Ireland’s Boycott-Israel Bill Could Have a Serious Impact—on Ireland's Own Economy

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.

Read more at Bloomberg

More about: American law, BDS, Ireland, Israel & Zionism, Israeli economy

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society