A leading US-based Zionist group slammed the so-called "database" of international corporations doing business with Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria, released by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on Wednesday, saying the UN was playing into the hands of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement.
"The publishing of this so-called "blacklist" of companies doing business with Israeli communities in the Settlements is not designed to provide information it was only created to have a chilling effect on the ability of working Israeli families to earn a living and to support boycotters of Israel," Herut North America's National Director Moshe Phillips said in a statement released Thursday.
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The database, released Wednesday after years of delays, listed 112 companies operating in Judea and Samaria that the UN human rights office said are complicit in rights violations by bolstering Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. It included major banks, construction companies, supermarkets and gas stations. But it also includes a number of global brands, including American firms Airbnb, General Mills and Motorola Solutions.
Israel denounced the list and accused the UN rights office of collaborating with the boycott movement in compiling the names.
The UN list does not impose any penalties on the companies or accuse them of acting illegally. Instead, it appears to be aimed at pressuring them into changing their business practices by drawing negative attention to their ties to a contentious Israeli policy.
Israel denounced the list and accused the UN rights office of collaborating with the boycott movement in compiling the names.
"While not the 'stated' purpose of the list, its publication will aid those engaging in the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement," stated Jeff Dunetz editor and publisher of the The Lid, and a weekly political columnist for the Jewish Star newspaper. Dunetz is also a Herut candidate for the 2020 World Zionist Congress.
Herut further said that it "agrees with the assessment" of Orde Kittrie of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who said that "compliance with the blacklist could be inconsistent with the US anti-boycott statute (50 USC 4842), which has long been used to punish compliance with boycotts (and blacklists) fostered by the Arab League."
Fred Taub, author of the 2010 book Boycotting Peace: Why Divestment Is Turning Truth On Its Head and a Herut candidate for the 2020 World Zionist Congress commented on the UN list saying, "You can't have peace with someone who won't sit down with you for a cup of coffee, boycotts are meant to divide, not bring people together."
"This boycott list echoes of some of the darkest periods of recent Jewish history and must be called out as hateful and dangerous," Phillips' statement concluded.
