A bill currently before the lower house of the Irish parliament would make it a crime to import or sell items produced by Israeli businesses in territory acquired by Israel in the Six-Day War. Such legislation, unprecedented for any Western country, might have very real consequences. But, writes Eli Lake, those consequences could harm Ireland more than they harm Israel:

Because of Ireland’s low corporate tax rates, many of the world’s largest companies keep their wealth there. U.S. companies accounted for 67 percent of all foreign direct investment in the country in 2017, and Ireland is especially popular with America’s tech giants. Apple is Ireland’s largest company. Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are also in the top ten.

Which brings us back to Israel. A big reason why Israel’s economy has boomed [in the past two decades] is because America’s tech giants have set up branch offices and bought promising Israeli tech startups. The Irish legislation, if it becomes law, would force Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook to choose between their Irish tax haven and their business in the Jewish state.

While the proposed law only targets the West Bank territories, not all of Israel, in practice it would be difficult to enforce that distinction. . . . It would probably violate the proposed law if Apple allowed an Israeli employee living in the West Bank to telecommute. The distinction becomes even thornier given that Ireland considers all of eastern Jerusalem to be “occupied territory.”

This would place U.S. companies in a bind. If they follow Irish law, they would either have to fire the telecommuting employee or have to forbid the employee from working from home. If they did that, however, the companies would be participating in a boycott not sanctioned by the U.S. government. And that . . . would in turn risk violating the anti-boycott sections of U.S. export regulations.

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.