Jerusalem Post: Dubai's boycott

Jerusalem Post
Dubai's boycott
Mar. 2, 2006

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1139395525547&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The controversy over a deal to hand over the control of six major US ports to a government-owned Dubai firm has centered around security concerns. President George Bush has assured worried members of Congress from both parties that these concerns were thoroughly vetted, and that all security-related functions would remain in the hands of the federal government.

On Tuesday, however, The Jerusalem Post revealed another potential obstacle to the deal: the firm, Dubai Ports World (DPW), is an active participant in the illegal boycott of Israel. Under extensive questioning at a Senate hearing on Tuesday, a DPW official admitted that the government of the United Arab Emirates owns DPW and does indeed enforce the boycott of Israel.

The port deal would seem to be far out of sync with the new spirit of American foreign policy that Bush has wrought. It is Bush, after all, who has continually urged the world to connect the dots between Arab freedom, facing down Muslim radicalism and American security. Yet now it is Bush who is insisting that the UAE, which show's up in Freedom House's ratings below Iran and formally bars Israelis from entering the country, is an American ally, and even one that can be compared with Great Britain.

This won't wash. The Dubai deal may or may not violate US anti-boycott laws, but treating a government that boycotts Israel as if nothing is wrong is pre-9/11 thinking. It fails to recognize that the Arab economic boycott of Israel - or more correctly of Jews, since it began even before the Israel was founded - is an unacceptable form of deligitimization and demonization of the Jewish state.