Irish eyes aren’t smiling

Regarding Alex Ryvchin’s article, (“Irish bill criminalizing West Bank settlements further step toward boycott,” July 24), I would like to point out that Ireland has never been overly friendly to Jews or to the Jewish state.

On May 2, 1945, Éamon de Valera, the head of the Irish government (which had remained neutral during World War II) paid a visit to the Third Reich’s Minister to Ireland, Dr. Eduard Hempel, to express his condolences on the suicide of the German head of state, Adolf Hitler. After the War, according to a two-part television documentary (“Hidden History: Ireland’s Nazis”) aired on RTÉ (Raidió Teilifís Éireann) in January 2007, Ireland became a haven for between 100 to 200 Nazi war criminals. One of these, Otto Skorzeny, was known as Hitler’s favorite commando and served as an adviser to Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser during the 1950s, where he trained the latter’s army in guerrilla tactics. One of his trainees was Yasser Arafat.

Ryvchin writes, “Should the bill become law, its economic impact on Israel’s economy would be negligible .... ” While indeed this is true, the economic impact on Ireland itself would probably be catastrophic. Such a law would be in violation of existing statutes and regulations of the United States, the European Union and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Prof. Orde F. Kittrie has penned a detailed account of how this is so. He writes in part: “The bill, if enacted, would gravely undermine Ireland’s economic links to the United States, which are vital to Irish prosperity. US investment in 2016 accounted for 67% of all foreign direct investment in Ireland. Yet this bill would make US companies with subsidiaries in Ireland, Irish companies with subsidiaries in the US and their employees who are Irish or resident in Ireland, choose between violating the Irish law or violating the US Export Administration Regulations. Violations of these US anti-boycott laws are punishable by fines and by imprisonment for up to 10 years.

“According to the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland, some 700 US companies employ over 150,000 people in Ireland. The companies include Apple, Dell, Facebook, Google, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, and Twitter. In addition, some 227 Irish companies employ an estimated 120,000 people in the United States. These companies would also be forced by Irish law to run afoul of some or all of the two dozen US state laws that impose sanctions on companies that boycott Israel.”

In the end then, perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all for Ireland to pass this law. DAVID WILK Ma’aleh Adumim