office during which officials from 14 Arab states, as well as Iran, Malaysia and Pakistan, voted to ban all films and other products related to Spielberg or his Righteous Persons Foundation.
According to the cable, cosmetics magnate Estée Lauder was also added to the blacklist while financial services company Merrill Lynch was put on a "watchlist."
The Guardian report said that the only Arab countries that did not attend the meeting were Egypt, Mauritania and Jordan. Also reportedly not present at the meeting were Djibouti and Somalia.
Given that many of Spielberg's movies are rated "G," I'd bet that put a real dent in the movie market in a lot of Arab countries.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
